PREFACE. 



North American botany has hitherto owed its greatest accessions 

 to the learning and enterprize of foreign botanists, who have de- 

 voted themselves to this alluring subject, under the liberal patronage 

 of transatlantic governments, either directly bestowed, or extended 

 indirectly through the exploring zeal of learned societies and scien- 

 tific'associations. France, Germany. Prussia and England, have all 

 sent into this country, men of learning and science, with the express 

 intention of investigating our plants. They have been supported 

 in their travels by regal liberality; and sustained in the importance 

 of their mission, by the countenance of scientific favour. To their 

 efforts we are unquestionably greatly indebted, for much of the pre- 

 sent knowledge of the botany of our country: and to them 

 unhappily we have looked too implicitly, for that improvement in 

 its character and interests, to which their early efforts have served 

 to give them a kind of prescriptive right. 



That spirit of independence, however, which forms the basis of cha- 

 racter in a true American, has discovered its determination to eman* 



VOL. I. B 



