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PREFACE. 
IN this little book a very large number of the commoner 
wild flowers growing in the United States, west of the 
Rocky Mountains, are pictured and described. It is the 
first attempt to supply a popular field book for the whole 
West. The field is vast, including within its limits all sorts 
of climate and soil, producing thousands of flowers, infinite 
in variety and wonderful in beauty, their environment 
often as different as that of Heine’s Pine and Palm. In 
such strange homes as the Grand Canyon and the Petrified 
Forest of Arizona, or the deserts of Utah and southern 
California, we find the oddest desert plants, forced to cu- 
rious expedients in order to sustain life amidst almost per- 
petual heat and drought, but often displaying blossoms of 
such brilliance and delicacy that they might well be envied 
by their more fortunate sisters, flourishing beside shady 
waterfalls, in a “happy valley’’ like Yosemite, or a splen- 
did mountain garden, such as spreads in many-colored 
parterres of bloom around the feet of Mt. Rainier. On the 
wind-swept plains hundreds of flowers are to be found; 
many kinds of hardy plants brighten the salty margins of 
the sea cliffs, or bloom at the edge of the snow on rocky 
mountain peaks, while quantities of humble, everyday 
flowers border our country roadsides or tint the hills and 
meadows with lavish color. 
The field includes the States of Washington, Oregon, 
California, Idaho, Nevada, Utah, and Arizona and to de- 
signate this whole field the term West is used in this 
book. The term Northwest designates Washington, 
Oregon, northern Idaho, and northern California, and 
the term Southwest covers southern California and 
Arizona. The flowers found only in the Rocky Mountains 
are not included, and it may be noted here that exceedingly 
few of the western flowers cross the Rockies and are found 
in the East. 
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