vi PREFACE. 



qucnce, be described anioiig those Avhich are slrictly the spontaneous growth of the neighbour- 

 ing country, in the Flora Philadelphica. Sincea design of publishing that work was first 

 announced, some little alteration has been made in the plan proposed. It was first intended to 

 confine the collections for the Flora to the mere indigenous plants of the neighbourhood. At 

 the suggestion ofa botanical friend, the author has concludedto extend the plan ofthe work so 

 as to embrace, in addition to these, such vegetables as have become, fortuitously or by design, 

 common companions of the native productions^of the soil. But, as it is a matter of some diffi- 

 culty, after passing the pale which circumscribes the native plants, to establish judicious li- 

 mits to the aberration, the author has determined to incorporate with the indigenous cataloffue 

 only the very cofj2mon ornamental trees and shrubs — those plants which constitute the esculent 

 vegetables of the table — those employed as condiments, or used to enhance the savouriness of 

 dietetick articles, and such others, as are so habitually introduced into the common gardens 

 of the adjacent country, or used in agriculture, that they have become, in a measure, naturalized 

 amongus. Such, for example, are the foreign grasses and vegetables cultivated by the peasan- 

 try; the numerous fruit-trees, and fruit-bearing shrubs, that are to be found in every garden; 

 the culinary pot-herbs reared in rural or city horticulture — and such other plants as are, from 

 their possessing or being supposed to possess, medicinal properties, brought to market and em- 

 ployed in domestick medicine. All ihesc are continually presented to our observation, and would, 

 inevitably, be sought for in a local Flora by the student of botany, the amateurs of that science, 

 and others, whose residence in the neighbourhood of their growth, renders them the objects of 

 curiosity, of pleasure, or of use in any way. For what every one meets with as common as the 

 grass by the way-sides, no one unacquainted with the minutise of botany would suppose to be 

 hardy intruders from foreign countries, tenaciously persisting in the right of possession, or the na- 

 tives of far distant climes, which the taste, the appetite, the pride, and sometimes even the pre- 

 judices of people, have drawn intotheir gardens and their grounds, where the same causesope- 

 rate in insuring their nurture and preservation. 



The plants enumerated in this catalogue have been collected sincethe month of April, 1814. 

 After that period, hardly one week of the floral season has passed by, particularly during the last 

 summer, without an eSbrt to procure the plants whose inflorescence was matured. Indeed, for 

 weeks at a time, the author has made almost daily excursions with a view to enlarge his stock, 

 and for opportunities of ascertaining the time of flowering and fructification of such plants 

 as he intended to describe. Notwithstanding these exertions, he cannot present the list as com- 

 plete. Many plants have doubtless eluded his observation. Not all, however, of those collect- 

 ed, are here enumerated: for many of the grasses that were culled, he has not been able, for 

 want of books, to ascertain correctly. The deficiency of those indispensable aids has been most 

 felt, in investigation of the cryptogamick class, which will consequently be found very im- 

 perfectly fiUed. As, however, this Prodromus is, in itselfi a mere appendage to a more exten- 



