26 PREFACE. 



plants and seeds to Great Britain. He is well and 

 respectfully remembered by those who made his 

 acquaintance, especially in Burke County. 



Mons. Delile, French Consul at Wilmington, in 

 the early part of this century, sent valuable collec- 

 tions of plants from the Cape Fear region to Paris, 

 which are acknowledged in the writings of several 

 European authors. 



Mr. John Lyon, of Great Britain, was an assidu- 

 ous collector of our plants, and contributed very 

 largely of our most interesting species to the English 

 gardens. He probably was in our mountain region 

 previous to 1802, but of this I have no positive in- 

 formation. He, however, spent several }~ears there 

 at a subsequent period, and died at Asheville in Sep- 

 tember, 1814, aged forty-nine years. A plain marble 

 stone marks his last resting-place in the graveyard 

 at Asheville. A manuscript Flora, which he seems 

 to have compiled for convenient use as a manual, 

 from such works as had then been published on 

 American plants, is now in my possession. 



F. A. Michaux, son of the Michaux mentioned 

 above, and who accompanied his father in some of 

 his visits to this country, traversed a portion of our 

 mountain district in 1802. The result of his explo- 

 rations in various parts of the country is contained 

 in his large work on the " Forest Trees of North 

 America," * illustrated with beautiful colored plates. 



* An exquisitely beautiful edition of this work was published in . 

 1857, by Rice and Hart of Philadelphia, in five volumes. 



