114 
[Assembly 
valuable observations on the plants of the Highlands of New-York ; to 
Dr. Aiken, for specimens and remarks on the plants of the central 
parts of the State ; to Prof. Eaton, the late Mr. H. H. Eaton, and Dr. 
Wright, for information relating to the botany of Rensselaer county ; 
to Drs. L. C. Beck and Eights, for rare plants of Albany county and 
other parts of the State, and to Dr. Matthew Stevenson for a catalogue 
of the plants of Washington county, as well as for many valuable spe- 
cimens. Other friends whose names appear in the following pages 
have rendered valuable assistance. 
Although so much has been accomplished towards the preparation of 
a Flora of the State, it is not pretended that all the plants within our 
limits are yet discovered. Many interesting districts have not been 
visited, and even in those which have been most examined, new plants 
are not unfrequently found. A considerable number of species are 
extremely limited in their geographical range, and others disappear 
soon after flowering, so that unless a district be visited several times in 
a season, many plants may be overlooked. 
The State of New-York is an interesting botanical region. The ge- 
ographical range of plants being limited by the characters of the soil 
and rocks, as well as by temperature, and the geological features of the 
State being greatly diversified, our Flora contains a considerable number 
of genera and species that are not found in some of the neighboring 
districts. The extended tertiary and alluvial formations of Long-Island, 
afford many plants peculiar to this portion of the State, besides the 
species that are confined to the immediate neighborhood of the sea. 
Our primitive formation yields a great proportion of the species inha- 
biting the New-England States. In the central and western counties 
where transition-rocks abound, we find many plants of Ohio, Indiana, 
and the country bordering Lake Superior, while on the lofty moun- 
tains of Essex county a true alpine vegetation exists. 
The whole number of species indigenous and naturalized in our State, 
including the lower orders of the cryptogamia, probably exceeds 2,400 
species. It is however the phenogamous or flowering plants that have 
chiefly occupied my attention, although I have not neglected the cryp- 
togamia tribes with the exception of the fungi, which are so perishable 
that few of them can be preserved for reference. Of phenogamous or 
flowering plants 1,350 species have been found within the limits of the 
State, and of ferns and plants allied to them, 53 species. The mosseis 
