VI 
PREFACE. 
qucnce, be described among those which are strictly the spontaneous growth of the neighbour- 
ing country, in the Flora Philadelphica. Since a 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 of a botanical friend, the author has concluded to extend the plan of the 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 catalogue, 
only the very coinmon ornamental trees and shrubs — those plants w'hich 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 
among us. 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 these 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 minutiae 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 into their gardens and their grounds, where the same causes ope- 
rate in insuring their nurture and preservation. 
The plants enumerated in this catalogue have been collected since the month of April, 1814. 
After that period, hardly one week of the floral season has passed by, particularly during the last 
summer, without an effort 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 filled. As, however, this Prodromus is, in itself, a mere appendage to a more exten- 
