PREFACE. 
Vll 
“Majestic woods, of every vigorous green, 
Stage above stage, high waving o’er the hills; 
Or to the far horizon wide diffus’d, 
A boundless deep immensity of shade.” 
Transported in idea to the borders of* the Hudson or 
the Delaware, we recline beneath the shade of venerable 
Oaks and spreading Maples; we see, as it were, fringing 
the streams, the familiar Cotton-wood and spreading 
Willows. On the higher plains, and ascending the hills 
and mountains to their summits, we see a dark forest of 
lofty pines; we hear the light breeze sigh and murmur 
through their branches as it did to the poets of old. 
But the botanist, in all this array, fails to recognise one 
solitary acquaintance of his former scenes: he is em- 
phatically in a strange land; a new creation, even of 
forest trees, is spread around him, and the tall Andes 
and wide deserts rise as a barrier betwixt him and his 
distant home. 
My indulgent reader will then excuse me, if I, on this 
occasion, appear before him only as a botanist; culling 
those objects which have given him so much delight, he 
wishes to present them to the curious public, alive to the 
beauties and symmetry of Nature’s works. Whatever 
is yet knowm of their uses and history, is also given; 
and that the task might be more complete, we have 
rambled a little beyond, rather than fallen short of, the 
exact limits of the republic. We have thus added, as 
our friends Torre y and Gray have done, or intend to 
do, in their general Flora, a collection of the trees of 
Upper California, extending our ramble as far as the 
vicinity of Sta. Barbara, in about the 34th degree of 
north latitude. We here met with several Oaks, Pines, 
a Plane-tree, a Horse-chestnut, and a Box Elder, which 
have not yet been found within the limits of the territory 
of Oregon. 
