PREFACE. 
The foundation of the North American Sylva, was laid by the labo- 
rious researches of the elder Michaux ; who, under the auspices of the 
French government, devoted ten years, from 1785 to 1796, to a thorough 
exploration of the country, from the sunny sub-tropical groves of Florida, to 
the cold and inhospitable shores of Hudson’s Bay ; repeatedly visiting all 
the higher peaks and deepest recesses of the Alleghany Mountains, and 
extending his toilsome journeys westward to the prairies of Illinois, and the 
banks of the Mississippi. He proposed to Mr. Jefferson, then Secretary of 
State, to extend his researches to Oregon, but was prevented from doing 
so by untoward circumstances. 
Soon after his return to France, and the year before he fell a victim to 
scientific zeal upon the coast of Madagascar, the elder Michaux published 
his history of North American Oaks, which may be deemed the nucleus of 
this more comprehensive work, subsequently issued by his son, who accom- 
panied his father in the earlier portions of his travels. Revisiting this coun- 
try in 1801, and again in 1807, the son made the extended and toilsome 
researches of which these volumes are the result ; they were first published 
in Paris, in 1810' — 13. 
They were translated into English by Hillhouse, and printed in Paris with 
French types, in 1819. This edition has been long since exhausted ; the 
second English edition was produced at New Harmony, Indiana, but was 
carelessly executed on very inferior paper, though like the present the engravings 
were printed from the original copperplates partly engraved by the celebrated 
Redoute, which had been brought from Paris by the liberal friend of educa- 
tion and science, the late William McClure, with a view of making the work 
more generally known among the American people ; his brother and execu- 
tor, Alexander McClure, Esq., of New Harmony, still keeping in view the 
future utility to the community of these expensive engravings, presented them 
to my brother-in-law. Dr. Samuel George Morton, at present the successor of 
William M'Clure in the Presidency of the Academy of Natural Sciences, at 
