PREFACE.
N o r th American botany has hitherto owed its greatest accessions
to the learning and enterprize of foreign botanists, who have devoted
themselves to this alluring Subject, under the liberal patronage
of transatlantic governments, either directly bestowed, or extended
indirectly through the exploring zeal of learned societies and scientific
associations. France, Germany, Prussia and England, have all
sent into this country, men of learning and science, with the express
intention of investigating our plants. They have been supported
in their travels by regal liberality; and sustained in the importance of
their mission, by the countenance of scientific favour. To their
efforts we are unquestionably greatly indebted, for much of the present
knowledge of the botany of our country; and to them unhappily
we have looked too implicitly, for that improvement in its
character and interests, to which their early efforts have served to
give them a kind of prescriptive right.
That spirit of independence, however, which forms the basis of character
in a true American, has discovered its determination to eman