tive, as Linnæus has made those of his own north

ern country."

Under the title of AMERICAN MEDICAL BOTANY, it is my intention to offer to the public a series of coloured engravings of those native plants, which possess properties deserving the attention of medical practitioners. The plan will likewise include vegetables of particular utility in diet and the arts; also poisonous plants which must be known, that they may be avoided. In making the selection, I have endeavoured to be guided by positive evidence of important qualities, and not by the insufficient testimony of popular report. In treating of each plant, its botanical history will be given; the result of such chemical examinations as I have been able to make of its constituent parts, and lastly its medical history. The botanical account will be found more diffuse than is necessary for exclusive botanists. The chemical inquiries are made chiefly with a view to the pharmaceutical preparations of each plant, or to interesting principles it may contain. Its medical history will contain such facts, relative to its operation on the human system, as are known to me from my own observation, or the evidence of those, who are qualified to form correct opinions on the subject.

I am by no means ambitious to excite an interest in the subjects of this work, by exaggerated accounts of virtues which do not belong to them. Much harm has been in medicine, by the partial representations of those, who, having a point to prove, have suppressed their unsuccessful experiments, and brought into view none but favorable facts. If, from a desire of avoiding error, I have not always been able to establish fully the character of a native vegetable, it will be recollected that many foreign drugs, which have been for centuries in use, have still an unsettled reputation as to their powers and modes of operating.

The figures of the present volume have been engraved and coloured from original drawings, made principally by myself. Dissections of the flower and fruit have been added to each for the use of botanical students. The subsequent portions of the work will be issued as rapidly as is consistent with their faithful execution.

At the end will be added an appendix or supplement, containing such facts relative to the plants already published, as may have come to light since their publication.