The Project Gutenberg EBook of Handbook of the Trees of New England, by
Lorin Low Dame and Henry Brooks

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Title: Handbook of the Trees of New England

Author: Lorin Low Dame
Henry Brooks

Release Date: January 28, 2007 [EBook #20467]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK TREES OF NEW ENGLAND ***

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HANDBOOK OF THE
TREES OF NEW ENGLAND

_WITH RANGES THROUGHOUT THE
UNITED STATES AND CANADA_

BY
LORIN L. DAME, S.D.
AND
HENRY BROOKS

_PLATES FROM ORIGINAL DRAWINGS_
BY
ELIZABETH GLEASON BIGELOW

BOSTON, U.S.A.
GINN & COMPANY, PUBLISHERS
The Athenaeum Press
1904

COPYRIGHT, 1901, BY
LORIN L. DAME AND HENRY BROOKS

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

PREFACE.

There is no lack of good manuals of botany in this country. There still
seems place for an adequately illustrated book of convenient size for
field use. The larger manuals, moreover, cover extensive regions and
sometimes fail by reason of their universality to give a definite idea
of plants as they grow within more limited areas. New England marks a
meeting place of the Canadian and Alleghanian floras. Many southern
plants, long after they have abandoned more elevated situations
northward, continue to advance up the valleys of the Connecticut and
Merrimac rivers, in which they ultimately disappear entirely or else
reappear in the valley of the St. Lawrence; while many northern plants
pushing southward maintain a more or less precarious existence upon the
mountain summits or in the cold swamps of New England, and sometimes
follow along the mountain ridges to the middle or southern states. In
addition to these two floras, some southwestern and western species have
invaded Vermont along the Champlain valley, and thrown out pickets still
farther eastward.

At or near the limit of a species, the size and habit of plants undergo
great change; in the case of trees, to which this book is restricted,
often very noticeable. There is no fixed, absolut