Page:The Living Flora of West Virginia and The Fossil Flora of West Virginia.pdf/16




 * I have the honor to transmit herewith the very interesting work of Dr. C. F. Millspaugh, Curator of Botany in the Field Museum of Natural History, Chicago, Ill., on the Living Flora of West Virginia, and also the very complete work of Dr. David White, Associate Curator of Paleobotany in the Smithsonian Institution, and Chief Geologist U. S. G. Survey, Washington, D. C., on the Fossil Flora of West Virginia.

The very exhaustive paper of Dr. Millspaugh which forms Part I. of this new Volume V(A) of the publications of the West Virginia Geological Survey, constitutes an entire revision of the "West Virginia Flora" prepared and published by Dr. Millspaugh in 1896, as a revision of his first publication of a "Preliminary Catalogue of the Flora of West Virginia," 1891, published by the West Virginia Agricultural Experiment Station when Dr. Millspaugh was connected with that Institution as Botanist during the years 1889 to 1892. The present paper embodies the results of a much wider and later study not only by Dr. Millspaugh through the works and collections of other authors, but also the results of Dr. John L. Sheldon's (Professor of Botany, W. Va. University) recent studies communicated freely to Dr. Millspaugh for use in this publication, so that a very large addition to the West Virginia Flora is thus made known to the world by this "labor of love" on the part of Dr. Millspaugh, for which all those interested in the botany of the State will be deeply grateful.

Dr. David White's paper on the Fossil Flora of West Virginia which constitutes Part II. of this volume is the first publication of its kind made by the State giving a complete list of the known fossil plants, or the Flora that covered the land and peat swamps of West Virginia millions of years ago when the vegetable deposits which now form our coal beds were in process of