ten years I have travelled throughout America, principally with a view of becoming acquainted with some favourite branches of its natural history. I have had no other end in view than personal gratification, and in this I have not been deceived, for innocent amusement can never leave room for regret. To converse, as it were, with nature, to admire the wisdom and beauty of creation, has ever been, and I hope ever will be, to me a favourite pursuit. To communicate to others a portion of the same amusement and gratification has been the only object of my botanical publications; the most remote idea of personal emolument arising from them, from every circumstance connected with them, could not have been admitted into calculation. I had a right, however, reasonably to expect from Americans a degree of candour, at least equal to that which my labours had met with in Europe. But I have found, what, indeed, I might have {vii} reason to expect from human nature, often, instead of gratitude, detraction and envy. With such, I stoop not to altercate; my endeavours, however imperfect, having been directed to the public good; and I regret not the period I have spent in roaming over the delightful fields of Flora, in studying all her mysteries and enigmas, if I have, in any instance, been useful to her cause, or opened to the idle wanderer one fruitful field for useful reflexion.
Not wishing to enlarge the present publication, or retard it by the addition of a voluminous appendix, I reserve for a subsequent volume, which will shortly be issued, A general view and description of the aboriginal antiquities of the western states, and some essays on the languages of the western Indians, and their connection with those of other parts of the world, involving, in some measure, a general view of language, both oral and graphical.
