Bulletin - United States National Museum - Smithsonian Institution

FLORA OF WASHINGTON' AND VICINITY. 15
giiiia, was only 39,834. It is now, exclusive of the Virginia portion re-
ceded to that State, 177,638. To render the comparison more exact, we
may add to this latter number the present population of Alexandria
County, amounting to 17,545, and we have, in place of 39,834, a popula-
tion on substantially the same area of 195,183, or about five times as
large. The population of Maryland in 1830 was 447,040, in 1880 it was
934,632, or considerably more than twice as large ;
that of Virginia in
1830 was 1,211,405 ; Virginia and West Virginia, embracing the same
territory, now number 2,131,249, the population having not quite
doubled ; the retardation, however, as compared with Maryland, is
doubtless due entirely to influences affecting the southern counties.
There were doubtless large areas of primeval forest then within our
limits which are now under cultivation, and a much greater variety of
soil and woodland was then open to the researches of the botanist. As
a consequence, we ought to expect that it would sustain a much richer
flora.
:
The general results at which I arrive by the process adopted may be
summed up as follows
1st. That 43 of these names, or 29 per cent, of them, belong to the
first class and constitute errors in naming.
2d. That 12 of these plants, or 8 per cent., belong to the second class
or were simply cultivated species and never belonged to this flora.
3d. That 10 of them, or 7 per cent., belong to the third class and were
collected beyond the reasonable limits of our local flora.
4th. That the remaining 81, or 56 per cent., belong to the fourth class,
and represent bonajide discoveries of species which either do not now
occur or are so rare as to have escajjed the investigations of the present
generation of botanists.
With regard to the first of these classes, the large number of errors
in naming cannot be considered any derogation from the ability or fidel-
ity of the compilers of the Prodromus or their immediate predecessors,
when we remember the very unsettled state that American botany was
in at that time. Both names and authorities were badly confused and
errors were committed even by the most experienced botanists. In many
of the cases the real plant which it was their intention to designate can
be readily told, especially after a comparison with their omissions in the
same genus. For example, their Corydalis glauea* as probably also their
* This may have represented Dicentra Cucullaria not otherwise designated in the
Prodromus.