Author: Roland M. Harper

Publisher: Forgotten Books

Published: 2015-06-26

Total Pages: 593

ISBN-13: 9781330410905

Excerpt from Economic Botany of Alabama, Vol. 1: Geographical Report Including Descriptions of the Natural Divisions of the State, Their Forests and Forest Industries, With Quantitative Analyses and Statistical Tables Dear Sir: - I have the honor to transmit herewith Part I of a report on the Economic Botany of Alabama, by Dr. Roland M. Harper. The plan of the present Geological Survey, organized in 1873, embraced the investigation of all the natural resources of the State, geological, agricultural, botanical, etc. The great work of Dr. Charles Mohr on the Plant Life of Alabama, published in 1901, was the first of the botanical series, and it was planned to supplement this systematic catalogue of our native plants with reports on their economic aspects. Dr. Mohr died before this part of the work could be taken up by him. Dr. Harper, the author of this report, has been in the South most of the time since 1887, and in the last ten years has studied the forest conditions in all the southeastern states, particularly Georgia, Florida and Alaama, having been employed on Geological Surveys of each of these three states. His work in Alabama, beginning in 1905, has covered something over two years all told, and has extended over practically all parts of the State. Since 1908 he has revisited about half of the counties and has taken over three hundred photographs of Alabama scenery, without cost to the Survey. Forty-eight of these photographs, together with some older ones belonging to the Survey collection, are used to illustrate the present report, and many others, together with a great mass of field notes already in hand, will be available for future reports. Part I of the Economic Botany of the State, now submitted, is a geographical report on the forests and forest industries of each of the natural divisions of the State, together with quantitative analyses of the forests of each region, something, so far as we know, not before attempted for a whole state. This forms the natural introduction to the other botanical reports which are planned to follow, viz: Part II, a catalogue of the trees and shrubs, with their distribution and economic properties; Part III, the medicinal plants, the weeds and other useful or noxious plants not included in the preceding parts. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.