Flora Peoriana The vegetation in the climate of middle Illinois

"Excerpt from Flora Peoriana: The Vegetation in the Climate of Middle Illinois
When we study the history of a country, we ought to be acquainted with its geography, its physiognomy of the landscape, its climate and the physical qualities of its people. All these things will influence the moral character of the people and only in that way, combining cause and effect, we will gain a clear view of its history.
Likewise when we study the flora of a country, it is not sufficient to know the names and characteristic qualities of all the species that grow in a certain district; we ought to know the circumstances under which they grow, the topography, the climate, the nature of the soil aud the geographical distribution of each species beyond the limits of the country in question.
This branch of science, known by the name of phytogeography, is a comparatively new one; it was founded in the first decennium of our century by Alexander Humboldt, when he published, in 1805, his ""Essai sur la Geographie des Plantes,"" and in 1817, his ""Prolegomena de Distributione Geographica Plantarum.""
Since that time many botanists, by treatises on single countries or on single groups of plants, have furnished material to more general works on the subject, f. i., Wahlenberg on the flora of Lapponia, 1812; on the vegetation and climate of Northern Switzerland, 1813; in his Flora Carpathorum, 1814. Robt. Brown, in his ""General Remarks, Geographical and Systematical on the Botany of Terra Australis, 1814, etc.
The first attempt to arrange the vegetation of our globe into separate geographical divisions was made by the Danish botanist Schouw, in 1822, when he published ""Grundtrack til en almindelig Plantegeographie,"" followed in 1824 by an Atlas of twenty-two maps. He used the names of the characteristic orders for each of his divisions: For North America, three only; the most northern, from 50 N. L. northward, he called the Kingdom of Saxifrageae and Mosses; the Northern United States and Canada formed that of the Asters and Solidagines; the Southern States that of the Magnolias. The country between the Rocky Mountains and the Pacific Coast, the flora of which was at that time nearly unknown, he passed by. Meyen, the botanist of the Prussian expedition around the world in 1830-32, published in 1836 a general work on the Geography of Plants. The most important works on the subject are the ""Geographic Botanique,"" by Alph. De Candolle (1855), and ""Grisebach's Vegetation of the Earth,"" in 1872.
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