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Name and Address of Institution
University of Pennsylvania Philadelphia Pa

Name of Principal Investigator
Dr. John M. Fogg

Title of Proposed Research
Preparation of a Selected Guide to the Literature on the Flowering Plants of Mexico

Description of Proposed Research
A. Need for bibliography
Although the flora of Mexico has been studied and described for more than 400 years, during which time a vast literature has been accumulated, there exists no comprehensive guide to this material. Descriptions of plants must be searched for not only in botanical publications, but also in travel accounts, pharmaceutical and medical works, agricultural and ethnobotanical publications. Furthermore, since many of the explorations of Mexico and plant collections were made by visitors from outside Mexico, the reports on the plants have appeared in publications from many parts of the world, mainly England, Germany, France and the United States. The value of the bibliography when completed has already been attested to by scholars in various fields. Requests for information have already been received and answered, from students in various fields and in all cases it was possible to supply valuable references which had not been known to the student previously.

B. Scope
as is

C. Work Accomplished to date
About 7500 items have been collected so far, most of them from books and separately paged publications. Material has thus far been collected from all the important libraries in Philadelphia, New York, Washington, Boston, New Orleans, Chicago, the John Carter Brown Library in Providence in Providence, the Rare Books Division of the Army Medical Library in Cleveland, the Lloyd Library in Cincinnati and the Missouri Botanical Garden in St. Louis. In addition, a year was spent in Mexico, on a travel and maintenance grant from the U.S. State Department. During this time, material was collected from libraries in Mexico City and from a few cities outside the capital: Veracruz, Merida, Campeche, and Oaxaca.

D. Work still to be done
Material still remains to be examined in Texas and California libraries. In the field of magazines and serial publications, only those from Mexico have been reviewed in any degree of completeness. Still to be reviewed, also, are magazines from regions of the world, other than Mexico in addition to a number of Mexican magazines whose files were not complete, or could not be located.