PREFACE. 



Having been engaged daring the last twelve or thirteen years in collecting 

 materials for the better elucidation of the Botany of the hundred of Wirral, 

 and the neighbourhood of Liverpool, I now lay the result before the mem- 

 bers of the Literary and Philosophical Society. In doing so, it is with much 

 pleasure that I acknowledge the deep debt of gratitude I owe to the 

 nimierous friends, — many of them members of this Society, — who have so 

 Hberally and promptly aided me in the undertaking, both by their advice 

 and their contributions. 



My especial thanks are due in the first place to Mr. T. B. Hall, who 

 permitted me unlimitedly to use the valuable stores contained in his Flora 

 of Liverpool, published in 1839, and which serves as the basis of the 

 present work ; and then to Messrs. Wm. Harrison and Wm. Skdhome of 

 the Liverpool Botanic Garden, without whose assistance this work would 

 probably have been delayed for some time — if not altogether laid aside. 

 To them the list of mosses is almost exclusively due ; although very efficient 

 aid has been rendered in this, as in the other departments, by Mr. Thomas 

 Sansom, and by Mr. R. Tudor, of BooUe, whose extensive and accurate 

 acquaintance with the natural history of this locaUty has been of tlie 

 greatest service. 



Dr. D. P. Thomson has given me the benefit of his superior knowledge 

 of physical geography, and to him I am indebted for much of the informa- 

 tion which is given under this head. The names of many other contribu- 

 tors, viz., Messrs. H. Shepherd, Brent, W. Bean, Byerley, Maughan, Pr. 

 Womls, John Harrison, (Miner, St. Helens,) Professor Nuttall, «fec., will 

 appeal* in the course of the paper; and I have endeavoiu-ed, in every 

 instance, to assign to its proper source cvciy discovery of a new species or 

 linbitat. 



