HISTORY OF ESSEX BOTANY. 169 



Hymenomycetes which have appeared in the Essex Naturalist. We are 

 sure that if any member— or better, a group of members— will adopt Mr. 

 Massee's admirable suggestion with regard to the systematic observation of 

 the larger fungi, the Council and officers will give all the facilities in the 

 power of the Club to afford, and the work-room at the new Essex Museum 

 may be used for analyses, &c. But how comes it, considering the fact that 

 the larger fungi have been " foraged," illustrated, and described in Britain for 

 30 or 40 years, that so little has been attempted by Mycologists beyond fitting 

 each form with a more or less stable name ? Entomologists have come in for 

 some hard knocks from time to time ; but the humble collector has, at least, 

 aided in ascertaining the life-histories of some hundreds, or even thousands, 

 of British insects. One of our leading Mycologists, in the above article, con- 

 fesses that a group of most important factors affecting the life-history of an 

 Agaric are absolutely unknown. Mycologists must evidently bestir them- 

 selves. — Ed.] 



HISTORY OF ESSEX BOTANY. 



By Prof. G. S. BOULGER, F.L S., F.G.S., Vice President. 



Part I (continued from page 68). 



The Botanists of the Sixteenth and Seventeenth 



Centuries. 



ri^^HE following passage should have appeared after that 



I relating to Litnavia on p. 68. 



p. 391. " Conyza major. Great Fleawort. Conyza minor. Fleabane 

 Mullet. . . The great and lesser Conyza do growe . . at Grayes in 



Essex." 



Johnson (Ger. em., p. 481) re-writes the whole of this 

 chapter of Gerard and says that the plant " which grows in Kent 

 and Essex on chalkie hils " is Baccharis Monspeliensium of Lobel, 

 or Conyza maior of Matthiolus, otherwise Plowman's Spikenard, 

 our Iiiii/a conyza dc. He then, on pp. 482-3, figures and des- 

 cribes as common, " Conyza media, Herbe Christopher." which is 

 Pulicaria dysenterica Gaertn., and as occurring "in like places'' 

 Conyza minima of Lobel and Dodoens, the C minor of Tragus, 

 which is Pulicaria vulgaris Gaertn. There is little doubt from the 

 habitat and synonymy that he gives that Gerard had confused 

 the first two species, but all three of them occur in the county 

 and may well have occurred at Grays. 



p. 448. '^ Glaux exiaua maritima. Blacke Saltwoort . . . I found it 

 especially . . . by Tilbery Block-house in Essex." [Glaux maritima L.] 



p. 501. " Veronica fcsmiihi Fuchsii, sive Elatine. The Female Fluellen. 

 EUitiiw altera. Sharpe pointed Fluellen. Both these plants 1 haue found in 



