HISTORY OF ESSEX BOTANY. 233 



edition, which, probably, Mr. Ray's publications superseded. Dr. Merrct 



has, in this Pinax, introduced many plants as new, which, on subsequent 

 examination, proved to be only varieties ; a number of exotics, evidently the 

 accidental offspring of gardens, and many that could never be met with by 

 succeeding botanists, in the places specified by him. He enumerates upwards 

 of 1,400 species of EnoHsh plants ; whilst the accurate Mr. Ray, only three 

 years afterwards, confines the number to 1,050." 



Merrett's more accurate contemporaries were less tolerant 

 than Pulteney. Thus Ray writes to Lister, from Middleton, 

 under date June i8, 1667 : — 



" My spare hours I bestowed the most part of the winter . in 



gathering up into a Catalogue all such plants as I had at any time found 

 growing wild in England, not in order to the present publishing of them but 

 for my own use, possibly one day they may see light, at present the world is 

 glutted with Dr. Merrett's bungling Pinax. I resolve never to put out anything 

 which is not as perfect as is possible for me to make it." 



This letter is only given in part in Derham's Philosophical 

 Letters (1718), p. 18, and in the Ray Society's Correspondence of 

 John Ray (1848), p. 13 ; but this passage is inserted by Derham 

 in his Life of Ray (1760), and appears on pp. 17-18 of the Ray 

 Society's Memorials (1846). 



It would be interesting to know more of Thomas Willisel, 

 Cromwellian soldier, and collector for Merrett, Ray, and the 

 Royal Society, than the little the present writer was able to put 

 together for the Dictionary of National Biography*'^ ; but it does not 

 appear that he collected in Essex. 



Merrett was one of the earliest fellows of the Royal Society 

 on its incorporation : he retired into the country during the 

 plague ; and the existence of copies of his Pinax, dated i666, and 

 others dated 1667 strongly suggests, as was pointed out by the 

 Rev. W. W. Newbould,5° that the stock was destroyed in the 

 Great Fire. Merrett died "at his house, near the chapel in 

 Hatton Garden, in Holborne, near London, Aug. ig, 1695 ; and 

 was buried twelve feet deep in the church of St. Andrew's, 

 Holborne. "5' His herbarium is in that of Sloane and his own 

 copy of his book is in the British Museum library [Press mark 

 976. b. 3] . 



There are fourteen Essex records in the " Pinax," viz. : — 



49 Vol. 62. 



50 Trimen & Dyer, Flora of Middlesex, p. 372. 



51 Anthony a Wood, Athena Oxoniemts, ed. Bliss, iv,, 432. 



