Manchester Manoirs, Vol. Ixiii. (191 8) No. 1 3 



from. Dr. Lonsdale's "Worthies of Cumberland" (p. 70). " Dalton 

 informs Mr. Crosthwaite that he had 'dried and pressed a good 

 many plants, and pasted them down to sheets of white paper, . . . 

 this has induced me to think, that a tolerable collection of them, 

 . . . would be a very proper object in the museum.' He afterwards 

 writes, October 4th, 1791 : 'I have at length completed the book 

 of plants and made an index both to the Linnaean and English 

 names." There can be no doubt that this is the first volume of the 

 herbarium now in the Society's possession, thc^ugh from the letters 

 we know that Dalton sent plants to Crosthwaite. The first 

 volume is dated 1790, and the plants therein come almost entirely 

 from the neighbourhood of Kendal. The second (dated 1791) and 

 third volumes were probably collected at, or about, the same time, and 

 are also for the most part Cumberland and Westmorland plants. 

 The fourth volume contains the first record from Manchester, while 

 the fifth contains most of his Manchester specimens. This would 

 place the dates of these volumes somewhere about 1793, probably 

 between 1792-5. The seventh and part of the eighth volumes were 

 collected during his tour in 1797, a tour which included London, 

 Somerset, and the Welsh border counties. The specimens in the 

 remaining volumes are nearly all contributed from friends and 

 correspondents, and especially from Edward Robson, of Darlington. 



Before considering the plants contained in the collection, a few 

 words might be said about its history. The latest entry in the 

 volumes is 1829. After this date tliere is an unfortunate gap in 

 our knowledge of the collection. It was presumably disposed of 

 after Dalton's death, but the next reference to it is in 1856, when 

 Dr. Angus Smith in his memoir* says : " Eleven volumes of a ' Hortus 

 Siccus ' are in the possession of a Mr. T. P. Heywood, of the Isle of 

 Man." Of this gentleman and his possession of the collection, 

 however, no information is forthcoming at the present time. The 

 next certain date is 1864, when eleven volumes of a "Herbarium" 

 formed by Dalton were entered in the catalogue of the Manchester 

 Public Library as being in their possession. The Library was 

 presented with the " Herbarium " by Canon Parkinson. Though 

 no exact record of the date of the presentation is available it most 

 probably took place some time before 1864, probably during the fifties ; 

 Canon Parkinson died in 1858. The questions arise as to whether the 

 " Hortus Siccus," possessed by Heywood, and the " Herbarium," 

 presented to the Public Library by Canon Parkinson, are one and 

 the same or different, and if the same how the transference took 

 place. No direct evidence is available, but in the first volume 

 of our collection, which is undoubtedly the " Herbarium," as it came 

 from the Public Library, Dalton has written a somewhat elaborate 



* Memoir of John Dalton and History of the Atomic Tlieory, up to his time, 

 pubhshed as Vol. xiii., 2nd Ser. of the Memoirs of the Literary and Philosophical 

 .Society of Manchester. 



