INTRODUCTORY EXPLANATIONS. / 



Bibliography of Lakeland Botany. — I have given the 

 localities for the rare plants classified under their counties, 

 C. standing for Cumberland, W. for Westmoreland, and L. for 

 Lancashire. As an authority for localities, B. is a contraction 

 of my own name. For critical plants a note of admiration 

 after the name of the collector means that I have seen and 

 compared a specimen from that locality. The following are 

 the principal publications that relate to the botany of the 

 Lake district, arranged in order of date : — 



1688. Lawson, Thomas. The foundation of our knowledge 

 of the botany of the Lake district was laid in a list of 150 

 plants and their localities, which in this year was sent to Ray 

 by Thomas Lawson, of Great Strickland. This was used by 

 Ray in the second edition of his Synopsis in 1696, and was 

 printed in its entirety in Derham's Life of Ray (in 1718, 

 p. 213), and again in the volume of Ray's Life and Letters 

 issued by the Ray Society in 1848 (p. 197), with the old 

 names translated into their binomial equivalents by Professor 

 Babington. Lawson was born in 1630, was educated at Cam- 

 bridge, and when of age was ordained minister of the Church 

 of England at Rampside, in Low Furness. In 1652 George 

 Fox visited the district and was kindly received by Lawson, 

 who lent him for a day his church and pulpit. Fox preached 

 in it with such effect that Lawson and many of his congrega 

 tion became Quakers. He resigned his living and settled 

 as a schoolmaster at Great Strickland, where he was much 

 esteemed by the Lowthers and other neighbouring gentry. 

 He died in 1691, and his grave, with a large tombstone which 

 was erected to his memory by one of his pupils, may still be 

 seen in a small graveyard, without any meeting-house attached 

 to it, at Newbyhead, which belongs to the Friends. A letter 

 which he wrote the year before his death to Dr. Richard 

 Richardson of Bingley, offering to meet him at Settle for a 

 l)Otanical excursion, is printed in the Richardson Correspond- 

 ence. He wrote several books of a controversial and 



