CXX FLORA OF BERKSHIRE 



About 1690 he communicated to Mr. Gibson the provincial catalogues 

 of plants, which appeared in 1695 in Camden's Britannia, but nothing 

 additional was given for Berkshire. A second edition of the Sijnopsis 

 was published in 1696, but the numerous additions were principally 

 due to auxiliaries, and among them to Dr. Lhwyd, W. Moyle, and 

 Vernon, Ray's advancing years and infirmities necessarily curtailing 

 his field work. Sir James Smith says : ' Of all the systematic and 

 practical Floras of any country, the second edition of Ray's Synopsis 

 is the most perfect that ever came under my observation. Ray 

 examined every plant recorded in his work and gathered most of 

 them himself. He investigated their synonyms with consummate 

 accuracy; and if the clearness and precision of other authors had 

 equalled his, he would scarcely have committed an error.' More than 

 a hundred species w^ere added in this second edition to the British 

 flora. The third volume of the Historia appeared in 1784. Ray died 

 at Black Notley on Januaiy 17, 1705, and a monument was erected 

 there to his memory. 



The references to local plants in the first and second editions of the 

 Synopsis are all due to correspondents of Ray, namely Bobart, Sherard, 

 and Doody. The appendix to the first edition contains the first 

 record as a British plant of Leontodon hirtum growing about Oxford ; 

 Bromus asper, a form oiPhragmites,Hieracium boreale, and Bromus erectus, all 

 recorded by Bobart, and Saliz Smithiana, S. rubra, and Stellaria palustris by 

 Sherard. To the second edition Bobart contributed records of a 

 variety of Scrophidaria nodosa, oiBeschampsiaJlexaosa, of the sessile-fruited 

 form of Quercus Robur, and of a white-fruited form of Rubus coryli/olius ; 

 Sherard recorded in the same edition Vicia Orobus from near Wytham, 

 almost certainly an error for V. syhatica ; while Mr. Doody states that 

 several plants, Lycopodium davatum, Osmunda regalis, Hypericum elodes, 

 Erica Tetralix, Scirpus caespitosus, &c., occur on Bagshot Heath, which is 

 in both Surrey and Berkshire. The precise records for the above will 

 be found under their respective discoverer's names. 



Ray's European Herbarium and his letters are in the British Museum. 

 There is a portrait and bust of him in Trinity College, Cambridge, 

 portraits in the National Portrait Gallery and at Kew, and there is one 

 prefixed to the Select Remains of the learned John Ray, by William Derham, 

 London, 1770. A "Wedgwood medallion of him is preserved in the 

 Library of the Botanic Garden at Oxford. Linnaeus perpetuated his 

 name in the plant-genus Rajunia, which Plumier had first established 

 as Jan-raia. A genus Raia occurs also in Ichthyology. 



In a copy of Ray's Caialogus in the possession of Mr. William Pamplin 

 are the following manuscript notes, made shortly after the publication 

 of the work. They were published on page 745 of the Phyiologisi for 

 1852. ' Alnus nigra bacci/era, with the common Alder by Coleman's 



