CXXXVlll FLORA OF BEEKSHIRE 



apprenticeship in Panton Street, Haymarket, and afterwards practised 

 in London. Pulteney (Sketches, ii. 351) says of liim : ' To an extensive 

 knowledge of English plants, acquired by attention to nature, he had 

 by his residence in the British Museum all the auxiliary resources 

 that could favour his design.' He made the acquaintance of Mr. Stilling- 

 fleet, who early directed his attention to the writings of Linnaeus, and 

 gave his mind that correct and scientific turn which caused him to 

 take the lead as a classical British botanist. In 1762 appeared his 

 Flora Anglica in a single octavo volume— a work which marks an epoch 

 in English Botany, for in it the binominal system of nomenclature 

 introduced by Linnaeus in the Species Plantarum was adopted for the 

 first time in Britain. He also followed Linnaeus' artificial system of 

 arrangement, though he took Kay's Synojjsis for the groundwork of his 

 book, adding such new species and new habitats as he or his friends 

 were able to supply. The synonyms of the most valuable authors 

 since the time of Ray and Dillenius were given, together with descrip- 

 tions of new or rare plants. A few new genera also were established. 

 The ' elegant ' preface w^as written by Benjamin Stillingfleet. This 

 work was at once adopted as the manual of British Botany, the author 

 having been made a Fellow of the Royal Society in the previous year. 

 He was a prominent member of the Apothecaries' Company, was 

 Keeper and Demonstrator of its Garden at Chelsea from 1765 to 

 177 1, and bequeathed to it his herbarium. In 1862 the Company 

 presented the whole of its dried specimens to the British Museum. 

 Among these were not only Hudson's plants, but also those of Ray, 

 Dale, and Rand. 



No plant was added to the flora of Berkshire in the first edition 

 of the Flora Anglica, which soon became so scarce that a copy was 

 sold, as we learn from Sir James Smith, for nearly twenty times 

 its original price. A second edition therefore appeared in 1778 in two 

 octavo volumes with many additions and various alterations. On the 

 whole this new book was worthy of its author. It records Caucalis 

 daucoides near Reading, but the plant has not been observed there 

 in recent years. Also Bromus muralis (Bromiis madritensis) round 

 Oxford ; this plant, if it ever occurred round Oxford, which is 

 doubtful, was gathered in Oxfordshire probably, not in Berkshire ; 

 Monotropa Htjpopitys, ' frequent in Berkshire ' ; and Carex strigosa, ' near 

 Oxford. D. Sheffield.' Dr. Goodenough accepted the record, and 

 Sibthorp gives an Oxfordshire locality for the plant, but I have failed 

 to find it. 



Hudson was a man of superior character, and bore with philosophic 

 tranquillity the irreparable loss which befell him in the winter of 1783, 

 when his house and the greater part of his literary treasures, among 

 these the material for a Fauna Britannica, were destroyed by fire 



