INTRODUCTION 



cxliii 



great plenty on the banks of the Ock. By the latter plant probably 

 is meant Scutellaria galericulata. 



Benjamin Stillingfleet, grandson of Edward Stillingtieet, Bishop of Stilling- 

 Worcester, was born about the year 1702, was educated at Norwich I'i^eet. 

 School, and entered Trinity College, Cambridge, in 1720. After 

 leaving college Stillingfleet travelled on the Continent, and upon his 

 return passed an unambitious life, which was chiefly devoted to the 

 study of books and nature. He subsequently obtained the post of 

 Barrack-master at Kensington. He published certain volumes of 

 poems, and also a volume of Miscellaneous Tracts, the first edition 

 of which was printed in 1759, consisting chiefly of translations from 

 Linnaeus' Amoenitates Academicae. To this work were annexed a 

 Calendar of Flora and Observations on Grasses. This latter portion is well 

 done, and the figures of the grasses above the avei-age. Six species 

 of grasses are mentioned as occurring in Berkshire, namely Alopecurus 

 pratensis, Cynosurus, Agrostls vulgaris, Festuca {Panicularia) fluitans, Aira 

 (Deschampsia) flexuosa, Festuca ovina ; five of these are additions to the 

 county flora. My own copy of the Miscellaneous Tracts is the third 

 edition, dated 1775. The subject of our memoir died in Piccadilly, 

 London, on Dec. 15, 1771, at the age of sixty-nine, and was buried 

 in the Church of St. James. 



Gray, the poet, in one of his letters, dated 1761, mentions Stillingfleet 

 in the following terms : ' I have lately made an acquaintance with this 

 philosopher, who lives in a garret in the winter, that he may support 

 some near relations who depend upon him. He is always employed, 

 consequently, according to my old maxim, always happy, always 

 cheerful, and seems to me to be a worthy, honest man.' He ordered 

 all his papers to be destroyed at his decease. The genus StilUngia 

 commemorates the 'philosophical naturalist.' 



A work entitled Indigenous Botamj, by Colin Milne and Alexander Milne and 

 Gordon, made its appearance in 1793. It was an account of British Gordon. 

 plants, arranged according to the Linnaean method of classification, 

 and the special feature in it was that it gave copious and precise 

 localities of plants, ' the result of several excursions chiefly in Kent, 

 Middlesex, and the adjacent counties in 1790 92.' One volume only 

 was published containing the Linnaean classes as far as the Pentandria. 

 The authors in the course of their explorations visited the neighbour- 

 hood of Reading, and observed Polemonium caeruleum ' between Reading 

 [possibly it should be Newbury] and Speenhamland, ' but it could not 

 have been native there. They saw Potamogeton pectinatum in great 

 abundance at Caversham, also P. compressiim, and they state that Sison 

 inundatum {Apium immdatum) 'grows by Caversham Bridge plentifully 

 and in the marshes about Newbury.' 



Mr. Milne was a native of Aberdeen and a LL.D. of Aberdeen 



