CHAPTER III. 



Historical and FJiographical Sl<?tch. 



ANY records of Halifax plants that have been handed down 

 from pre-Linnean times are exceedingly scanty ; but 

 since the middle of the eighteenth century the parish has 

 possessed an unbroken succession of resident botanists, whose 

 publications and collections taken conjointly, embody a mass 

 of information on the local flora, which has been invaluable in 

 preparing the present work, though some portions of it are 

 unrepresented. 



The second part of Turner's Herball published in 1562, 

 contains the first specific notice of a Halifax plant — " It was 



told me by a learned man, a frende of myne, 

 Early that in the year of our lorde, mdlvii., that 



Records. there was a great plentye of galles found upon 



oke leves in the North countre of England and 

 namely about Hallyfax." A century later the Pinax of 

 Christopher Merrett, 1666, enumerates four, each of excep- 

 tional interest, viz : — the club-moss, Lycopodium alpiiium, near 

 the mile cross, west from Halifax ; Lycopodium Selago, at Dove- 

 stones ; Pyrola votundifolia (= media), "at North Bridge, half- 

 a-mile from Halifax, plentifully " ; and the bearberry, 

 Arctostaphylos Uva-ursi, on a great stone by the river Gorple. 

 This last constitutes the first British record of the plant, as 

 possibly do the first and second also. What a commentary 

 on the changes the last two hundred and fifty years have 

 brought about is afforded by these prosaic details ! Gorple 

 Stones and Dovestones are still much as they were, though 

 the bearberry has probably gone, but for the others to grow in 

 what is now the heart of Halifax, shows that the Hebble 

 valley and the slopes on which the town is built were then 

 more secluded than Norland Clough and Moor are to-day. 

 The winter green (Pyrola) also attracted the attention of the 

 famous John Ray, who records it in 1670 on the road to 

 Keighley, and again in 1690 as growing ' on the moors south 

 of Heptenstall on the way to Burnley, in great plenty for near 

 a mile's riding.' 



In 1724 Ray's Synopsis of British Plants was revised by 

 Dillenius, the first Professor of Botany at Oxford, who was 

 indebted to Dr. Richardson for most of the plants mentioned 

 from this locality. Dr. Richardson, though not resident in the 



