HISTORICAL AND BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. xlix. 



The " History and Antiquities of the Parish of Halifax," 

 written by the Rev. John Watson, and published in 1775, 



contains on pp. 729-764, " A Catalogue of 

 " Catalogue Plants growing in the Parish of Halifax ; the 

 of Plants." Description from Car. Linnaei Species Plant- 

 arum, Holmiae 1753, and Gulielmi Hudsoni 

 Flora Anglica, London 1762." There is no clue whatever in 

 the History itself to the authorship of this Catalogue, but it 

 has been generally attributed to James Bolton.* From this 

 there is no reason to dissent, and the records reproduced in 

 this Flora from the Catalogue are accordingly entered " 1775 

 . . . /.-B.," or "/. Bolton"; but I had hoped to have 

 traced the original acknowledgment, or to have obtained more 

 direct proof than I have gleaned. For such evidence as is 

 forthcoming I am indebted to Dr. F. Arnold Lees, who wrote 

 in 1895, " I have seen the acknowledgment in Bolton s own hand, 

 but I was using the late Rev. W. W. Newbould's copy of 

 Watson's History . . . What became of N's copy 

 after his death I know not " ; and again in the Naturalist for 

 August, 1900, " The manuscript was seen by my late friend 

 the Rev. W. W. Newbould, and he said it was in Bolton's old 

 style hand, and agreed with notes, etc., to the Original Draw- 

 ings of the ' History of Ferns."' Apart from the fact that 

 there is no one else to whom to assign the authorship, the 

 internal evidence of the Catalogue and its close resemblance to 

 Bolton's subsequent publications justify the general assump- 

 tion. The similarity of style may be noted on comparing the 

 duplicate entries of the ferns, and the same holds good with 

 regard to the mosses and fungi of the Catalogue and of the 

 later wofiks. Occasional references by other botanists are also 

 confirmatory, as may be seen on turning to Geranium pyrenaicum 

 (pp. 21-22). The author of the Catalogue, though careful to 

 record the success of the experiment of introducing seed from 

 Bingley (which Bolton visited more than once), leaves it to 

 King to say who was the sower. Again the Catalogue con- 

 tains the first local record of Campanula hederacea, and Hudson 

 three years later in the second edition of his Flora makes 

 mention of it growing " prope Halifax" on the authority of 

 Bolton. So the hepatic Blasia pusilla, specially localised in the 

 Catalogue as being ' rare and curious ' appears in Hudson 



*Lees' Flora of West Yorks., p. 89 ; Diet. Nat. Biog., Art., J. Bolton ; 

 Britten and Boulger's Biog. Index of Botanists, &c, 



