A SKETCH 



PEOGRESS OF BOTANICAL INVESTIGATION 

 IN MIDDLESEX. 



WITH BIOGEAPHICAL NOTICES. 



In this chapter those botanists who have puWished on the Flora of Middle- 

 sex are mentioned in chronological order, the nature and extent of their 

 investigations are stated, and a short account of their writings given. 



In the case of some of those who died previously to the commencement of 

 the present century, particulars of their lives are added : Turner, Johnson, 

 Plukenet, Boody, Petiver, Buddie, Blackstone and Curtis are so treated. In 

 this part of the subject we have drawn largely on the collection of letters 

 and other MSS. formerly belonging to Sir H. Sloane, Petiver and others, now 

 in the British Museum. These are quoted as Sloane MSS. ; there is an ex- 

 cellent catalogue of them by Ayscough, printed in 1782. Besides this inex- 

 haustible mine of information, we have derived much assistance from the 

 following books among others : * — 



Philosophical Letters between the late learned Mr. Ray and several of Ms ingenious 



Correspondents. Published bj^ W. Derham. Lond. 1718,t 

 Historical and Biographical Sketches of the Progr-ess of Botany in England. By 



Richard Pulteney, M.D., F.R.S. 2 vols. Lond. 1790. 

 Biographical Notices of various Botanists in Bees' Cyclopcedia. [By Sir J. E. Smith.] 



Lond. 1819-20 (but many of the volumes really published several yeai-s before). 

 Literary Illustrations of the ISih Century. By John Nichols, F.S.A. Vol. i. 1817, and 



vol. iv. 1822. 

 Correspondence of Linnceus and other Naturalists. Edited by Sir J. E. Smith. 2 vols. 



Lond. 1821. 

 Extracts from the Literary and Scientific Correspondence of Richard Richardson, M.D.; 



F.R.S. [Edited by Dawson Turner.] Yarmouth, 1835. 



* As the following sketch does not profess to give a fuU history of the progress 5^ 

 British Botany, so neither are the biographical notices intended as complete lives. Some 

 new — i.e. unpublished— matter will, however, be found here, which it is hoped may beot 

 use to future biographers. 



t In the Correspondence of John Ray, published in 1848 by the Ray Society, are some 

 additional letters to Petiver and Sir Hans Sloane, printed from the originals in the 

 Sloane MSS. 



