BOTANICAL INVESTIGATION IN MIDDLESEX. 373 



Eanunculus hirsutus, Sisymbrium Irio, Lythrum HyssopifoUa, Bupleuriim 

 teniiissimum, Vinca minor, Li7nosella, Veronica montana, Ritmex pulcher^ 

 Paris, Tamus, Echinochloa, Melica uniflora, and Equisetum limosum are 

 among them. 



We must not entirely omit the name of one who, though he never pub- 

 lished, 3^et contributed in his time to forward British botany. Thomas 

 Willisel was, says Pulteney, ' an unlettered man ; ' he seems to have gained 

 his living by travelling about England collecting plants, and in this capacity 

 his services are acknowledged by Merrett, Morison, W. Sherard, and Eay ; * 

 the Eoyal Society also employed him, and he went to America for a similar 

 object. He discovered in Middlesex, Lactuca saligna, Lamium incisum, 

 and Apera. Willisel died before 1686. 



Between the publication of How's Phytologia and Dr. Merrett's Pinax, an- 

 other botanical author had appeared. This was John Ray, who in 1660 

 published his first book, a catalogue of plants growing about Cambridge, with 

 an appendix, in 1663. This little book must have at once established the 

 author as a botanist of repute, and it no doubt contributed greatly to set 

 on foot that spirit of original investigation which led to the rapid and 

 extensive strides in the knowledge of British plants made during the sixty 

 years following. 



With the writings of Ray, then, we may say, commenced a new era, which, 

 in 1670, the appearance of the Catalogus PJantarum Anglice fully introduced. 

 This Flora was in every way so superior to Merrett's, that the latter must 

 have been at once superseded. 



A second edition, greatly augmented, came out in 1677,t and in 1688, a 

 small tract of twenty-seven pages of additional species, called Fascicidiis 

 Stirpium Britannicarum. In'all these the plants are arranged alphabetically, 

 but schemes of classification had long occupied the mind of their author, and 

 in 1682 the Methodus nova was given to the world ; this was quickly followed 

 by Ray's great systematic work on universal botany, the Historla Plantarum, 

 of which the two first volumes appeared in 1686 and 1688, though the third 

 (a supplement to the two preceding) was not published till 1704. 



The first systematic Flora of Great Britain came out in 1690, under the 

 title of Synopsis MetJwdica Stirpium Britannicarum. This accurate and in- 

 valuable volume, of which a much improved second edition appeared in 

 1696,1 became at once the text-book of English botanists, and the model for 

 all subsequent floras. 



Our great naturalist died February 17, 1705-6, at seventy-eight years oi 

 age. He seems to have been but rarely in London, and very few Middlesex 

 localities are recorded by him. He added, however, to our flora, Cictita 

 virosa, Sonchus palustris, Juncus supinus and J. sqiiarrosus, Avena puhescens, 

 and Lycopodium inundatum. 



* There is a letter to Willisel from Ray in Ray's Letters, p. 358, written in September 

 1661. 



t In the library of the Brit. Mus. (968, f. 7) is a copy of the 2nd edit, of the Catalogus, 

 full of MS. additions and corrections in Ray's neat handwriting. 



t It was really published at the end of 1695 (v. Sloane MSS. 3332, fol. 169). 



