376 A SKETCH OF THE PROGRESS OP 



His medical MSS. are to be found in Sloane MSS. 1502, but are chiefly 

 prescriptions. His botanical MSS. came into the hands of Mr. Hudson, by 

 whom they were given to Sir J. E. Smith. Plukenet's vast herbarium of 

 more than 8,000 plants, mostly passed into the hands of Dr. Moore, Bishop 

 of Norwich (one of the subscribers to the Amaltheum), who bought them of 

 his executors ; from Dr. Moore they were purchased by Sir Hans Sloane, 

 and now form vols. 60, 61, 83-105, 145 and 242 of the Sloane Herbarium 

 in the British Museum.* 



Plukenet has recorded very few species for Middlesex, though he evidently 

 knew the plants of the neighbourhood of London well, and has figured many 

 for the first time. His time was so fully occupied with exotic and garden 

 botany as to leave him little leisure for a critical study of indigenous plants. 

 In his earlier life, however, he seems to have done so, for there are in the 

 British Museum copies of Eay's Catalogus (both editions), full of his 

 MS. notes ; and his criticisms on and additions to the first edition of the 

 Synopsis are printed in Eay's Letters, pp. 226-235. He first observed Tri- 

 folium suhtcrraneum in our county ; but this is apparently the only addition 

 he made to its flora. 



Samuel Doody was born in Staffordshire on May 28, 1656, and was the 

 eldest son, by his second wife, of John Doody,t an apothecary in that 

 county, and afterward in London, j Another son, Joseph, a younger brother 

 of Samuel, born in 1658, was, in 1703, settled in Stafford.§ 



Doody assisted his father in his business, and succeeded him at his death 

 (which, however, did not happen till after 1696); their shop was in the 

 Strand, ' over against Salesbury House.' 



It is probable that his business took up most of his time, and prevented 

 him from following out to its full extent his inclination towards botanical 

 pursuits. We have found a small commonplace book with the date 1687 

 written in it (Sloane MSS. 3361), which contains numerous extracts from 

 books on botany, lists of plants, &c., showing that at that time he had 

 already begun the study. 



The first printed record of him is the acknowledgment of his help by 

 Eay in the preface to vol. ii. of the Historia (1688) ; the next in the Synopsis 

 of 1690 ; and in the appendix to the latter book is a list of his observations. 

 These are chiefly, as might be expected, in the neighbourhood of London, 

 and several new mosses are noticed. At this time he seems to have been 

 intimate with Plukenet and Petiver. The Cryptogamia had then been very- 

 little studied ; Doody applied himself especially to them, and soon became 

 an authority on the subject. In a letter to Dr. Eichardson in 1691, W. 

 Sherard says that Doody was * putting out a small treatise of Musci ; ' no 



* ' Part of Plukenet's Herbarium was in the possession of Philip Carteret "Webb, Esq., 

 and was disposed of at the sale of his books. — Mr. Dryander.' {Pulteney, Addenda to 

 vol. ii.) 



t J. D. often spelt his name < Doodle.' 



X Sloane MBS. 2353. 



§ A letter from him to Petiver in Sloane MSS, 4043, fol. 90. 



