H 



INTRODUCTORY, 



together with the former total, makes the number of recorded 

 species just 300. 



Five years after the publication of Baines' first edition, 

 namely, in 1845, we find an enthusiastic and able worker 

 in the field of botany, namely Mr. George Norman, better 

 known, perhaps, as an ardent entomologist and student of 

 diatoms. Mr. Norman was born in 1823, and for some time 

 was a merchant with his brother, Mr. T. A. Norman, of 

 Wilberforce House, High Street, Hull. The pursuit of 

 natural history in various courses, however, seems to have 

 claimed him more than the merchant's office, and in the 

 year 1845 and onwards we find from his MSS. that he was 

 noting the plants of the Hull district and preparing lists of 

 them, probably with a view to the compilation of a Flora. 

 This, however, was not carried out ; but, through the kind- 

 ness of Mr. T. Sheppard, F.G.S., Curator of the Hull 

 Municipal Museum, now the fortunate possessor of many of 

 Norman's books, we have carefully perused the MS. notes 

 and find that they make several additions to the former 

 East Riding records. The dates given by Norman in his 

 working copies of "The Botanist's Manual" (Sheffield), and 

 Baines' "Flora of Yorkshire " (first edition, 1S40), are all 

 in the forties — beginning 1845 or 1846 — and it was probably 

 about this time and onwards for twenty years that he made 

 most of his observations on the Ferns and Phanerogams. 

 Afterwards it was, with still greater zeal that Mr. Norman 

 took up certain branches of Entomology, became the dis- 

 coverer of several new species of moth, and, in Diatomaceae, 

 quite an expert. Several diatoms were first found by 

 himself and named specifically after himself or his friends 

 of the microscope. Since, the subject is a botanical one, 

 examples of these may be mentioned here : — Coscinodiscus 

 subtilis, var. Normanii ; Pleurosigma Normanii ; Odontidium 

 (Fragilaria) Harrisonii ; and Aulocodiscus SoUittianus.* 



Contemporaneous with Mr. George Norman, and pro- 

 bably a fellow worker with him, was Mr. James Freeland 

 Young, of the Hull Mechanics Institute, evidently a good 

 and careful botanist, who has left us in many respects the 

 most direct and tangible information towards the compilation" 

 of an East Riding Flora. Mr. Young, like Mr. Norman, 

 had been a field botanist and, more than the latter, a 

 collector and preserver of plant specimens. Three or four 



* For more of G. Norman, see "Bye-gone Hull Naturalists," I., by 

 T. Sheppard, in the "Transactions of the Hull Scientific and Field 

 Naturalists' Club,'' Vol. I., Part III., 1900. 



