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XXX. Observations on the Esula Major Germanica of Lobel. 

 By Edward Fobster, Esq., F.P.L.S. F.R.S. 



Read November 1st, 183G. 



A HE rediscovery of plants mentioned by ancient authors as natives of this 

 kingdom, but long since forgotten, must be interesting to all who delight in 

 herbarization. It will be well, therefore, to call the attention of the Linnean 

 Society to the fact that the Euphorbia lately discovered near Bath by Mr. 

 E. Simms and Dr. Heneage Gibbes, and brought into notice by Mr. Babing- 

 ton. was found in Great Britain, two hundred and sixty years ago, in the same 

 neighbourhood, and probably by the side of the very same wood where it was 

 observed by the botanists above mentioned. 



In July 1634, Thomas Johnson, afterwards Lieutenant-Colonel of King 

 Charles's forces and Honorary Doctor of Medicine in the University of Oxford, 

 author of many works on natural history, but best known by his excellent 

 edition of Gerard's Herbal, accompanied by several medical friends from Lon- 

 don, undertook a botanical excursion to Bath and Bristol, and from thence to 

 Salisbury, Southampton and Chichester, meeting the party at Marlborough, as 

 he had already been two months at Bath in attendance on a female patient. 

 On his return he published the result of their twelve days' peregrination under 

 the title of Mercurius Botanicus. In this little book he records Esula major 

 Germanica, Ad. Lob., Ger.; Titkymalus palustris fruticosus, Cam., Bauh.; 

 Quack -salvers' Turbith ; Water Spurge. " By a woodside, some mile south of 

 Bathe." This is copied by Howe in his Phytologia Britannica, 1650. In Mer- 

 rett's Pinax Rerum Britannicarum it occurs thus : " By a woodside a mile 

 from Bath, and betwixt Guildford and Godliman, near Compton in a wheat- 

 field by the side of a moor, near Mr. Yalden's house," which is inserted by 

 Dillenius in the Indiculus Plantarum dubiarum, at the end of his edition of 

 Ray's Synopsis, 1/24. The Bath station is nearly exact as to the places where 

 it now grows, one being south of Bath, the otlier not far otherwise. 



