1862.] martyn's list of surrky plants. 163 



S'THSJ llB¥ri"lto>M^S'^'MAKTYN AND THE SURREY LIST" 



■}^■i:<hlii>'U ^((iv-a-;; t:i.: OF PLANTS. ■ r^''"^^^ 



Tlie Rev. Thomas Martyn, to whoui'we are indebted for tlie 

 liist' of^Surrey Plants published in Manning and Bray's * His- 

 tory of Surrey,' was the Regius (Royal) Professor of Botany in 

 the University of Cambridge^ and also Vicar or Perpetual Curate 

 of Edgeware, in ]\Iiddlesex. He was the eldest son of the cele- 

 brated Dr. John Martyn, who Avas also Professor of Botany in 

 the same University, and of whom more anon. 

 "' professor Thomas Martyn was born in 1735, in Chelsea, and 

 siibceeded his father. Dr. John Martyn^ in the Professorship, 

 which the latter resigned in 1761, when he retired from the 

 more active employments of life. • " j^. r -j 



The Rev. Thomas 31artyn was, like hi^ father, devoted both to 

 literature and to science. In 1763, he published ' Plant^e Can- 

 TABRiGiENSEs, — a Catalogue of the Wild Plants of the County 

 of Cambridge ;' and in 1771 a Catalogue of the Contents of the 

 Botanical Garden of Cambridge ; also his ' Flora Rustica,' — a 

 work containing descriptions and illustrations of such plants as are 

 either useful or injurious in husbandry, — a useful treatise. An- 

 other practical work by the Professor, is a Translation of the ce- 

 lebrated J. J. Rousseau's ' Letters on Botany.' More than one 

 edition of this work have appeared. The second is dated 1787. 



The Professor was also editor of ' Miller's Gardener's Dic- 

 tionary,' perhaps the most useful and popular horticultural work 

 which has ever appeared. It is the source from which Dr. John- 

 son, our great lexicographer, derived the botanical information 

 scattered here and there in his excellent Dictionary of the 

 English language. 



This celebrated botanist and amiable man, to whom science 

 owes much, was a native of Chelsea, where his estimable father 

 was in practice as a physician. Dr. Martyn the elder was an 

 amateur botanist, and an excellent scholar; his translations of 

 Virgil's Eclogues and Georgics are lasting monuments of his 

 classical erudition and botanical attainments. His versions of 

 this author, the greatest of the Latin poets, are the only Eng- 

 lish translations of the classics in which the botany of the ancient 

 poets has been satisfactorily expounded. 



The Rev. Thomas Martyn was the author of many works of 



