BOTANY 



unmodified by modern industrial developments, Howitt's Flora is, in 

 common with Jowett's Calendars, of the greatest value to modern 

 workers. 



Six years before the publication of his Flora, Dr. Howitt (in con- 

 junction with Wm. Valentine, F.L.S., a talented Nottingham bryologist) 

 issued three parts of a Muscologia Nottingbamiensis, consisting of dried 

 specimens of local mosses with descriptive letterpress. Presumably from 

 lack of support no further numbers of this work were published. 



The New Botanist's Guide by H. C. Watson (1835-7) contains a 

 long list of Nottinghamshire plants, which was drawn up mainly from 

 a marked catalogue, accompanied by numerous specimens, supplied to 

 Mr. Watson by Mr. T. H. Cooper. The specimens were given to 

 Mr. Cooper by Dr. Howitt for conveyance to the author of the N. B. G.,to 

 be used in drawing up the county list. They must therefore be accepted 

 as evidence of the occurrence in Nottinghamshire of the species they 

 represent, but as Mr. Cooper ' was almost a stranger in the county, and 

 had enjoyed few opportunities of botanizing there,' and as, moreover, 

 the catalogue contains many obvious inaccuracies, the records which 

 are unsupported by actual specimens must be ignored. In the N. B. G. 

 Supplement a new list of Nottinghamshire plants, drawn up from the 

 advance sheets of Dr. Howitt's Flora, is given to replace that supplied by 

 Mr. Cooper. 



The published botanical literature of Nottinghamshire since the 

 time of Howitt is very scanty. Lists of the plants of the county, or of 

 parts of it, such as Sherwood Forest, have appeared from time to time in 

 sundry directories and guide-books, and a few new species have been 

 recorded in various botanical works and periodicals by E. J. Lowe, 

 J. Bohler, Hilderic Friend, J. K. Miller, H. Fisher, and the writer, but 

 an up-to-date Flora of Nottinghamshire is still a desideratum. 



A modern account of Nottinghamshire botany, when compared 

 with the records of Jowett and Howitt, furnishes melancholy evidence of 

 the large number of interesting plants which, once common, have now 

 become exceedingly rare or altogether extinct. The enormous growth 

 of the city of Nottingham has covered some of our best collecting grounds 

 with buildings, while the cultivation of waste lands, the drainage of 

 bogs, the multiplication of railways and collieries, and the conversion of 

 large areas of arable land into pasture, have all been potent agents in the 

 destruction of our native plants. Nor are we compensated for their loss 

 by the numerous aliens waifs and strays from foreign lands which are 

 making their appearance along railway lines and canals, and about malt 

 kilns and grain warehouses, brought over with grain, fodder, and other 

 merchandise from abroad. Perhaps the most famous of our disappearing 

 plants though of course not a true native is the purple spring crocus 

 (Crocus vernus), which formerly covered many acres of the Nottingham 

 meadows with such a luxuriant growth as to suggest the idea of its 

 having been sown as a crop. Much of the ground this beautiful plant 

 occupied is now built over, and although it is still common in places its 



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