BOTANY 



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earliest account of Leicestershire plants is the MS. catalogue of 

 plants near Loughborough, by R. Pulteney, in the year 1747. 

 Another MS. catalogue by the same author is dated 1749. The 

 former is in the Leicester Museum, the latter in the library of the 

 Linnean Society. A list of plants, also by Pulteney, appeared in 1759 

 in Philosophical Transactions, xlix. 



Richard Pulteney was born at Loughborough in this county in the year 

 1730. He practised medicine and surgery at Leicester, was elected F.R.S. 

 in 1762, M.D. Edin. 1764, in which year he removed to Blandford, Dorset. 

 Ten years later he contributed the article on natural history and botany to 

 Hutchin's History of Dor -set ', followed in 1803 by a fuller account in the 

 second edition, which was completed in 1814. This second article did not 

 appear until after his death, which took place on 13 October, 1801. A 

 biography of this distinguished naturalist, by Dr. Maton, was published in 

 the above-mentioned history. Camden's Britannia, 1789, contains a list of 

 plants by Gough. The Rev. George Crabbe, the poet, contributed with 

 Dr. Pulteney the 'Lists of rarer Plants ' in Nichols's History of Leicestershire, 

 1796. 



Crabbe spent some years of his life in the neighbourhood of Belvoir, 

 where he made himself acquainted with many of the wild plants within 

 walking distance of the castle, at which he acted as chaplain for nearly 

 eighteen months (17835) ; he then 'wisely' accepted the vacant curacy of 

 Stathern, which he held for four years. He was then presented to the 

 two livings of Muston and Allington, the latter just over the boundary in 

 Lincolnshire. He held these two livings from 1789 for over twenty-five 

 years, but he was non-resident for thirteen years (1792-1805). At this 

 period he was troubled with indifferent health whilst living at Parham, Great 

 Glemham, and Rendham, all of which were near his native Aldeburgh in 

 Suffolk. He returned to Muston in 1805, where he remained until 1814, 

 when he was introduced to the living of Trowbridge, Wiltshire, 3 June, 1814. 

 He died here in February, 1832, in his seventy-eighth year. Some of the 

 rarer plants recorded by Crabbe have disappeared through drainage from the 

 Belvoir district, but others have been found since that were unknown to 

 him when his list of Belvoir district plants was published. A few of his 

 localities in Nichols's History are outside the county. 



The Rev. Andrew Bloxam, M.A., was born at Rugby, 22 Septem- 

 ber, 1 80 1, entered Rugby School 1809, Worcester College, Oxford, 1820, 

 of which he was afterwards Fellow. In 18245 ^ e was naturalist on 

 board the frigate Blonde in the Pacific Ocean. He published papers on 



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