A HISTORY OF BUCKINGHAMSHIRE 



leaf of the wheat and thus infecting it with the fungus which eventually 

 produced the well known wheat rust (Puccinia graminis), a startling dis- 

 covery, with far-reaching results, but which has its prototype in the larval 

 and imago stages of the insect world. 



In compiling the foregoing notes I have to acknowledge assistance 

 of many friends who have sent me notes on the county plants, among 

 whom I may mention the Rev. F. H. Woods, Rev. W. H. Summers, 

 Rev. E. F. Linton, Rev. W. Moyle Rogers, Rev. H. J. Riddelsdell, 

 Miss Johnson, Messrs. J. G. Everett, Garry, C. E. Britton, J. Britten, 

 E. M. Holmes, Bolton King and J. Saunders. 



BOTANOLOGIA 



Although not far removed from the great botanical centres of London and Oxford, there 

 are comparatively few references to Buckinghamshire localities in the works of the botanists of 

 the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. It is true a few may be found in the pages of 

 Gerard's Herbal of 1597, four or five in Parkinson's Herbal of 1640; others are to be 

 picked out of the Pbytologia of William How published in 1650, from Culpeper's Physi- 

 cian Enlarged of 1653, from the Botanologia of Robert Turner of 1664, and the Pinax 

 of Christopher Merrett, which was issued in the year of the great fire of London, namely 

 1666. 



The great Cambridge botanist, John Ray, was indebted to Leonard Plukenet for one or 

 two records which he inserted in the Catalogus of 1670, but the county received little or no 

 attention from Ray himself, and even in the enlarged third edition of the Synopsis which 

 was published by Dillenius, afterwards professor of botany at Oxford, only a solitary addition 

 to the county flora is made. 



John Blackstone, who lived just outside the county boundary near Chalfont, published 

 in 1737 a Fasciculus Plantarum circa Harefield sponte nascentium, which contains several 

 Buckinghamshire localities, and there are still more in his Specimen Botanicum of 1746. 

 In the voluminous works of the prolific writer John Hill, who lived at Denham, there are but 

 few notices of his county plants, but about a score may be found either scattered through 

 pages of his Flora Britannica of 1760, or the Herbarium Britannicum of 176970, or in 

 his enormous Vegetable System and a few specimens collected by him from the county are 

 contained in the herbarium of the British Museum, which also contains others gathered by 

 the great scientist Sir Joseph Banks, probably while he was at Eton College, for they 

 are chiefly from that classic neighbourhood. We have only a small number from Dr. 

 Lightfoot, who was librarian and chaplain to that well known botanist and patroness of 

 natural science, the Dowager Duchess of Portland, then living at Bulstrode. In the pages of 

 English botany we learn that he introduced the small winter green (Pyrola minor] to the 

 woods of Bulstrode, and three plants, the milk parsley (Peucedanum palustre), the water soldier 

 (Stratiotes Aloides), and the yellow loosestrife (Lysimachia thyrsijlora), which still grow by or in 

 the ornamental water there, were also probably planted either by Dr. Lightfoot or the Duchess 

 of Portland. He was for a long time resident at Uxbridge, and was the author of the impor- 

 tant Flora Scotica issued in 1777. I have also a few MS. notes by Lady Mary Markham, 

 a sister of the well known botanist, the Countess of Aylesford, made while visiting the 

 Duchess of Portland at Bulstrode, and a few others by Professor Sibthorpe of Oxford, a friend 

 and correspondent of Dr. Lightfoot. There are a few isolated references to Buckingham- 

 shire plants in the pages of the first edition of English Botany, others in the first edition of 

 the Botanist's Guide of 1805. Joseph Woods, the author of the Tourist's Flora has left 

 records of a small number of plants from the south of the county, where a nephew of his 

 is rector of Chalfont St. Peter's and inherits the love of the science from his uncle. 

 There are also a few local notes in the New Botanist's Guide edited by Mr. H. C. 

 Watson in 1835, and a few additions are to be found in the London Flora by Alexander 

 Irvine in 1838. The latter botanist was the editor of the Phytologist a botanical magazine 

 in which first appeared anything like a comprehensive list of Buckinghamshire plants. The 

 list, which was published in 1843, was by Mr. G. G. Mill, son of James Mill, the 

 author of The History of British India and the brother of John Stuart Mill It 



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