6 The Rey. Dr. Hincks on the Flora of Ireland. 
ultra.” The work was dedicated to Primate Boulter. Threl- 
keld was an Englishman, who settled in Dublin as a physician 
and dissenting minister. In his preface he speaks of having 
devoted attention to botanical studies in England as well as 
since he came to Ireland, and particularly mentions his ha- 
ving been in danger in 1707 (twenty years before the publica- 
tion of this work) in the neighbourhood of Tynemouth Castle, 
from having been observed clambering on rocks instead of 
keeping the high road. He expressly says too, that he col- 
lected plants for twelve years, marking the place where they 
grew, and preserving them in a Hortus siccus, whereas the 
author of the article THRELKELDIA in Rees’s Cyclopedia 
(did Sir J. E. Smith continue his contributions so long ?) 
says, “ that this catalogue was founded on the papers of Dr. 
Thos. Molyneux, or the communications of other people,” and 
seems to question the propriety of Mr. Brown’s notice of him. 
Rank in science he neither claimed himself, nor have others 
done it for him ; but so far is the preceding charge from being 
just, that Dr. Molyneux’s contributions, having come too late 
to be incorporated with the work, were printed as an Appen- 
dix, and he appears to have expressly noticed every plant that 
was inserted in his catalogue on the authority of others. 
Threlkeld speaks of his work as a pocket-book, a small treatise, 
an abridgement, by which he hopes to stir up others to con- 
tribute their quota “to wipe off the ugly character Pompo- 
nius Mela has fixed on the Irish inhabitants, cultores ejus in- 
conditos esse, et ommium virtutum ignaros magis quam alias 
gentes.” Yet he himself in the same preface gives a fair ex- 
cuse for the neglect of this branch of learning, when he ob- 
serves, “ that the wars and commotions have laid an embargo 
upon the pens of the learned, or discord among the petty 
subaltern princes has rendered perambulation perilous, least 
they should be treated as spies,” when he mentions his own 
danger at Tynemouth in 1707. In the days of Threlkeld bo- 
tany was little more than a branch of medicine, and in this 
light he chiefly regarded it. To detail the virtues of plants 
was his grand object, and he satisfies himself with the names 
by which they could be found in the works of Gerard, Caspar 
Bauhin and Ray, who appear to have been his authorities, 
though he sometimes expresses himself peevishly of the 
changes made by the last, which in his eyes were not improve- 
ments. To their Latin name he adds the English one and 
the Irish one, when he could attain it. These “ Irish names,” 
he says, “ I copied from a manuscript which has great author- 
ity with me, and seems to have been written sometime be- 
fore the civil wars in 1641, and probably by that Reverend 
