202 THE FLORA OF FAVERSHAM. 
and its vicinity. And first of all let me do all honour to the ve- 
terans who have already beaten the path so well for their humbler 
followers. Our flora has been peculiarly fortunate m finding 
chroniclers from time to time. arly in the last century a MS. 
list, compiled by John Bateman, M.A., and containing about 
two hundred species, furnished Blackstone with the habitats of 
about forty species for his “Specimen Botanicum’ in 1746. Mr. 
Jacob, a resident surgeon, was however the first who gave to the 
world the result of his researches in this field. His book, entitled 
‘Plante Favershamienses, was published in 1777, and is now 
very scarce. He was followed, after an interval of sixty-two 
years, by Mr. M. H. Cowell, at that time a resident in Faversham, 
who in 1839 published a most admirable ‘ Floral Guide,’ in which 
the exact localities of our local species are noted with very great. 
accuracy and fulness, accompanied with much valuable informa- 
tion and a map, on which the various walks to be taken are laid 
down. I have not the pleasure of knowing that gentleman, but 
of course he is a reader of the ‘ Phytologist, and I am happy to 
be able thus publicly to thank him, and to acknowledge the great 
assistance which his book has rendered me in exploring a terra 
incognita, for such this neighbourhood was to me two years and 
a half ago. Mr. Cowell might with truth have styled his work 
‘Herborizing Made Hasy;’ for so minute are his directions, that any 
one taking it in his hand may be perfectly certain whether he is on 
the exact spot he seeks or not, thus avoiding the annoyance and loss 
of time often involved in a search over a vaguely defined locality. 
But for this peculiar merit I should hardly have dared to pronounce 
any of the species which he enumerates to be extinct, which is 
already, I fear, in several instances the case. Mr. Jacob’s list 
described as growing within the limits I have before defined 528 
of the species and varieties allowed in the London Catalogue, but 
entirely omitted the Juncacee, Cyperacee, and Gramineae. Of 
this number eighty-one were lost before 1839, or at least not 
found by Mr. Cowell. This gentlgmen numbered up 546 species 
and varieties, including the orders omitted by Jacob, but did not 
extend his inquiries further than a circuit of about three miles 
round the town. Of his list, I have failed, after a careful search, 
in discovering twenty-one. Many have changed their habitats. 
A few mentioned by Jacob as growing within Cowell’s limits, but 
not included in his Guide, and several others just beyond those 
