THE BOTANY OF NOTTINGHAMSHIRE 67 



of 31. In 1826, when only 25 years old, he published in the Nottingham 

 Journal under the pseudonym of ' II Rosajo ' a series of ' Botanical 

 Calendars ' or ' Notices of Native Plants of the County of Nottingham, 

 arranged according to the order of their appearance '. These Calendars, 

 twenty-eight in number, appeared at frequent intervals from March to 

 December, and give localities for 1,023 species of flowering plants and 

 cryptogams, including more than 100 not mentioned in the works of 

 Deering and Ordoyno. They received warm commendation from the 

 leading botanists of the period, including Sir W. J. Hooker and Sir J. E. 

 Smith. Four foho volumes of dried specimens of Nottinghamshire plants 

 collected and mounted by Jowett are preserved in the Bromley House 

 Library in Nottingham, and are particularly valuable as setthng the 

 identity of several species which are not now to be found in the county.* 



Godfrey Howitt, M.D., the friend and co-worker of Jowett, was born 

 in 1800, and after graduating at Edinburgh, practised as a physician in 

 Nottingham. In 1839 he emigrated to Austraha and died there in 1873. 

 His Nottinghamshire Flora appeared in 1839 and records 1,137 species of 

 flowering plants and ferns, mosses, hepatics, lichens and algae. As a 

 record of our flora at a period when it was still comparatively unchanged 

 by modern industrial developments Howitt's Flora is, together with 

 Jowett's Calendars, of the greatest value to present-day botanists. Pre- 

 viously, in 1833, Howitt, in collaboration with William Valentine, a 

 talented Nottingham bryologist, had commenced the publication of a 

 work entitled Muscologia Nottinghamiensis, consisting of dried and 

 mounted specimens of local mosses with descriptive text. Three fasciculi, 

 each containing eight species, were issued, but the work then came to an 

 abrupt termination. 



A long period of stagnation followed this early activity and during the 

 next half-century only a few additional species were recorded in various 

 botanical works and periodicals. In 1906 however, a great advance was 

 made on our previous knowledge in the article on ' Botany ' in the Victoria 

 History of Nottinghamshire by the present writer. In this work, 854 species 

 of flowering plants and ferns were enumerated as growing wild in Notting- 

 hamshire, including a considerable number of interesting species not 

 previously known to occur in the county. The relation between the dis- 

 tribution of our plants and the geological structure of the county was 

 described, and lists given of the species characteristic of the various 

 geological formations. Very many additions were also made to Howitt's 

 list of mosses and liverworts as the result of several years' assiduous 

 collecting; but the greatest advance was made in the fungi, chiefly as the 

 result of the work of the members of the British Mycological Society in 

 Sherwood Forest in September 1897, which resulted in the addition of no 

 fewer than 250 species, mostly of the larger fungi, to our list, as well as 

 the confirmation of a large number of species recorded by the earher 

 botanists. Many others were found by the writer in the Nottingham 



*A full and critical account of this Herbarium is given in a paper 

 bv J. W. Can- in tlie Trans. Xottingliam Naturalists' Society for 

 1906-7. 



