374 A SKETCH OF THE PROGRESS OF 



It is, however, to Ray indirectly that the botany of our county owes very 

 much. The example of his zeal, and the perusal of his writings, stirred up 

 an enthusiasm for botanical pursuits in London, as well as in all parts of 

 England, so that Linneeus termed this ' the Golden Age of Botany,' and a 

 number of ardent workers appeared. Among these coadjutors and corre- 

 spondents of Ray, Samuel Doody, James Petiver, and Leonard Plukenet 

 appear prominently; and by all of these^ but especially by the two first 

 named, the vegetation of the neighbourhood of London was closely studied ; 

 and probably at the end of the seventeenth century, no part of England, 

 ■with the exception of the country round the two old Universities, had been 

 so thoroughly investigated. 



Leonard Plukenet* was born in 1642, and is supposed by Smith to 

 have been of French extraction. f Pulteney implies that he was educated 

 at Cambridge, but his name does not occur in the matriculation lists of the 

 time. He seems to have taken an M.D. degree, possibly abroad, as his name 

 is not given in a list of 386 English medical graduates printed in 1695; 

 nor was he a fellow or member of the College of Physicians in that year. 



His letters in the Sloane MSS. | throw very little light on his life. The 

 earliest dated were written in 1672 and 1673, and are addressed to a cousin, 

 Captain Anthony Irby, at Boston. At this time he was living in St. Mar- 

 garet's Lane, near Old Palace Yard, Westminster, and there he seems to 

 have continued all his life. Plukenet mentions his wife in a letter dated 

 ' 23 June, 1673.' Most of the letters, which are eighteen in number, want 

 both date and address, and are besides, mostly on trivial affairs. The 

 botanical ones are addressed to Ray (a somewhat fulsome piece of eulogy), 

 to Bobart, Professor of Botany at Oxford, to Matthew Dodsworth,§ and 

 to Sir Hans Sloane (probably"). There are also letters to Smith, the book- 

 seller in St. Paul's Churchyard ; to Col. Byrd, ' Mr. Bannister's patron,' 

 and to a female cousin. 



We may suppose that he practised medicine as a regular physician ; but 

 it is probable that he was not very successful in his profession. There is 

 no evidence that he was connected with the Apothecaries' Company. 



He must have been engaged in botanical studies for some time previously 

 to 1688, for he assisted Ray in the second volume of the Historia Plantarum. 

 In the preface to the first edition of the Synopsis (1690), Ray speaks of him 

 as a botanist of the very highest order. 



About this time, as appears from a letter of Sherard's in the Bicliardson 

 Correspondence (p. 5),|| he was appointed supervisor of the king's gardens 

 at Hampton Court. Queen Mary, consort of William III., from whom he 

 received much favour, no doubt gave him this appointment. 



It was not till Plukenet was nearly fifty that he published. In 1691 ap- 



* AJso \mtten Plucinell, Plvknet, and Pluclcenett. 



t ' Plus que net,' latinized ' plus quam nitidus.' (Rees' Cyclopwdia.) 



i Vols. 4043, 4055. 



§ Sloane MSS. 4043, fols. 64 and 6G, are two interesting letters from Dodswortli to 

 Pnlteuey, dated ' Cowick,' 1680 and 1681. 



II So also Petiver, in a letter to Breynius, apparently written in 1693. (Sloane MSS. 

 4055, fol. 165.)J 



