jQ3e 29, 1871. ] 



JOURNAL OF HORTICULTURE AND COTTAGE GARDENER. 



453 



ei-s gallons of water to one of the manirfacturer'6 tobacco 

 water. — G. Abbey. 



THE ROYAL HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY'S 

 EXHIBITION AT NOTTINGHAM. 



June 27th, 



" Nottingham ale, boys, Nottingham ale ! 

 No liquor on earth is like Nottingham ale." 



To teat the truth of which assertion of the old ballad five 

 Fellows of the Society sat in conclave at one of the Nottingham 

 inns the evening previous to the Exhibition opening — five 

 *' Fellows" alike only in their devotion to gardening, as will 

 be well apparent from their "notes and queries." One, such 

 63 Cs^ar liked, "sleek-headed, and sleeping well o' night«," 

 observed in a tone savouring of inquiry as much as of assertion, 

 "The Society came here because it's close to the 'dakery;' 

 the President's one of the dukes." His neighbour, a thin tall 

 " Fellow," like Shakespere's " ouUerof simples," added, "Ah! 

 and townsmen came down liberally." The third " Fellow," a 

 bit of a bookworm, said it was " appropriate too, for Charles 

 the First first unfurled his standard here;" but the other 

 "Fellows" granted at that, and No. 4 "hoped the Society 

 would make a better fight than Charles did." All four seemed 

 by one impulse to turn to the fifth "Fellow," as if he were 

 iiiely to serve as an index of the Nottingham things worth 

 seeing and knowing. In reply he was somewhat tedious, and 

 we will record but a fragment or two of his antiquarian lore. 

 " Each of us has drunk down to more than a peg of this ' Not- 

 tingham ale,' but I daresay you do not know how it came to 

 be famous. One of my father's servants was a Nottingham 

 woman, and she said that a relative who kept the * Punch Bowl ' 

 in Peck Lane of this town brewed most seductive ale, and that 

 5iia brother wrote thus — 



*' Ye doctors, who more esecntion have done 



With bolas, and potion, and powder, and pill, 

 Than hangman with halter and soldier with gun, 



Or miser with famine, or lawyer with qnill ; 

 To dispatch us the quicker you forbid U3 malt liquor, 



Till onr bodies Krow thin and oar faces look pale : 

 Observe them who pleases. What cures all diseases 

 Is a comforting dose of good Nottingham ale. 

 Nottingham ale, boy.^, Nottingham ale ! 

 No liquor on earth ia like Nottingham ale." 



The "Nottingham ale" had done its work upon the fifth 

 "Fellow," and he went on prosing about what "our Journal 

 had said of George London helping to bring Princess Anne to 

 Nottingham," and then about its market place, where, he said, 

 " More than a century since the market gardeners stood in the 

 Long Row up to Chapel Bar, and sold their Potatoes for Qd. per 

 peck, and their Peas for 4:d. Eggs thsn sold on an average of 

 forty for Is., and fowls for Is, Gd. per couple." 



" Ah ! you told about Cbarles unfarling his standard here. 

 My great grandfather remembered that, and said the words on 

 it, ' Give to Cssar his due,' should have been ' Give to each 

 his due.' It was stuck up where the Infirmary grounds now 

 are." 



"Nottingham potteryware was in much request a century 

 and a half since, bat one Wedgwood outdid it." 



** Those bells you hear are at St. Peter's, and on one of them 

 i6 this inscription — 



' Oar voices shall with joyful sound 

 Make hills and valleys echo round.' 



And I hope the echo will be repeated by other chimes, and 

 summon from far as well as near visitors to our Exhibition. 

 Now, those bells remind me that Chables Deering lived, died, 

 and was buried in the parish of St. Peter's. Ah ! his house 

 was by the side of that churchyard, and he was buried facing 

 that house ; but the house was pulled down to make way for 

 Albert Street, and his gravestone with others used for pave- 

 ment." [Can this be?— Eds.] 



"Who was Charles Deering?" asked the "sleek-headed" 

 Fellow. 



"Who! Why, the man who wrote one of the first local 

 Floras and the first local history in England." 



We humbly confess that, like the "sleek-headed" Fellow, 

 we had not a clear recollection of this noteworthy man of Not- 

 tingham, so we turned to a good printed authority, and find as 

 follows : — 



" Charles Deering was a native of Saxony. He took his degrees in 

 physic at Leyden, and came to England first, in the train of a foreign 

 ambassador. This happened about the year 1720. He practised physic 

 and midwifery in London ; and having a strong bias to the study of 



botany, became one of the members of the society established by Dr. 

 Dillenius and Mr. Martyn, which subsisted from theyearl721 to 1726. 



" In the year 1736 he removed to Nottingham, at the recommenda- 

 tion of Sir Hans Sloane. At this time he was married; but his wife 

 did not long survive the removal to that place. He was at first well 

 received, and is said to have been very snccessful in his treatment of 

 the small-pox, which disease was highly epidemical at that place, soon 

 after his settling there. He published 'An account of an improved 

 method of treating the small-pox' in 1737, and to his honour be it 

 remembered his regimen was the cool one, which at that time had been 

 adopted by very few. 



"Dr. Deering showed hia attachment to his botanical pnreuits by 

 his assiduity in collecting such ample materials for his catalogue in 

 less than two years after fixing at Nottingham. He puhlishfd it in 

 1738 under the following title :— ' A catalbgne of plants natnrally grow- 

 ing and commonly cultivated in divers parts of England, more especi- 

 ally about Nottingham.' 



" The arrangement is alphabetical, and the number of plants about 

 850. The author was particularly attached to the subjects of the 

 Cryptogamia class, in which his researches had been very successful. 

 Of the number above mentioned, more than two hundred belonged to ■ 

 the orders of Fungi, Musci, and Algre ; among which, we meet with 

 twenty-seven which he considered ae nondescripts, and ten others not 

 to be met with in the third edition of Ray's Synopsis. He was assisted 

 in this branch by his correspondence with the learned professor at 

 Oxford, who considered some of his discoveries as new. and speaks of 

 his knowledge and aseidnity in terms of applause. In Deering's post- 

 humous work, the ' Nottinghamia Vetus et Nova,' there occuis a list 

 of some plants discovered by the author after the publication of this 

 catalogue. These are principally of the Cryptogamous kind. 



" Notwithstanding his early success, that ' adverse fatality,' which 

 he himself alludes to in his ' Letter on the small-pox,' still attended 

 him. He was, unhappily, not endowed with that degree of prudence 

 and equanimity of temper which are so necessary to the jrjictice of 

 physic, insomuch that he very early lost the little interest which his 

 character and success had at first gained. Besides his acquaintance 

 with the ancient languages, he was master of many of the modem 

 tongues. Hia knowledge of botany was very considerable, and will bo 

 perpetuated so lonfj as DiUenius'a ' history ' shall preserve estimation. 

 He had a knowledge of designing, and was an ingenious mechanic. 

 After his failure in physic, his friends attempted several schemes to 

 alleviate his necessities. They procured him, among other?, a com- 

 mission in the regiment raised at NottiuRham, on account of the 

 rebellion ; but this proved more honourable than profitable to him. 

 He was afterwards employed in a way more agreeable to his genius 

 and talents, being furnished with materials, and enabled by the assist- 

 ance of John Plumtree, Esq., and others, to write the history of Not- 

 tingham, which ho dedicated to the Duke of Newcastle. But he did 

 not live to receive the reward of this labour. He had been troubled 

 with the pout at a very early period, having been afflicted with it in his 

 nineteenth year, and in the latter stage of bis life he snfiVred long con- 

 finements in this disease, and became asthmatical. Being at length 

 reduced to a degree of poverty, and dependanre, which hia spirit could 

 not sustain, oppressed with calamity and complicated disease, he died 

 April 12th. 1749. Two of his principal creditors administered to his 

 effects, and buried him in St. Peter's churchyard, opposite the honse 

 in which he resided. 



" He left an hortus siccus of the plants of his ' catalogue,' consist- 

 ing of upwards of six hundred species, in eight volumes, of the quarto 

 form, besides separate tables of the Mosses, and a volume of paintings 

 of the FuuRi, accurately done by his own hand. Some part, if not the 

 whole, of this collection, was, I believe, purchased by the Honourable 

 Eothwell "Willoughby, who had been one of his benefactors while living, 

 and inherited a portion of that taste which distinguished his family in 

 the time of Mr. Bay. He left also a manuscript treatise, in Latin, 

 ' De Be obstetricaria.' 



" His posthumous work was published by his administrators, George 

 Aysconph, printer, and Thomas Willingtou, druggist, underthe follow- 

 ing title : — 'Nottinghamia Vetns etNova, or, An Historical Account of 

 the ancient and present State of the Town of Nottingham.' " 

 "Well," said the " sleek headed" Fellow, "that beats 



* The little smith of Nottingham, 

 Who doth the work that no man can.' 



Why, I've lived here more than all my life, for my father and 

 mother lived here aU theirs, and I never knew so much afore 

 of that Deering. He's only just mentioned even in Allen's 

 " Illustrated Handbook " of this towr. However, this is what 

 he does say about its botanists, and tome things now worth 

 seeing near it." Spying which, ''Sleek-head" pulled a little 

 red-covered hook out of his pocket and read this — 



" Few towns have been favoured with such able botanists as Not* 

 tingham. Among them may be mentioned John Bay, in whom we 

 have a special interest on account of his friendly connection with the 

 Willoughhys of 'Wollaton Hall. In the next generation Dr. Deering 

 arranged the plants known in his time in alphabetical order, and added 

 some useful remarks on their medicinal properties. Soon after, the 

 Linnsean system was adopted, and Mr. Ordoyno tabulated the plants 

 of the county in his ' Flora Nottinghamensis.' "We then have Mr. 

 Jowett, followed by Dr. Godfrey Howitt, who gave us a better list of 



