Lett — Census Ueport on the Mosses of Ireland. 67 



the Keeper and assistants in the Herbarium in the National Museum, for 

 their attentions to me. 



I must lastly acknowledge the kindly help given me on many occasions, 

 during a long course of years, in examining critical specimens, by Mr. E. 

 Charles Horrell, Dr. Braithwaite, Mr. H. N. Dixon, Mr. Nicholson of Lewes, 

 and Mr. Wheldon of Liverpool. 



And to my good friends Mr. Praeger and Mr. Waddell I am further 

 indebted for their kindness in reading my My. and proofs, and making 

 many useful suggestions. 



The Pkogress of the Muscology of Ikeland. 



The earliest botanist who mentions any mosses found in Ireland is the 

 Rev. John Ray (1627-1703) of Black Notley, in Essex. He was the father 

 of systematic botany, and from him Withering and Jussieu gathered their 

 ideas for the arrangement of their Floras, and worked them out. Pay, in 

 his "Synopsis Methodica Stirpium Britannicarum " (London, 1690, 3rd 

 edition, 1724), mentions and describes eight mosses found in Ireland, but 

 only one of them has a locality specified for it. Most, if not all, of these 

 were collected by William Sherard, of Oxford, during a visit he paid to 

 Sir Arthur Rawdon at Moira in the county of Down, from whence he 

 explored the shores of Lough Neagh and the Mourne Mountains. Such was 

 the small beginning of the muscology of Ireland. Ray described each plant 

 in a few sentences, and gave one or two references to previous writers who 

 had mentioned it, but he did not give generic and specific names — they were 

 not used at that date. A sample of his style will enable the reader to 

 understand the great advantage that modern botanical works have over the 

 production of the first of the systematists : — 



" Hypnum erectum aut iiuitans aquaticum, foliis oblongis perangustis 

 acutis, C.G. 219. Muscus palustris valde ramosus, surculis erectioribus, 

 foliolis in tenues et longos nmcrones productis Syn. ii, 39, 14, tiuitans, foliis 

 et flagellis longis tenuibusque D. Sherard, Dood. Syn. ii, App. 338. In the 

 pits of the shaking bogs in Ireland." 



The chief authorities referred to by Ray are Sherard, Doody, and his own 

 history of Oxford plants. 



This system of writing a Flora was a new thing, and did not find favour 

 in the eyes of Caleb Threlkeld, M.D., whose " Synopsis Stirpium Hiberni- 

 carum" (Dublin, 1727) was the first essay of its kind published in the 

 Kingdom of Ireland. For in it he remarks about Ray's Synopsis : " The 

 curious who consult it will find themselves glutted with numbers and names 



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