i33 



ON THE HEPATICiE AND MUSCI 



OF WESTMORLAND. 



GEORGE STABLER, 

 /, evens, Mi In tho rpe . 



SECOND PAPER. 



(First Paper, see % The Naturalist; Oct. 1888, /. 320.) 



In connection with this, however, it is perhaps desirable that the 

 history of Westmorland bryology and hepaticology should be reviewed 

 as a whole. 



The earliest record of a moss of our district is one by 

 Thomas Lawson, the father of Westmorland botany, who was Vicar 

 of Rampside, and afterwards, in 1653, became the famous Quaker 

 schoolmaster of Great Strickland, near Penrith* In a manuscript 

 commenced in the year 1670 this 'skilful and diligent botanist,' as 

 Ray calls him, notes the beautiful Hylocomium splendms from 

 Swarthmoor, near Ulverston, not far from the border of West- 

 morland. 



John 



j 



eulogises as 'the most accurate in observation, the most philosophical 

 in contemplation, and the most faithful in description amongst all 

 the botanists of our own or perhaps any other time. 7 



It is to this botanist we owe, strictly, the first record of a West- 

 morland moss. As has been previously noted, this was Polytrkhum 

 commune, a giant among the acrocarpous mosses. Ray was a per- 



Law 



He 



made three journeys into the north of England — the first in 166 r, 



1668, and he was last in Cumberland and West- 

 he was 62 years of age, in 1690. Since writing the 



the second in 



paper 



Westmorland 



of Mr. Massee, of the Royal Herbarium, Kew, that the moss is 

 recorded in the first edition of Ray's Synopsis (1690). 



From this date there is a wide gap of 72 years (1690-1762) 

 before we meet with the next announcement of a 

 moss. It was during this period that the transition from the old 

 style of nomenclature to that of the Linnsean or binomial took 

 place, and it is almost entirely within these two dates that Dilleniu 

 lived (1685-1747). In 1741 Dillenius published his ' Historia 

 Muscorum/ a work far in advance of anything hitherto attempted, 

 yet in it I do not find mention of a single moss from the English 

 Lake District. 



May 1896. 



