OF NORTHUMBERLAND AND DURHAM, 79 



Rev. John Harriman, bom 1760, died 1831, was a native 

 of Maryport in Cumberland. He became Rector of Eglestone 

 and Gainford, and botanised all along the Tees from Darling- 

 ton upwards. He was the first botanist to collect many of the 

 rarer plants of Upper Teesdale, about the year 1793; for 

 instance Gentiana verna, Tofieldia pabistris, Elyna caricina, 

 J^uncus triglumis, Vaccmium uHgmostim, Polystichum Lonchitis, 

 and Pyrus Aria, and on the fells over Eglestone Malaxis 

 paludosa. The specimens of Gentiana verna which were 

 figured in " English Botany " he says were collected for him 

 by a miner named John Binks. He was elected a Fellow of 

 the Linnean Society in 1798. Later he worked hard at Lichens, 

 and corresponded with Acharius and Borrer. The most 

 interesting species he found was Verrucaria thelostonia, which 

 is described by Acharius in the second part of Winch's 

 " Botanists' Guide," and is figured by Sowerby in " Enghsh 

 Botany," t. 2153. Acharius named after him Verrucaria 

 Harrimanni, figured "Enghsh Botany," t. 2539. He died at 

 Croft, in Yorkshire, Dec. 3, 1831. 



Rev. Jelinger Symons, born 1778, died 1853, pubHshed 

 in 1798, when he was only 20 years of age, an octavo volume 

 of 207 pages entitled " Synopsis Plantarum insulis Britannicis 

 indigenarum." It contains brief Latin characters of all the 

 British species then known. He was the first to apply the 

 name of Scolopendrium vulgare to the Common Hart's Tongue 

 Fern. He was elected a Fellow of the Linnean Society the 

 same year that his synopsis was published. He was for some 

 time Curate of Whitburn near Sunderland, and sent to Winch 

 in 1807 a considerable list of the rarer plants of that neigh- 

 bourhood, which is cited in the second volume of Winch's 

 "Botanists' Guide." He became in 1833 Rector of Radnage 

 in Buckinghamshire, where he died in 1853. 



William Weighall, of Sunderland, a contemporary of 

 Edward Robson, is distinguished in the history of British 

 botany as being the first person who collected a considerable 

 number of plants introduced by foreign ballast. Of these 

 upwards of 150 species have now been collected and deter- 



