BOTANY 
HE county of Cumberland, owing to the great variety of its 
land surfaces, possesses a large variety of vegetable life, alpine, 
aquatic, maritime, and plants of cultivation, besides such as are 
peculiar to bogs, peat mosses and open moorlands. Its botanical 
history is somewhat meagre. From all the information I have been able 
to gather, it would seem that very slight attention had been paid to 
botanical investigation prior to the restoration of king Charles II., and 
that the real pioneers of the study practically were Lawson, Ray, 
Willison, and Dr. William Nicolson, Bishop of Carlisle, who left behind 
him at his death a MS. list of Cumberland and Westmorland plants 
founded upon Ray’s Catalogue, and supplemented by additions founded 
on the worthy prelate’s personal gatherings around Carlisle and in the 
parish of Great Strickland, near Penrith, of which he had been formerly 
rector. He lived at the rectory when Lawson was schoolmaster at Great 
Strickland in the adjoining county of Westmorland. From some quaint 
remarks in the bishop’s book, which through the courtesy of the late 
Bishop Goodwin I had the privilege of examining and making extracts 
from, there would appear to have been friendly correspondence and in- 
terchange of thought between the two. The rectory is not more than 
a dozen miles from Lawson’s abode at Strickland. It would further 
seem from the frequent occurrence of the phrases ‘subter meenia,’ ‘ inter 
rudera,’ and ‘juxta fossas,’ that the city defences at Carlisle were in a 
ruinous condition in 1690, the date of the bishop’s MS., and had pro- 
bably not been repaired since the siege and capture by Cromwell’s troops 
not fifty years before. 
Some corroboration as to the scarcity of botanical information as 
regards Cumberland up to comparatively recent times is afforded by 
reference to the pages of a recently published work by Mr. W. A. 
Clarke, F.L.S., containing ‘ First Records of British Plants.’ Only six 
species are included referring to Cumberland, chiefly on the authority of 
Willison and discovered by him in the course of a journey from Hexham 
to Penrith about 1670. These are Vicia Orobus, DC., to which Bishop 
Nicolson adds ‘ nostratibus, horse-pease,’ at Gamblesby ; A/chemilla alpina, 
L., and Circea alpina, L., both by Hullswater Lake (sic) ; Vaccinium 
uliginosum, L., at Osten (now Alston) ; Lobelia Dortmanna, L., which the 
bishop calls ‘ Water gladiole’ in Hullswater, and Salix cinerea, L., Cum- 
berland in general. 1753.—Since Nicolson’s day additions to local 
botany in Cumberland have been made chiefly by Dawson Turner, joint 
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