A HISTORY OF CUMBERLAND 
editor of the Botanists Guide through England and Wales, assisted by the 
Rev. John Dodd, vicar of Aspatria previous to 1804, the Rev. W. 
Wood of Whitehaven, and the Rev. John Harriman of Eglestone, 
Durham. The records left by the last-named gentleman still remain as 
authentic as anything that has come under the writer’s personal notice. 
A list published in Hutchinson’s History of Cumberland (1794), compiled 
mainly by the Rev. W. Richardson, vicar of Dacre, is far from being 
equally trustworthy, and was rather severely criticized by Mr. N. J. 
Winch, of Newcastle, who himself, from personal observations, published 
an amended catalogue in 1824. Mr. J. G. Baker of Kew Gardens says 
of him, ‘ Winch was a capital botanist.’ John Rooke, a Whitehaven 
artist of more than local repute, who died so lately as 1872, left at his 
decease a collection of botanical drawings bound up into six volumes. 
These drawings, executed with great fidelity down to the minutest detail, 
were sold by the artist’s executors to Mr. J. C. Brown, J.P., of Hazel 
Holme, Whitehaven, by whom they are justly prized. Rev. Robert 
Wood, sixty-two years vicar of Westward parish, Wigton, and Mr. 
William Dickinson, F.L.S., of Thorncroft, Workington, were zealous 
co-workers in natural science for more than half a century, and left 
behind them valuable collections of dried plants as evidences of their 
industrious research. It was the writer’s happy lot to be their associate 
in his earlier botanical studies and to be able to avail himself of their 
experience. The late Dr. John Leitch (M.B. and C.M. of Edinburgh) 
who practised at Silloth, where he died so recently as 1897, was a keen 
botanist and did much to promote the study of plants in his own locality 
especially in looking after the mass of alien plants annually appearing at 
Silloth, from the dressings of foreign cargoes of grain discharged at 
the port. 
It would be unpardonable to omit all notice of the Lakeland Flora, 
published by Mr. J. Gilbert Baker, F.L.S., of the Royal Gardens at Kew 
(the MS. of which he submitted to me for examination) as a contribu- 
tion to our county flora ; or to acknowledge the courteous and invaluable 
aid extended to me by him in verifying the identity of alien and other 
plants collected by myself and co-workers at Silloth, Maryport, and 
Derwent Tinplate Works, Workington, the number of species amounting 
to about 200. 
Much remains to be done before the botany of the county as a 
whole can be considered as approximately complete. Some districts I 
admit may be set down as practically exhausted, as for instance the 
neighbourhood of Keswick, the great resort of tourists to the Lake 
district. It is in the extreme north and north-east, abutting on the 
Pennines, that so little has been hitherto accomplished, and I leave the 
work to be undertaken by younger men of active habits unburdened by 
the infirmities of age. 
I would gladly here add a word of hearty and grateful acknowledgment to the living 
friends and fellow-labourers who have aided me in the task of compilation of the Flora of 
Cumberland. These include Miss E. J. Glaister, Skinburness House ; Miss Julia Curwen, 
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