4 HISTORY OF LICHENOLOGY 



the species of plants in alphabetical order, but as the work was not critical 

 it fell into disuse, being superseded by John Ray's Catalo'gus and Synopsis. 

 To Robert Plot^ we owe the earliest record of Cladonia coccifera which had 

 hitherto escaped notice; it was described and figured as a new and rare 

 plant in the Natural History of Staffordshire^. Plot was the first Gustos 

 of Ashmole's Museum in Oxford and he was also the first to prepare 

 a County Natural History. 



The greatest advance during this first period was made by Robert 

 Morison^ a Scotsman from Aberdeen. He studied medicine at Angers in 

 France, superintended the Duke of Orleans' garden at Blois, and finally, 

 after his return to this country in 1669, became Keeper of the botanic 

 garden at Oxford. In the third volume of his great work^ on Oxford 

 plants, which was not issued till after his death, the lichens are put in 

 a separate group— "Musco-fungus" — and classified with some other plants 

 under "Plantae Heteroclitae." The publication of the volume projects into 

 the next historical period. 



Long before this date John Ray had begun to study and publish books 

 on Botany. His Catalogue of English Plants^ is considered to have com- 

 menced a new era in the study of the science. The Catalogue was followed 

 by the History of Plants'; and later by a Synopsis of British Plants^, and in 

 all of these books lichens find a place. Two editions of the Synopsis 

 appeared during Ray's lifetime, and to the second there, is added an 

 Appendix contributed by Samuel Doody which is entirely devoted to 

 Cryptogamic plants, including not a few lichens — still called "Mosses" — 

 discovered for the first time. Doody, himself an apothecary, took charge 

 of the garden of the Apothecaries' Society at Chelsea, but his chief interest 

 was Cryptogamic Botany, a branch of the subject but little regarded before 

 his day. Pulteney wrote of him as the "Dillenius of his time." 



Among Doody's associates were the Rev. Adam Buddie, James Petiver 

 and William Sherard. Buddie was primarily a collector and his herbarium 

 is incorporated in the Sloane Herbarium at the British Museum. It contains 

 lichens from all parts of the world, many of them contributed by Doody, 

 Sherard and Petiver. Only a few of them bear British localities : several are 

 from Hampstead where Buddie had a church. 



The Society of Apothecaries had been founded in 16 17 and the mem- 

 bers acquired land on the river-front at Chelsea, which was extended later 

 and made into a Physick Garden. James Petiver* was one of the first 

 Demonstrators of Plants to the Society in connection with the garden, and 

 one of his duties was to conduct the annual herborizing tours of the 

 apprentices in search of plants. He thus collected a large herbarium on 

 the annual excursions, as well as on shorter visits to the more immediate 



1 Plot 1686. '^ Morison 1699. ^ Ray 1670. * Ray 1686. * Ray 1690. « Petiver 1695. 



