5' 



AN OLD LEEDS HERBARY. 



F. ARNOLD LEES, M.R.C.S., 



Koundhay, Leeds; Author of the Flora of West Yorkshire. 



The tongueless messages of an old Hortus Siccus are not 

 without their value apart from the pathos embalmed in their 

 mummified presentments. A lustrum ago I acquired, through 

 the generosity of Mr. Hy. Walker, bookseller, a bulky fasciculus 

 of Dried Plants which had been brought together by the late 

 Dr. J. Deakin Heaton, a resident in Leeds — to judge by the 

 dates attached to the specimens — from 1835 to his death in 

 1880. Probably my particular 'accretion did not include every- 

 thing of note communicated to or found by the doctor : species 

 used to be deposited in the Museum of the Medical School but, 

 going through what I acquired, recently with some thorough- 

 ness, I was surprised to find the localities whence several of the 

 items were drawn to be both significant and unpublished. The 

 whole of them make up a picture of the past which emphasises 

 the great change in the- character of the suburban flora that has 

 gone on. As examples : fifty years ago the Bee Orchis, and 

 the Fly, grew at Scarcroft, the lesser Pyrola on Whinmoor, the 

 Water Violet at Swillington, and by the ' beck ' (now a covered- 

 in goit) at Sheepscar grew both the Comfrey and the purple 

 Loosestrife. All these and more are now of a surety relegated 

 for ever to farther fields. 



Ancillary to a brief glance at a dead-and-gone generation, 

 too, is a wish to once again adumbrate a theory, deduced from 

 experience, of that change and compensation which, in matters 

 botanical, hold everywhere outside the very pavements of a 

 large town. As some species die out naturally, others — as 

 naturally — take their forerunners' place. Great alterations, from 

 green meads to brick-and-mortar dwelling-houses have, of course, 

 affected the periphery of our borough area ; but more than this, 

 the surface uninterfered with by Man has changed, and with it 

 has changed the flora it gave rise to. Knostrop, Whinmoor, 

 Moortown, and Allwoodly are not built over, vet no more offer 

 they a home to Cotton-grass by the acre, or heath and furze by 

 the square mile. Adel dam and numerous smaller sheets of 

 water are almost no-more; filled up with the land-making Reed- 

 mace that, its work done, is ousted from existence by Tussock 

 Sedge, Juncaceae and aquatic Sallows. The LysitnacJiia vulgaris 

 that in 1840 fringed the Foundry ponds at low Osmondthorpe, 



1900 February i. 



