5 2 



Lees: An Old Leeds Herbary. 



where too (as at Adel) Osmunda used to grow, has gone for 

 ever unless its descendants, transplanted from the wild for their 

 golden wealth of blossom — not an impossible supposition — are 

 among those which, undaunted by grime, still grin gayly 

 through the garden railings of Mount Preston and other of the 

 older residential parts of the city. Within the writer's memory 

 the bonny Bog-bean, the Vaccinium Vitis-Idcea, the lovely 

 Anagallis tenella, and the singular, mud-loving Limosella have 

 all disappeared from the ' Seven Arches ' vicinage, the Lyco- 

 podiiun clavatum from Scotland Mills ; and latest of all, and 

 very reluctantly (to all appearance, for they are of the hardiest 

 in constitution) the Woodruffe and Tuberous Vetchling are no 

 longer to-be found in or near Batty Wood, with' the Galium 

 verum that, writing in 1872 in the Journal of Botany, I truthfully 

 described as making gay bank and bridlepath by the old wind- 

 mill on Sugar-hills, out by Potternewton. These be trivial 

 matters, but like the proverbial straw they show which way the 

 wind blows : extinction and substitution is the Order in all 

 Life. 



A word of explanation why the Heatonian records which 

 follow were not included in the Flora of West Yorkshire may 

 be permitted. As the Dean of the Medical School and keeper 

 of its herbarium, sometime later in "the charge of Mr. Frederick 

 Greenwood and Mr. Edward Atkinson, all themselves botanists, 

 I knew Dr. Heaton's penchant well enough, and looked through 

 the school herbary more than once ; but, at this time, in the 

 middle Sixties, I was a learner merely myself, and for a ' Flora' 

 of Leeds ' sometime ' it was to Professor Miall that eyes were 

 turned. In the late Eig'hties when it finally took shape under 

 my hand, I was concerned more with the Riding as a whole, 

 and with what still survived within its marches, than with 

 pictures however significant of the rococo in Things Botanical. 

 I never even thought of asking for leave to inspect the Dean's 

 private collection at Claremont. 



Dr. Heaton died in 1880 ; and the Memoir of his life some- 

 what largely built on his diaries, published three years after- 

 wards, is most inadequate so far as showing in its due 

 proportions the botanical side of his character and attainments. 

 As was, perhaps and alas ! to be expected of slap-dash 

 Journalism, the doctor's unassuming modesty with regard to 

 his labours among- mere vegetables, was not seen, from some 

 lack of sympathy or vision, to be more than the subsidiary 

 pass-time it seemed on the surface. 



Naturalist^ 



