10 
PROCEEDINGS OF THE 
cords in his great work the places where he gathered the 
English plants, which he has described therein. Johnson, 
the editor of a well know n edition of the Herbal, published, 
about 1632, a catalogue of plants growing on Hampstead 
Heath, entitled “Enumeratio Plantarun in Ericeto Hamp- 
stedeani locisque vicinis crescentium.” This list contains 
somewhat fewer than one hundred species. But as the au- 
thor in his Preface professes to give such as he had not col- 
lected during his Iter Cantianum, and other Botanical pere- 
grinations, &c., three times as many more should probably 
be added ; and the Flora of Hampstead may, in those days, 
have been estimated at four hundred. Reckoning the Pha- 
nerogamous species, in the first edition of Ray’s Synopsis, at 
nine hundred, the Hampstead plants are to those as 4 : 9, 
being nearly one-half of the known English species. Black- 
stone’s “Fasciculus Plantarum Circa Harefielcl Nascentium,” 
published in 1737? about one hundred years after the date of 
Johnson’s Botanical publications, comprehends betw'een five 
hundred and fifty and six hundred plants of the vascular 
species, collected within a circumference of twenty miles ; 
forming more than one-half of the British plants of the same 
sort known at that period. 
If Ray’s Catalogue “ Plantarum circa Cantabrigiam Nas- 
centium,” published in 1660, be compared with the first edi- 
tion of his catalogue of English plants, published in 1670, 
we shall scarcely find one in four which is not noticed in the 
former work. From these facts w r e see how important local 
Floras are, as being the chief materials from which National 
Floras are compiled. The County Floras of Relhan, Sib- 
thorpe and Abbott, with the more local lists of plants formed 
by Warner, Jacob, and Forster, subsequently enabled the 
author of the Flora Britannica, and of the English Flora, to 
supply his country with one of the most valuable Floras in 
existence. 
Moreover, it is from local observers, who only have the 
opportunity of making a consecutive course of observations 
on plants, that we shall be able to approximate to the periods 
of their flowering, their times of arriving at maturity, and 
their seasons of decay and dissolution. By such a calendar 
as might be compiled from the budding, leafing, and restiva- 
tion of common species, the agriculturist will more surely 
learn the proper time, for his important operations, than 
from Moore’s Almanack. 
The difference in the commencement of Seasons, and their 
