304 
THE ESSEX NATURALIST. 
this little book is of considerable interest, and Mr. Foord-Kelsey 
has determined to present it to the Botanical Department of the 
British Museum. Before doing so, however, he has kindly 
permitted me to examine it, and to exhibit it at a meeting of the 
Essex Field Club. 
The manuscript is very neatly written on one side (save for 
occasional additions) of 41 octavo pages, bound in cloth with 
about a dozen blank pages at the end, and lettered on a label 
outside “ Flora of Dedham.” Before the actual Flora, which 
is arranged according to the Natural System under Dicotyledones, 
Monocotyledones and “ Acotyledones or Acrogenae,” there are 
some three pages of introduction, which, with the title-page, I 
will transcribe as illustrating the careful methods of the 
author:— 
“ A Catalogue of Plants growing wild in the basin of the 
Stour, in the Counties of Essex and Suffolk, in the neighbourhood 
of Dedham, Essex. From observations made in the year 1837, 
by W. H. Coleman, B.A., of St. John’s College, Cambridge, late 
Assistant Master of Dedham School. Hertford, mdcccxxxviii. 
“ The observations recorded in the following Catalogue 
were made during a residence at Dedham in the year 1837. The 
greater part of the stations assigned are in the Basin of the 
Stour, i.e., in the district whose drainage is towards that river 
or its tributaries. It was intended to have confined the Catalogue 
to the plants found within this space ; but the desire of including 
several plants of some rarity (Anthemis nobilis, Inula pulicaria 
and Mentha Pulegium) has, I believe, led me a little beyond 
the summit level between the Stour and Coin ; and having 
thus transgressed, I have felt less compunction in inserting 
some outlying stations of other rare species, which do occur in 
the basin of the Stour. No observations have been made west¬ 
ward of Stoke-by-Nayland church, or eastward of Wrab Ness. 
“ The river Stour appears to be the boundary between 
two different geological formations. That on the South, or Essex 
side, is a heavy retentive clay ; being, I believe, the Blue or 
London Clay : while to the North the subsoil is of a more loamy 
character, belonging to the plastic clay formation : white bricks 
are made of this clay at Higham. Both of these strata are often 
covered to a considerable depth by beds of gravel, as at the 
Gun Hill, &c. In the North East quarter, in the neighbour- 
