HERTFORDSHIRE NATURALISTS AND THEIR WORK. 
87 
Nat. Hist. Soc ,’ vol. i, 1875, p. 23), and did not neglect native 
plants, though his attention was concentrated upon exotics, on 
which he published at some length, and his collections are to be 
seen in sundry volumes of the Sloane Herbarium at the Natural 
History Museum, Cromwell Hoad. The other, Samuel Doody, 
commemorated in the fern genus Doodia , is connected with Herts 
by his record of five species— Medicago falcata , between Watford 
and Bushey Mill; Heracleum Sphondylium , at Tring; Euphorbia 
platyphylla , at Otterspool; Neottia Nidus-avis and Herminium 
Monorchis , both at Tring. He published nothing himself, but was 
in close connection with the leading botanists of his day, and noted, 
his finds in an interleaved copy of Hay’s 4 Synopsis ’ now in the 
British Museum at Bloomsbury. 
A gap of something like thirty years separates the next on our 
roll from those who preceded him, and he is the last of the pre- 
Linnean botanists. John Blackstone resided for four months at 
Harefield at the house of some friends, detained there by illness, 
and he amused himself by compiling a small book which I have 
here to exhibit to-night, entitled 4 Fasciculus plantarum circa 
Harefield sponte nascentium . . . ’ Londini, 1737. Being so close 
to the county boundary it possesses great interest for Hertfordshire 
naturalists, and is frequently quoted by Mr. A. H. Pryor in his 
4 Flora.’ Nine years later the same writer produced his 4 Specimen 
botanicum,’ 1746, which was not confined to a small radius, but 
embraced the whole of the southern and midland counties. This 
volume is also on the table for your inspection; it was the last 
published in the Haian period, before the Linnean system gained 
the mastery over its predecessors. 
Within eighteen months from the date of the preface to this 
modest little volume, one of Linnaeus’s pupils visited the county, 
and I have given in our 4 Transactions,’ Yol. IX, Part 4, July, 1897, 
an account of the circumstances under which Pehr Kalm made his 
visit. On pp. 121-125 I have set out a list of his observations 
of the native plants within our area, and therefore need not dwell 
further on this point. Indeed, though the field is large and many 
more names offer temptation to continue in this vein of reminiscence, 
I dare not trespass more than a few minutes longer on your for¬ 
bearance. 
Kalm was the forerunner in this country of his instructor’s 
system, which made its first appearance in the shape of an adapta¬ 
tion by Dr. John Hill of Hay’s 4 Synopsis,’ followed in 1762 by 
a work of genuine value, William Hudson’s ‘Flora Anglica.’ 
Though this author was, to use an old phrase, 44 a diligent searcher 
