c 
WARNER’S “‘ PLANTZE WOODFORDIENSES.” 273 
given in the annotations are reproduced in Thomas Furly For- 
ster’s printed list of 1784 without a single exception, the habi- 
tats given are identical, and the descriptions of the several plants 
are similarly, indeed almost identically, worded. 
This can scarcely be mere coincidence. There can be no 
reasonable doubt that the ‘‘ Additions’ published in 1784 are 
copied, with a few emendations, from these manuscript notes. 
Six plants, not mentioned in the annotations, appear in the 
printed list of 1784, viz. :—Chara vulgaris, Chenopodium viride, 
Mentha gentilis, Salix triandnia, Salix helix and Salix vitellina ; 
we may infer that in the interval between 1778 (the presumed 
date of the notes) and 1784, additional records were made and 
the difficult genus Salix was being tackled by the recorder. 
This almost perfect identity implies that the annotated vol- 
ume now described contains Thomas Furly Forster’s own manu- 
script records of his additions to Warner’s list of plants, which 
afterwards, in 1784, he printed under the title of “‘ Additions to 
Warner’s Plante Woodfordienses.”’ 
A comparison of the handwriting of the MS. notes with the 
known caligraphy of Edward and Benjamin Forster, while 
presenting many resemblances (as might be expected in 
the case of three brothers, all of about an age and who were 
probably educated together) yet exhibits sufficient variations 
to justify the conclusion that it is distinct from either; and 
actual comparison of the manuscript with letters written by 
Thomas Furly Forster, in the possession of the Linnean Society 
(which I have had the privilege of inspecting by favour of 
Dr. B. Daydon Jackson), and also with his signature to the register 
of St. Mary’s Church, Walthamstow, on the occasion of his 
marriage, goes to prove that these manuscript annotations 
were in fact written by Thomas Furly Forster himself. The 
earliest dated letter of Thomas Furly Forster’s which the Linnean 
Society possesses is one addressed to “* Dr. Smith at Mr. Smith’s 
Norwich,” dated 28 June, 1790.2, This letter is 12 years later 
than the date of the MS. annotations and, bearing this interval 
of time in mind, I can have no hesitation in regarding the 
latter as being in the same handwriting. When the annotations 
were written T. F. Forster was only 17 years old, and at this 
age one’s handwriting is scarcely fixed, as is indeed evident from 
2 This I am permitted by the Council of the Society to reproduce in facsimile, 
