HISTORY OF ESSEX BOTANY.
233
edition, which, probably, Mr. Ray's publications superseded. . . Dr. Merret
has, in this Pinax, introduced many plants as new, which, on subsequent
examination, proved to be only varieties ; a number of exotics, evidently the
accidental offspring of gardens, and many that could never be met with by
succeeding botanists, in the places specified by him. He enumerates upwards
of 1,400 species of English plants; whilst the accurate Mr. Ray, only three
years afterwards, confines the number to 1,050."
Merrett's more accurate contemporaries were less tolerant
than Pulteney. Thus Ray writes to Lister, from Middleton,
under date June 18, 1667 :—
" My spare hours I bestowed . . the most part of the winter , in
gathering up into a Catalogue all such plants as I had at any time found
growing wild in England, not in order to the present publishing of them but
for my own use, possibly one day they may see light, at present the world is
glutted with Dr. Merrett's bungling Pinax. I resolve never to put out anything
which is not as perfect as is possible for me to make it."
This letter is only given in part in Derham's Philosophical
Letters (1718), p. 18, and in the Ray Society's Correspondence of
John Ray (1848), p. 13 ; but this passage is inserted by Derham
in his Life of Ray (1760), and appears on pp. 17-18 of the Ray
Society's Memorials (1846).
It would be interesting to know more of Thomas Willisel,
Cromwellian soldier, and collector for Merrett, Ray, and the
Royal Society, than the little the present writer was able to put
together for the Dictionary of National Biography49 ; but it does not
appear that he collected in Essex.
Merrett was one of the earliest fellows of the Royal Society
on its incorporation : he retired into the country during the
plague; and the existence of copies of his Pinax, dated 1666, and
others dated 1667 strongly suggests, as was pointed out by the
Rev. W. W. Newbould,50 that the stock was destroyed in the
Great Fire. Merrett died "at his house, near the chapel in
Hatton Garden, in Holborne, near London, Aug. 19, 1695 ; and
was buried twelve feet deep in the church of St. Andrew's,
Holborne."51 His herbarium is in that of Sloane and his own
copy of his book is in the British Museum library [Press mark
976. b. 3].
There are fourteen Essex records in the "Pinax," viz.:—
49 Vol. 62.
50 Trimen & Dyer, Flora of Middlesex, p. 372.
51 Anthony a Wood, Athenae Oxoniensis, ed. Bliss, iv., 432.