2 OCCURRENCE OF CHALKY BOULDER CLAY AT CHINGFORD.
direction. Michell (born 1679, died 1737) was of humble parent-
age and entirely self-educated. He is said to have been of a
most lovable and modest disposition. Owing to his great ability
and enthusiasm for the study of plants, he became botanist
to the Grand Duke of Tuscany and director of the botanic
gardens in Florence. To defray the expense of preparing the
plates for his book, Nova Plantarum Genera, he appealed
for assistance to botanists throughout Europe. Among his
friendly correspondents was Dr. Wm. Sherard, of Oxford, founder
of the Sherardian chair of botany in the University, from whose
letters we learn of the efforts he made to obtain contributors
amongst his friends to Micheli's book. No doubt it was in
this way that Dr. Dale became one of the seventeen Englishmen
whose names appear in the list of 193 patrons given in Nova
Plantarum Genera, patrons who, Micheli writes, "made
provision for the plates accompanying this work to be engraved
on copper."
There is no reason to think that the plate dedicated to Dale
and illustrating Mycetozoa was chosen to suit his tastes, although
we know that he was so far interested in fungi that he supplied
a list of them to his distinguished neighbour, John Ray, for the
Historia Plantarum.
NOTE ON THE OCCURRENCE OF CHALKY
BOULDER CLAY AT CHINGFORD.
By PERCY G. THOMPSON.
[Read 28th November 1914.]
TRAVELLER'S Joy (Clematis vitalba, L.) has long
been known to held botanists as growing along the border
of Bury Wood, Chingford, although it is to be found nowhere
else in the present Forest district until one gets to the north
and east of Epping town, when it occurs commonly in hedges
on Boulder Clay soil (see Essex Naturalist, vi., 1892, p. 3).
It is essentially a chalk-loving plant ("most common on chalky
soil," says Hooker).
I have long speculated, from its occurrence in Bury Wood,
on the possibility of an unmapped and unsuspected patch of
Boulder Clay existing in the Chingford district of the Forest.
On a recent visit to Yardley Hill, Chingford, in September