72
ON AN ANNOTATED COPY OF RICHARD
WARNER'S "PLANTS WOODFORDIENSES."
By PERCY THOMPSON. F.L.S.
(With 4 Plates and 1 other Illustration).
(Read 19th October, 1919.)
BY the courtesy of our Member, Mr. J. J. Holdsworth, I am
enabled to exhibit and to give an account of an interesting
copy of Warner's "Plants Woodfordienses," which is in his
possession.
This copy contains both the "Index of the English Names"
and the "Index of the Latin Names, as given by Linnaeus,"
which latter, having been printed subsequently to the original
publication of the work in 1771, is not found in all copies, and
also it includes the "Additions to Warner's 'Plantae Wood-
fordienses," published in 1784 (after Warner's death in 1775),
by Thomas Furly Forster, of whom we shall say more later.
The volume is interleaved throughout with blank sheets of
handmade paper bearing the watermark T. FRENCH and a
Shield of Arms (quartered) within a circle surmounted by a
crown: I have been unable to obtain any information as to the
exact date of this mark, which would appear, in the opinion of
the experts consulted, to be a rare one.
The entire volume is enriched with numerous manuscript
notes of the nature of addenda to or amendments of the original
printed text, these being apparently designed by their writer as
materials for a projected second edition of the work. This is
evidenced by such instructions as "Dele," "add," "insert,"
by additions to the Index of Latin names (arranged in proper
alphabetical order), and, in one case, by the note "this may be
erased."
The whole of the manuscript annotations, notwithstanding
slight variations, may reasonably be considered as being in one
and the same handwriting, having regard to the long length of
time over which they extend, viz., from 1784 to 1827: it is evident
that during this lapse of 43 years, an originally boyish hand would
become formed and matured, and be modified in the process.
(Plate IV.)
As to the identity of the annotator, there is abundant internal
evidence that the writer collected his plants in, and had an in-