303
A MS. ESSEX FLORULA.
BY Prof. G. S. BOULGER, F.L.S., F.G.S.
IN the "Abbreviations" in Gibson's Flora of Essex (1862)
p. xx., appears the entry "W. C. . . .* Coleman,
W. H., M.A., one of the authors of the Herts Flora—List of
plants near Dedham," the asterisk marking "Clergymen," as
is stated on the previous page.
In the List of Correspondents in the second part of Watson's
Topographical Botany (1874), p. 551, the Rev. W. H. Coleman is
credited with catalogues communicated from nine vice-counties ;
and in the "Explanations of the Catalogues," pp. 520-1, these
are described as (i.) a London Catalogue (ed. ii.), checked for
plants seen near Minehead and Dunster, South Somerset, in 1847 ;
(ii.) a manuscript catalogue of plants of East Grinstead, East
Sussex and Surrey ; (iii.) a manuscript catalogue of plants ob-
served near Dedham, in the counties of Essex and Suffolk (east
and west ?), no date, but probably made in 1837 ; (iv) a manu-
script catalogue of plants within five miles of Hertford . . .
during 1838 and 1839 ... a forerunner of the Flora of
Hertford, the joint work of Webb and Coleman ... a well
worked out Flora" ; and (v.) a London catalogue (ed. ii.),
checked for plants seen in the neighbourhood of Ashby-de-la-
Zouch, in the county of Leicester. Watson adds "In her
Flora of Leicestershire, Miss Mary Kirby had the efficient aid
of three clerical botanists, Bloxam, Coleman and Churchill
Babington."
In the library of the Kew Herbarium is a manuscript Flora
of East Grinstead, 1836, probably No. ii. of the above and acquired
with Watson's herbarium; and most probably i., iv. and v. are
also there among Watson's papers, if they have survived the
holocaust referred to in the Journal of Botany for 1881, p. 263.
Coleman's contributions to the list of Cambridgeshire plants
appear in the Supplement to Watson's New Botanist's Guide
(1837), vol. ii., pp. 598-601, as is mentioned in Babington's Flora
of Cambridgeshire (1860), p. xi.
In August 1920, the Rev. E. Foord-Kelsey, Rector of Kimble,
Bucks, purchased in Aylesbury for sixpence what is perhaps
No. iii. in Watson's list above summarised. Although apparently
communicated, at least in substance, to both Gibson and Watson.