304
THE ESSEX NATURALIST.
this little book is of considerable interest, and Mr. Foord-Kelsey
has determined to present it to the Botanical Department of the
British Museum. Before doing so, however, he has kindly
permitted me to examine it, and to exhibit it at a meeting of the
Essex Field Club.
The manuscript is very neatly written on one side (save for
occasional additions) of 41 octavo pages, bound in cloth with
about a dozen blank pages at the end, and lettered on a label
outside "Flora of Dedham." Before the actual Flora, which
is arranged according to the Natural System under Dicotyledones,
Monocotyledones and "Acotyledones or Acrogensae" there are
some three pages of introduction, which, with the title-page, I
will transcribe as illustrating the careful methods of the
author :—
"A Catalogue of Plants growing wild in the basin of the
Stour, in the Counties of Essex and Suffolk, in the neighbourhood
of Dedham, Essex. From observations made in the year 1837,
by W. H. Coleman, B.A., of St. John's College, Cambridge, late
Assistant Master of Dedham School. Hertford, mdcccxxxviii.
"The observations recorded in the following Catalogue
were made during a residence at Dedham in the year 1837. The
greater part of the stations assigned are in the Basin of the
Stour, i.e., in the district whose drainage is towards that river
or its tributaries. It was intended to have confined the Catalogue
to the plants found within this space ; but the desire of including
several plants of some rarity (Anthemis nobilis, Inula pulicaria
and Mentha Pulegium) has, I believe, led me a little beyond
the summit level between the Stour and Coin ; and having
thus transgressed, I have felt less compunction in inserting
some outlying stations of other rare species, which do occur in
the basin of the Stour. No observations have been made west-
ward of Stoke-by-Nayland church, or eastward of Wrab Ness.
"The river Stour appears to be the boundary between
two different geological formations. That on the South, or Essex
side, is a heavy retentive clay ; being, I believe, the Blue or
London Clay : while to the North the subsoil is of a more loamy
character, belonging to the plastic clay formation : white bricks
are made of this clay at Higham. Both of these strata are often
covered to a considerable depth by beds of gravel, as at the
Gun Hill, &c. In the North East quarter, in the neighbour-