306
THE ESSEX NATURALIST.
common by Watson in the New Botanist's Guide ; as also of
the more common ones which are wanting in the district examined.
"My very imperfect knowledge of the names of the lanes,
farm-houses and other localities, has forced me to use much cir-
cumlocution in describing stations. To diminish this I have
frequently coined names for remarkable localities, or used them
on imperfect information. These names I have explained below ;
but I am afraid that there will still be much obscurity in this
respect. W. H. Coleman."
From the language of this preface it was obviously written
with a view to publication ; and, as Watson speaks of the list
he saw as undated, it was not then in its present form. The
lists of rarer species and of absentees alluded to, do not appear
to have been added, though there is a complete "Index of Genera"
at the close of the manuscript.
Referring as it does to an area intermediate between that
dealt with by Dale in his edition of Taylor's History of Harwich
and that in which Joseph Andrews's Sudbury herbarium, des-
cribed by me in the Journal of Botany (1918, pp. 294, et seq.), was
collected, this Florula is of great local interest. Gibson has
very seldom transcribed its stations (which are all in his District 8)
at all fully ; but that the manuscript remained some time in
its writer's possession is shown by his pencilled correction of
Oenanthe Phellandrium and Ae. Pimpinelloides to Ae. fluviatilis
and Ae. Lachenalii, whereas it was not until 1844 that he first
described Ae. fluviatilis in the Annals of Natural History (vol.
xiii. p. 188). As in several places "Mr. Hurlock's" has been
altered in pencil, possibly in another hand, to "the Lecturer's,"
it looks as if the manuscript may have been used as the basis
for a lecture by this person.
As to the writer of the Florula, William Higgins Coleman was
born apparently in 1816, and was associated, whilst still an
undergraduate at St. John's College, Cambridge, with J. W.
Colenso, afterwards Bishop of Natal, in the well-known Examples
in Arithmetic and Algebra, published at Cambridge in 1834.
He graduated B.A. in 1836, proceeding M.A. in 1838. Judging
from the introduction to his Flora of Dedham, he was at East
Grinstead for most of 1836, possibly in a scholastic post; at
Dedham Grammar School during 1837 ; and at the junior school
of Christ's Hospital, at Hertford, from 1838 to 1847. From his