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THE ESSEX NATURALIST.
Your Council has appointed a committee, composed of Miss G. Lister,
Miss E. Prince, Mr. R. Paulson and Mr. P. Thompson, to draw up a revised
list of the plants of the Epping Forest district, and invites the active co-
operation of Members in securing accurate records of the rarer plants.
The President, Mr. Robert Paulson, resigns the chair after three years'
service, and your Council, in welcoming his successor, desires to record
its grateful thanks to Mr. Paulson for his constant interest in, and work
for, the Club and his unfailing courtesy in the chair.
Lastly, your Council desires to express its thanks to the Officers of the
Club and to the many private members who have, by gifts or personal service,
helped on the work of the Club during the past year.
A Bird Sanctuary in the Lea Valley. All nature-lovers will rejoice
to hear that, as the outcome of representations made by the Essex Field
Club and kindred societies, the Metropolitan Water Board has decided to
abandon the practice of allowing wild-fowl to be shot on its Reservoirs in
the Lea Valley. The President and Hon. Secretary of the Club attended
as members of a deputation before a Committee of the Board on July 4th
last to urge this step, with the above happy result. Editor,
More Annotations by Edward Forster.—An interesting recent
addition to the Stratford Museum Library is a copy of Turner and Dillwyns'
Botanist's Guide through England and Wales, 1805, in 2 vols., 8vo, which has
just been acquired through the trade.
The volumes in question were until lately in the library of the late Prof.
G. S. Boulger, and they belonged originally to our celebrated Essex botanist,
Edward Forster, junr., whose autograph appears on the flyleaf to each
volume ; the books were presentation-copies to Forster from the authors,
to whom he had given help in the compilation of the work. Later, the
volumes became the property of William and Caroline Pamplin, the former's
autograph also occurring on the flyleaf in each case.
Edward Forster has followed his usual custom of having the books
interleaved with blank sheets throughout; he has inserted in MS. numerous
personal records of the various plants listed, and has also frequently
elaborated his own records as printed by the authors in the volumes.
Percy Thompson,
An Eighteenth Century Measurement of the Fairlop Oak.—" In
the morning [of 19th April 1748] I went with Mr. Warner and some English
gentlemen to the places which lay immediately to the east of Woodford
. . . Mr. Warner went out . . . especially to show us an oak
tree, which he said was one of the thickest oaks he had seen in England.
We measured the periphery of the trunk, four feet above the ground, when
we found that this oak was 30 feet round ! The oak stood in
Barking parish, and a fair used formerly to be held under it. Some of the
branches were now withered."
Peter Kalm : "Resa til Norra America," I. 1753.