268
ON A THIRD ANNOTATED COPY OF RICHARD
WARNER'S "PLANTAE WOODFORDIENSES."
BY PERCY THOMPSON, F.L.S.
[Read 27th October, 1913.]
I HAVE on previous occasions1 described two interleaved
and annotated copies of Warner's Plantae Woodfordienses
which came to my notice, and which proved to have been the
work and property of, respectively, Benjamin Meggot Forster
and Edward Forster, of Walthamstow, two of three brothers
all of whom were interested, some century or more ago, in the
local flora of the Epping Forest district.
A third annotated copy of Warner's book has since come
into my hands, and this I propose to discuss with a view to de-
termining the authorship of the notes written in manuscript
on the interleaved blank pages.
The volume was noticed by me on the shelves of the valuable
Library of the Saffron Walden Literary and Scientific Institution
during the visit paid by the Club to that town at Easter, 1922 ; a
cursory inspection suggested to me that a connection of the volume
with the Forsters of Walthamstow was probable : and accordingly
I asked and obtained permission to borrow the book and to
investigate its history.
It is crown octavo, bound in whole buff leather, with tooled
panels on sides and raised bands on back. The title on a black
name-band (apparently not original) is anglicised into
WARNER'S PLANTS OF WOODFORD, while the original
red date-band is lettered "LOND. 1771."
The volume contains the "Appendix," the "Index of the
English Names," and the "Errata," but not the "Index of
the Latin Names" nor the "Additions" of 1784 ; it is, there-
fore, certainly the original edition of 1771, as indicated by the
date on the binding.
The interleaved blank pages of handmade paper bear occa-
sional fragments of a water mark which appears to be capable
of reconstruction into a conventional fleur-de-lys bound by a
triple band : the printed pages show no water mark.
1 Essex Naturalist, xix., p. 72 et seq.; ibid., p. 221 et seq.