WARNER'S "PLANTAE WOODFORDIENSES." 273
given in the annotations are reproduced in Thomas Furly For-
ster's printed list of 1784 without a single exception, the habi-
tats given are identical, and the descriptions of the several plants
are similarly, indeed almost identically, worded.
This can scarcely be mere coincidence. There can be no
reasonable doubt that the "Additions" published in 1784 are
copied, with a few emendations, from these manuscript notes.
Six plants, not mentioned in the annotations, appear in the
printed list of 1784, viz. :—Chara vulgaris, Chenopodium viride,
Mentha gentilis, Salix triandria, Salix helix and Salix vitellina ;
we may infer that in the interval between 1778 (the presumed
date of the notes) and 1784, additional records were made and
the difficult genus Salix was being tackled by the recorder.
This almost perfect identity implies that the annotated vol-
ume now described contains Thomas Furly Forster's own manu-
script records of his additions to Warner's list of plants, which
afterwards, in 1784, he printed under the title of "Additions to
Warner's Plantae Woodfordienses."
A comparison of the handwriting of the MS. notes with the
known calligraphy of Edward and Benjamin Forster, while
presenting many resemblances (as might be expected in
the case of three brothers, all of about an age and who were
probably educated together) yet exhibits sufficient variations
to justify the conclusion that it is distinct from either; and
actual comparison of the manuscript with letters written by
Thomas Furly Forster, in the possession of the Linnean Society
(which I have had the privilege of inspecting by favour of
Dr. B. Daydon Jackson), and also with his signature to the register
of St. Mary's Church, Walthamstow, on the occasion of his
marriage, goes to prove that these manuscript annotations
were in fact written by Thomas Furly Forster himself. The
earliest dated letter of Thomas Furly Forster's which the Linnean
Society possesses is one addressed to "Dr. Smith at Mr. Smith's
Norwich," dated 28 June, 1790.2 This letter is 12 years later
than the date of the MS. annotations and, bearing this interval
of time in mind, I can have no hesitation in regarding the
latter as being in the same handwriting. When the annotations
were written T. F. Forster was only 17 years old, and at this
age one's handwriting is scarcely fixed, as is indeed evident from
2 This I am permitted by the Council of the Society to reproduce in facsimile.