274 THE ESSEX NATURALIST.
"June 1784": it contains grasses, sedges, mosses, liverworts,
lichens, freshwater algae and fungi. Forster wrote the following
letter to W. Borrer in 1843 (when he was in his 78th year).
"Having, as I conceive, ample materials for a Flora of Essex,
"I have long thought of publishing one, and have actually begun
"to arrange it. I shall be most happy to avail myself of your
"assistance, and of that of any other Essex botanist. My first
"plan was to have printed only a second edition of Warner's
"Plantae Woodfordienses but having enough for a county Flora,
"I have thought it best to extend it to all the known plants of
"Essex; when I say enough, I must not be understood to
''imagine I have found all the rare plants, and therefore shall
"stand in need of much assistance, and all communications from
"botanists in other parts of the county will be most acceptable.
"I am the weakest in Algae, only visiting the coast occasionally.
"I see no reason why we should not have all the Yarmouth
"rarieties."
I should surmise that there were six books of this type and
that they were begun with the idea of supplementing Warner's
list, for the records are all local. Whether 1784 was the date
of all the note books of this type or not it is obvious that at the
age of nineteen at latest he had begun lists of local plants and
to these he added until his death in 1849 from an attack of
cholera, caught at a Refuge for the Destitute in which he was
interested.
At his death his herbarium and library were sold. There is
a catalogue of the sale annotated by W. Pamplin, in the
Department of Botany, British Museum. Robert Brown
acquired the herbarium for five guineas and it formed the nucleus
of the British Herbarium : from that time there has been a
separate British collection in each of the plant groups.
The following list of Essex Fungi is given as it appears in
Edward Forster's note books. The modern name, where
different, is added in square brackets. Specimens in Forster's
herbarium are marked by a * and additional information from
the labels is inserted in ordinary round brackets. Where
specimens are available the name is given from these : where
no specimens have been found the synonym has been traced
from the books known to be in Forster's library.