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HISTORY OF LICHENOLOGY
the species of plants in alphabetical order, but as the work was not critical
it fell into disuse, being superseded by John Ray's Catalogus and Synopsis.
To Robert Plot 1 we owe the earliest record of Cladonia cocci/era which had
hitherto escaped notice; it was described and figured as a new and rare
Plot was the first Gustos
plant in the Natural History of Staffordshire^.
of Ashmole's Museum in Oxford and he was also the first to prepare
a County Natural History.
The greatest advance during this first period was made by Robert
Morison 2
, a Scotsman from Aberdeen. He studied medicine at Angers in
France, superintended the Duke of Orleans' garden at Blois, and finally,
after his return to this country in 1669, became Keeper of the botanic
garden at Oxford. In the third volume of his great work 2 on Oxford
plants, which was not issued till after his death, the lichens are put in
a separate group "Musco-fungus" and classified with some other plants
under "Plantae Heteroclitae." The publication of the volume projects into
the next historical period.
Long before this date John Ray had begun to study and publish books
on Botany. His Catalogue of English Plants* is considered to have commenced
a new era in the study of the science. The Catalogue was followed
and in
by the History of Plants*, and later by a Synopsis of British Plants 5
all of these books lichens find a place. Two editions of the Synopsis
appeared during Ray's lifetime, and to the second there is added an
Appendix contributed by Samuel Doody which is entirely devoted to
Cryptogamic plants, including not a few lichens still called "Mosses"
discovered for the first time. Doody, himself an apothecary, took charge
of the garden of the Apothecaries' Society at Chelsea, but his chief interest
was Cryptogamic Botany, a branch of the subject but little regarded before
his day. Pulteney wrote of him as the "Dillenius of his time."
Among Doody's associates were the Rev. Adam Buddie, James Petiver
and William Sherard. Buddie was primarily a collector and his herbarium
is incorporated in the Sloane Herbarium at the British Museum. It contains
lichens from all parts of the world, many of them contributed by Doody,
Sherard and Petiver. Only a few of them bear British localities : several are
from Hampstead where Buddie had a church.
The Society of Apothecaries had been founded in 1617 and the mem-
bers acquired land on the river-front at Chelsea, which was extended later
and made into a Physick Garden. James Petiver 6 was one of the first
Demonstrators of Plants to the Society in connection with the 'garden, and
one of his duties was to conduct the annual herborizing tours of the
apprentices in search of plants. He thus collected a large herbarium on
the annual excursions, as well as on shorter visits to the more immediate
1 Plot 1686.
* Morison 1699.
3
Ray 1670.
4
Ray 1686.
5
Ray 1690.
,
6 Petiver 1695.