Martin Lister and Lincolnshire natural history : Presidential address to the Lincolnshire Naturalists' Union, 1927 / [H.W. Kew].

  • Harry Wallis Kew
Date:
[1927]
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: Martin Lister and Lincolnshire natural history : Presidential address to the Lincolnshire Naturalists' Union, 1927 / [H.W. Kew]. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    17/20 page 15
    » * From such considerations he passed to the Tables, and therein mentioned Santon [Blown-sand], Bolingbroke [Kimeridge- clay], and other localities in this county. (ii) Birch’s ‘ History of the Royal Society’, 1757, iv. 268, 387. At meetings of the Society, 1684-5, Dr. Lister observed (1) that ‘ as to seeing in the night ’, King Charles I had a man from Louth, who served as a night guide to the Army, and could read a letter in the darkest night; and (2) that Congers were often cast up dead in Lincolnshire, seldom seen alive, as being a high-sea fish, and therefore little eaten. (iii) ‘Johannes Goedartius de Insectis. In Methodum redactus, cum notularum additione. Opera M. Lister’, 1685. With this work Lister published four unfinished plates of English Beetles, &c., ‘tabulae mutae’, which had evidently been intended to illustrate his Beetle MS already quoted. Some of the Beetles, as we saw, had been collected in this county. (iv) ‘ F. Willughbeii de Historia Piscium libri quatuor’, 1686 (‘ Mr. Ray’s Book of Fishes’). On Lister’s authority Ray records the occurrence of ‘ Rutilus latior vel Rubellio fluvia- tilis’ [the Rudd] in Holderness and not far from Lincoln, in ponds. (v) ‘ Part of two Letters wrote to Oxford by Dr. Martin Lister concerning several Plants that may be usefully Culti¬ vated ’ (Phil. Trans., 1697, p. 412). By some tillage, he thought, even harsh plants might be brought to kinder food: ‘ the same Asparagus which we eat, grows wild in the Marshes of Lincolnshire, very fair, and not to be distinguished by the Eye from that in our Gardens, but is intolerable bitter ; which Garden Culture alone has civilized, and made pleasant’. Others might serve as substitutes of Hemp and Flax; e.g. ‘ Corona frat rum, of the Thistle kind ’ [Cnicus eriopliorus] which ‘ naturally grows ’ on the dry Wolds and high pastures of Yorkshire and Lincolnshire and in other barren soils. [The Herball of Gerarde, 1597, and of Johnson, 1633, had already recorded Asparagus for marish grounds in this county. Lister had evidently consulted Johnson for both plants].
    digitised image 1
    digitised image 2
    digitised image 3