406
NOTES AND QUERIES. [12 s. n. NOV. is, me.
correspondents is here shown to have been
William Sherrard, the founder of the Chair of
Botany at Oxford University. At the same
time I could not help regretting that, if the
Bodleian in its, comparatively speaking,
financial straits, could afford to make this
patriotic purchase, our own British Museum
authorities should not have seen their way
to secure it for the nation, so that it might
have found its place there amongst the
Sloane MSS.,and thereby have enriched that
collection by some fifty fetters from the great
physician and collector which it contained.
In May, 1 699, Uvedale speaks of seventeen members of his household having had the mallpox within the compass of less than three months, eleven of them, including six of his own children, being down together- He seems, however, to have been as success, ful in their treatment as he was in warding off the plague from his school, for he reports them then as " all safe and well." In the same letter he speaks of his northern (?) plants being soon gone, and of their having given him only a "ghost visitt." In 1718 he refers to his hortus siccus, and speaks of plants in which his collection is weak or -deficient. In his last letter in the collection of Dec. 12, 1721 when in his 80th year, he speaks pathetically of his having been for the first time in his life seriously attacked by gout supervening on other trouble, and appeals to his friend for directions in " regiment or pharmacie." He complains that in consequence his garden is being neg- lected, as the weather has prevented him from going into it for some time ; his chief remaining pleasure, apparently, then con- sisting in turning over the leaves of his hortus siccus. He also speaks of a visit recently paid him by William Sherrard, the first Professor of Botany at Oxford, another of Richardson's correspondents. Sherrard himself, in writing to Richardson in November, 1719, speaks of having recently seen his friend " Dr. Uvedale, who has got over an ugly fevour " ; but this, apparently, did not prevent them from " daily drinking your health."
The body of Uvedale' s letters would seem to be in the ordinary handwriting of the period, with the clear copperplate signature,
' Rob Uvedale " embellished somewhat "with flourishes at the end of each ; his usual conclusion being the conventional
" your obliged humble servant," softened in
one or two instances into " affectionate liumble servant." Nearly all the letters
appear to have been written from " Enfeild," had evidently been closed by seals in
red wax bearing the Uvedale arms Argent,
a cross moline gules fragments of which
still remain.
I agree with Mr. Boulger in his conclusion that, if we had no other knowledge of its collector, his herbarium alone would be sufficient to vindicate Uvedale from Dawson Turner's description of him as " more of a florist than a botanist."*
And I would like, further, to believe with him that not only these species (genus Uvedalia of Petiver), but also the cedar that he planted and the herbarium that he col- lected, may for centuries to come keep alive the memory of Robert Uvedale.
J. S. UDAL, F.S.A.
(To be continued.)
BIBLIOGRAPHY OF HISTORIES OF
IRISH COUNTIES AND TOWNS.
(See US. xi. 103, 183, 315 ; xii. 24, 276, 375 ; 12 S. i. 422 ; ii. 22, 141, 246, 286.)
PART XII. T.
TAGHMON.
History of Wexford, Town and Countj. Vol. V. Chapter on Taghmon. By Philip H. Hore, M.B.I.A. London, 1900-11.
TALLAGHT.
Victory of Tallaght Hill. Dublin, 1867. History and Antiquities of Tallaght. By W. D.
Handcock. Dublin, 1877 and 1899. (Includes
data on villages in district.)
TAMLACHT.
Two Ulster Parishes, Kilrea and Tamlacht : a Sketch of their History, with an Account of Boveedy Congregation. By J. W. Kernohan, M.A. Presbyterian Historical Society, Cole- raine, 1912.
TANEY.
The Parish of Taney : a History of Dundrurn , co. Dublin, and its Neighbourhood. By Francis Ellington Ball and Everard Hamilton. Dublin, 1895.
TABA.
On the History and Antiquities of Tara Hill. By George Petrie, M.B.I.A. Vol. XVIII. Pro- ceedings Royal Irish Academy, Dublin, 1839. (A learned and exhaustive treatise on the Hill of Tara, the chief seat of the Irish monarchs, from the earliest dawn of their history to the middle of the sixth century.)
A Short Description of the Hill of Tara. Dublin (privately printed), 1879.
Tara, Pagan and Christian. By Archbishop Healy. Catholic Truth Society, Dublin, 1915.
See Meath.
- See 'Extracts from Richardson Correspond-
ence,' edited by Dawson Turner (1835), p. 15.
