ESSEX AND THE EARLY BOTANISTS. 449
day, should go to Dunmow and have a gamon of Bacon. But the
Party was to swear to the truth of it, kneeling upon two hard-
pointed stones set in the Priory Churchyard for that purpose,
before the Prior and Convent and the whole Town.' But this, as
old Camden says, by the way. In the woods thereabouts several
interesting plants were to be found. Gerarde noticed two species
of orchids, the common tway-blade, and what he calls the 'wilde
white Hellebor' or helleborine. He also met with the rare
liquorice vetch, which he terms the liquorice hatchet fetch,
'the leaves whereof hath the taste of Liquorice root;' and this,
he adds, he also found in other parts of Essex, as 'in the townes
called Clare and Henningham.' A few years later, the distin-
guished botanist, Thomas Johnson, who published an enlarged
edition of Gerarde's Herbal, found this plant at Purfleet, 'about
the foot of the hill whereon the winde-mill stands.'
But a greater name than that of Gerarde is associated with
the flora of the county. We refer to the illustrious John Ray,
the foremost naturalist of his age, and the founder of modern
scientific botany. He was born at Black Notley, near Braintree,
some twelve years after the death of Gerarde. The entry of his
baptism may still be made out in the church register, stained
brown with age, and runs in almost illegible writing :—'John son
of Roger and Eliz. Wray bapt. June 29,1628.' In later life John
Kay (as he came afterwards to spell his name) returned to his
native village and built himself a house 'on Dewlands,' where he
died in the year 1705. A melancholy interest attaches to this
house on Dewlands, which was standing only last summer, when
the writer visited it, in almost exactly the same condition as when
Ray lived and died there. During the afternoon of Wednesday,
September 19 (1900), it was swiftly and totally destroyed by
fire. Its disappearance will be deeply regretted by all botanists.
Black Notley has been well called the Mecca of Essex naturalists,
and now its main object of interest is gone. Ray's stately tomb,
a pyramidal monument some ten feet in height and bearing a
lengthy Latin inscription, may still be visited in the churchyard,
but the old house in which the great naturalist lived for five-and-
twenty years is now only a memory. There was nothing in its
outward appearance specially to distinguish it from other farm-
houses in the neighbourhood. A long, low, narrow building,
made of lath and plaster set in oaken frames, the great red brick
chimney-stack standing against the south wall was the chief
indication of its age. The old seventeenth-century lattice-
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