TRANSACTIONS ITER by
ROBERT
LITORALE GATHORNE-HARDY
THE manuscript from which the following work has been printed was discovered by Mr. W. Ketton-Cremer in a collection of papers relating to a family called Sutton. Knowing my associations with the county and my interest in botany, he made me a present of it,—a piece of magnanimity almost unmatched among people who collect such things. I feit that the work remained morally his, and in acknowledging the kindness of the original gift, I must thank him for giving his approval to the project of publishing it. I must also acknowledge gratefully help and information given to me by Miss J. C. N. Willis and Mr. H. R. Lingwood. The manuscript is neatly written on twenty-four small octavo sized leaves. On the front wrapper is written, in elegant lettering, " Orford ". Below is added in pencil, " A weeks Tour in Suffolk, August 1787, by Dr. Sutton and Mr. Kirby ; " underneath is written, also in pencil, " Keep this C. S. ". This pencil writing would seem to be a later addition. The work is written on one side of each leaf ; sometimes there are notes on the opposite page, and these I have put within brackets in the text. I have retained the writer's abbreviations for thus, it seemed to me, could best be preserved the feel and the freshness of the charmingly though not unlearnedly adolescent narrative. The two young botanists can be fairly confidently identified. The author must be a Rev. Charles Sutton, a fellow of St. John's College, Cambridge, who became a D.D. He married a sister of William Kirby. Records by a Rev. C. Sutton are acknowledged by Hind in his Flora of Suffolk, and this must be the same man. William Kirby came of a Suffolk family distinguished in things of the mind. His grand-father, John Kirby, published in 1735 a learned topographical work on Suifolk; his uncle Joshua Kirby was an erudite topographical artist, a friend of Hogarth and Gainsborough, and an architect. He himself was an excellent botanist, but more important in entomology,—a science to which he was drawn by the accidental finding of a beautiful insect. He became a member of the Linnean Society and later F.R.S. His