A Retrospect of Suffolk Naturalists

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A RETROSPECT OF SUFFOLK NATURALISTS.

A RETROSPECT OF SUFFOLK NATURALISTS. BY CLAUDE MORLEY,

F.E.S., F.G.S., F.Z.S.

AN Object of our Society is " the publication of permanent Record, in reasoned sequence, respecting the comparative past rarity of Animals and Plants of Suffolk," one method of which is surely to discover what our predecessors have already achieved. This is a subject of no small local interest, and the sooner lt be pursued the easier of elaboration it will be found. With us have been Naturalists from prehistoric times: what crop-raiser is not a Botanist, or stock-breeder a Zoologist ? Throughout last Century two sorts of Naturalistsflourishedcoevally : the workingman-collector and the educated Student. Everyone has heard of " Robinson Crusoe " Davis, who—naturally, for an adequate quid pro quo—handed over all sorts offlotsama jetsam garnered from Kessingland shore to the wandering Palseontologist and curioso; and the Ipswich " fly-catchers" Jimmy Parsons who died in 1890, Fluter Lee of Rope Walk who died in 1895, Harry Eaton's father of Curriers Lane, cordwainer Teddy Boar of Tanners Lane (who took forty gross of Arctia villica larvse one Sundav !) ; Tim Last of The Entomologist, 1866; Harry Mee of Birds Gardens; and (Substitute, 1857) the professional King " whose word no man relies on." All these made a good thing out of the London dealers. Among the numerous other sort shall be mentioned only the Botanist, rector Ashfield of Burgate in 1830 (Oakley Hill's 1932 Echoes of Burgate), Prof. Henslow of Hitcham, the Ven. William Kirby of Barham ; and such quaint characters as rector Henry Rowe of Ringshall, who in 1810 wrote his amusing ' Fables in Verse ' :— " In thought antique and seif debate, the hoary Virtuoso sate . . . Before him, in due order, spread the tinsel'd remnants of the dead : His fossils, roman coins and rings, his beads and trumpery of kings, His bracelets,fibulas. . . "* _

But here I will restrict the Retrospect to those Naturalists hguring in a single periodical. . No sooner had the " Bury and West Suffolk Archaeological Institute" come into being, during March 1848, than it was assailed by Naturalists concerning whose gestes we will exclusively concern ourselves. So influential did they become that, ere the 1853 publication of the Institute'sfirstvolume of Proceedings its title had been extended to include the suffix " and Natural History . . . embracing every department of Natural History '

»Nature and Art, Biology and Archseology, run on remarkably parallel lines through our lives, converging only in the case of harly Man. ine above " verse " may well have given rise to the dictum of William bmith, F R S , the father of British conchology :—" Orgamc fossils are to the Naturalist as coins to the Antiquary. They are the antiquities ot the earth and very distinctly show its gradual regulär formation, with the various changes of inhabitants " (Stratigraphical System of Organized Fossils ; London, 1817).


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