Natural History and Local History in Late Victorian and Edwardian England: The Contribution of the Victoria County History

C Cambridge University Press 2011 Rural History (2011) 22, 1, 59–87.  doi:10.1017/S0956793310000142 59 Natural History and Local History in Late Vi...
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C Cambridge University Press 2011 Rural History (2011) 22, 1, 59–87.  doi:10.1017/S0956793310000142

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Natural History and Local History in Late Victorian and Edwardian England: The Contribution of the Victoria County History JOHN BECKETT AND CHARLES WATKINS School of History, University of Nottingham, University Park, Nottingham, NG7 2RD, UK School of Geography, University of Nottingham, University Park, Nottingham, NG7 2RD, UK [email protected]; [email protected]

Abstract In 1899 the Victoria County History (VCH) was established as a ‘National Survey’ of England which was intended to show the present day condition of the country and trace the ‘domestic history’ of all English counties to the ‘earliest times’. Natural history was seen as a key component to be included in the first volume for every county. In this paper we examine the reasons for the prominence given to natural history and demonstrate how the expert knowledge of natural historians was marshalled and edited. We use the contrasting counties of Herefordshire and Nottinghamshire to examine key intellectual debates about the role of the amateur and the expert and concern about nomenclature, classification and the state of knowledge about different groups of species. We emphasize the importance of the geography of the natural history and the way in which the VCH charted concerns about species loss and extinction. We examine the reasons why the VCH later abandoned natural history and finally we assess the value of its published output for modern historical geographers, historical ecologists and environmental historians.

The Reverend Thomas Stebbing, an enthusiastic and early exponent of Darwinism and a leading natural historian of crustaceans, wrote with horror in 1906 that a recent history of Nottinghamshire ‘could claim to discuss its flora and fauna, while ignoring the whole zoology of invertebrate animals’. How could it be, he asked, that ‘spiders and flies, ants and grasshoppers, are treated as mere material for fables, and the great armies of beetles and bees and butterflies are left out of account, as though they had no essential part in the life and economy of the globe, and contributed nothing to the beauty and the marvel of man’s surroundings?’1 Stebbing’s comments appeared in the first volume of the Victoria County History for Nottinghamshire, and in this paper we examine the remarkable natural histories contained in the first volume of each Victoria County History ‘set’ published before the First World War. Founded in 1899, and unique in Europe, the Victoria County History was planned initially as a 160-volume series divided into county ‘sets’, usually containing four

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John Beckett and Charles Watkins Table 1 Victoria County History Volume Ones which include natural history or equivalent 1900 1 Hampshire 1901 3 Cumberland, Norfolk, Worcestershire 1902 3 Hertfordshire, Northamptonshire, Surrey 1903 1 Essex 1904 2 Bedfordshire, Warwickshire 1905 4 Buckinghamshire, Derbyshire, Durham, Sussex 1906 6 Berkshire, Devon, Cornwall, Lancashire, Nottinghamshire, Somerset 1907 1 Yorkshire 1908 5 Herefordshire, Kent, Rutland, Shropshire, Staffordshire 1911 1 Suffolk 1926 1 Huntingdonshire 1938 1 Cambridgeshire 1939 1 Oxfordshire 1957 1 Wiltshire 1969 1 Middlesex 1987 1 Cheshire __ 33

volumes, two of general essays and two of topographical entries. The first volume covered everything up to Domesday Book, beginning with geology2 and natural history, and working through the prehistoric to the historic, from earthworks to archaeology. In this paper we ask why the Victoria County History was so committed to natural history in its early days and at what this says more generally about the relationship of local and natural history. We consider the association between local and national experts in the different fields of natural history, and we examine the extraordinary insight we can gain from both archival and published Victoria County History material into the world of the Edwardian naturalist. We use the contrasting counties of Herefordshire and Nottinghamshire to examine key intellectual debates about the role of the amateur and the expert; concern about nomenclature, classification and the state of knowledge; the crucial importance of the geography of the natural history; and a gathering apprehension concerning the extinction of species. Finally, we consider why the Victoria County History abandoned natural history and we assess the value of its published output for modern historical geographers, historical ecologists and environmental historians. We conclude that the Victoria County History not only made a substantial contribution to natural history, publishing something in the region of 1.4 million words on twenty-seven separate counties before the First World War (See Table 1), but provided a national and a consistent context which helped to develop knowledge of the natural world, rather than simply reflecting what was known in 1899.

County societies and natural history Until relatively recent times, the study of natural history was indistinguishable from other local studies such as antiquarian and archaeological investigation. Contemporaries

Natural History and Local History in Late Victorian and Edwardian England 61 saw no reason to draw a firm distinction between disciplines. Several early seventeenthcentury ‘local’ histories were referred to as ‘natural histories’, including Robert Plot’s studies of Staffordshire and Oxfordshire, and John Aubrey’s Wiltshire. Gilbert White’s study of Selborne, was titled ‘natural history’, but it included material on antiquities, while Sir Richard Colt Hoare, for his Modern Wiltshire series, commissioned George Maton to write on natural history, and this appeared in volume six. From the sixteenth century ‘county history’ was usually written topographically with an emphasis on place, the parish, within administrative boundaries, the hundred or wapentake. Often, but not invariably, these histories included sections on natural history. Richard Clutterbuck’s History and Antiquities of Hertfordshire included introductory sections on natural history, climate and plants.3 W. Bartlett’s edition of Thomas Wright’s Essex, published in 1851 included sections on geology, fossil organic remains and vegetable species;4 John Nichols’s Leicestershire included a catalogue of rare plants found in the Leicester, Loughborough and Charnwood region,5 and the third edition of Hutchinson’s Dorset, published in 1861, included sections on natural history, geology and flora.6 County archaeological and antiquarian societies set up during the nineteenth century often included natural history and architectural history in their remit whether or not the terms appeared in the organisation’s title. The Wiltshire Archaeological and Natural History Society was founded in 1853 at Devizes, and still exists under the same title today. The inaugural meeting of the society resolved that it should ‘cultivate and collect information on archaeology and Natural History in their various branches and form a Library and Museum illustrating the History, natural, civic and ecclesiastic of the County of Wilts’. Despite these grand designs, the society showed little interest in natural history because its concerns were primarily with archaeology; indeed, natural history seems to have been included in the title only because Somerset had adopted it, and so it was ‘considered advisable to adopt this course as being likely to increase the success of our institution’.7 The new society proceeded to divide up its queries between ‘parochial history, ancient buildings, monuments and antiquities, traditions and customs, idiom and dialect, the church, the churchyard, and questions on ornithology, entomology and geology’.8 The Somerset Archaeological and Natural History Society today calls itself ‘the Historical Society for the County of Somerset since 1849’, and notes on its website that it was one of ‘several such organisations established in the English shires during the 1840s [which] reflected the early Victorian flowering of interest in county history and archaeology, as well as the natural environment’.9 Nor are these links surprising, given the fervour for collecting in Victorian England, even if it was often the piling of fact upon fact, rather than anything more profound. Discovering a new species of beetle was enough to keep many a natural historian happy.10 The link between natural history and antiquarian and archaeological study was also found in religion: contemporaries still thought in terms of a partnership of natural and human history, and this attitude was encouraged because many of the founders of county societies were Anglican clergymen. Put another way, the phenomena of nature, and the events and remains of history, were both proof of the unfolding of a pre-ordained providential plan. History before man, or at least before man left records, was the history of nature.11

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Even as clergymen and gentry were coming together in these societies, scientific investigation of the sort encouraged by antiquaries was raising new questions about the evolution of the natural order beyond and outside the divine fiat. The study of natural history was also changing, partly because it was considered to be one of the two great subject areas into which all knowledge could be divided: natural history and natural philosophy. Natural philosophy eventually evolved into physics and chemistry, and natural history into the biological and geological sciences, but this was still some way off in 1899. Meanwhile the intellectual tradition of the nineteenth century continued to see natural history as primarily about collecting and classifying, just as members of county archaeological and antiquarian societies also collected artefacts, documents and other remains. Men like the Lincolnshire antiquary R.W. Goulding thought nothing of being documentary historians and field collectors at one and the same time. Goulding spent his career as librarian at Welbeck Abbey in Nottinghamshire, and like many intellectuals concerned with natural history as well as other scientific issues he did not have a dedicated scientific background.12 This widespread enthusiasm for practical natural history has been well documented in recent years.13 This intense interest in the collecting and classifying of flowering plants, ferns, insects, birds, fossils and shells, spanned divisions of both class and gender. David Elliston Allen, in his ground breaking social history, The Naturalist in Britain, showed how the rise of local societies and organisations, combined with the publication of floras and other guides to identification, allowed a rapid growth in interest in natural history such that ‘by the 1840s, in one field after another, the signs were multiplying of a distinct deepening in penetration. Comparatively suddenly, British natural history had become noticeably acuter in its enquiries and more ambitious in its organisational reach.’14 This great public interest was fuelled by many hundreds of popular and scientific publications dealing with diverse aspects of natural history.15 The circulation of natural history knowledge, ideas and specimens took place within established scientific organisations and more informal networks of friends and associates. Anne Secord has shown the importance of natural history correspondence networks in her study of botanists, entomologists and zoologists in north-west Britain, noting particularly how the network ‘was largely oral and, deriving its sense of community from artisanal values developed in the workplace, entirely male’.16 Reverend Octavius Pickard-Cambridge was typical. A country parson, he wrote numerous scientific papers on spiders, meteorology and general entomology, partly by maintaining ‘an unflagging correspondence with scientists all over the world. He was signed up as one of the natural history expert editors for the Victoria County History, and wrote the entries on spiders for twenty-two counties.17 Another group of enthusiasts was based around Sherwood forest in the mid nineteenth century. January Searle who ‘was acquainted with most of the naturalists and literati of the north of England’, described his friend John Trueman as ‘a first-rate entymologist [sic], who although a shoemaker by trade, corresponds with the first men and societies in the kingdom, and is known as a valuable entymological contributor to the cabinets of our national institutions’. Trueman: Told us of the haunts, nature, habits and metamorphosis, of the various insects and butterflies which peopled . . . the dark holes in the trees, the moss, grass, ferns, and foliage . . . On dark nights

Natural History and Local History in Late Victorian and Edwardian England 63 he goes out into the Forest with a pot of rum and honey, which he smears over the bark of the trees, to lure the insects he wishes to take. After waiting some time, he pulls a dark lanthern from his pocket, and throws the light full upon the tree, where he beholds his victims enjoying their death supper.18

Many of the insects, ferns, seaweeds, birds, mammals and flowering plans which were collected were carefully identified and classified and ended up either in private collections or displayed in one of the many natural history museums to be found throughout Britain, run both by municipal authorities and local and national learned societies.19 Popular interest in geology, in landscape, partly influenced by the Romantic movement, and in natural phenomena more generally, led to the formation of local scientific societies, and a growing interest in collecting, itself part of a wider associational movement dating from at least the 1780s.20 A survey of 1873 listed 169 local scientific societies in Great Britain and Ireland, of which 104 were field clubs, mostly formed since 1850. They included the Penzance Natural History and Antiquarian Society (1839), the Eastbourne Natural History and Archaeology Society (1867), the Bath Natural History and Antiquarian Field Club (1868), and the Hampshire Field Club (1885). Each member of the Hampshire club was expected to have an interest in an aspect of natural history or antiquities. It is not going too far to suggest that natural history reached a sort of cult status between the 1820s and 1870s. By the end of the nineteenth century nearly 50,000 people were members of natural history societies. For many, if not all, of these people, there was no recognised contradiction between combining natural history and archaeology with collecting and cataloguing finds, as well as undertaking excursions.21 In addition, there was the growing influence of Darwinism in the 1870s and 1880s, and with it the idea that evolutionary theory needed to be reconciled to Christian doctrine, something which became easier when Archbishop Temple, an acknowledged Darwinian, became Archbishop of Canterbury in 1896.22 Gradually some order was introduced, with a rationalisation in the number of societies, particularly through mergers, and as a result also of the professionalisation of science teaching in the wake of the 1870 Education Act. The emphasis shifted from collecting to identifying types, partly through practical work in laboratories, while the growing interest in conserving nature, expressed through the work of the Commons Protection League, the Society for the Protection of Birds, now the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds, and the National Trust all helped to emphasise the importance of understanding the natural world. It was against this background that the Victoria County History was launched in 1899 as a ‘National Survey’ of England ‘at the commencement of the Twentieth Century’, designed to show ‘the condition of the country at the present day, and tracing the domestic history of the English Counties back to the earliest times’. The original framework for each county envisaged a largely chronological account covering a range of topics which included the four key concerns of the county societies: natural history, including geology, flora and fauna; archaeology in the form of pre-historic, Roman and Anglo-Saxon remains; architecture, through detailed descriptions of churches and important houses; and local history in the form of a series of essays on each county’s ecclesiastical, social and economic, political and educational history, together with its sporting interests. These essays, according to H. Arthur Doubleday, general editor 1899 to 1904, were designed to

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‘bring into prominence the main characteristics of every phase of county life’. Each set was also to include topographical entries on a place by place basis reflecting the style of the older county histories, and providing ‘such local details as go to the making of parish histories’.23 The agenda quickly became avowedly Darwinian. The Times noted that ‘the History of each county will open with its geology, pass on to its palaeontology, and so through the ascending scale of the floral and animal kingdoms until prehistoric man is reached’.24 A report drawn up in 1903 distinguished clearly between palaeontology, geology and flora and fauna, appointing separate editors for each section, and the emphasis on origins was reflected in the membership of the Advisory Council established to oversee the Victoria County History. It included the presidents of the Royal Society, the Linnean Society and the Zoological Society, as well as the Director of the British Museum.25 Of course, behind this also lay commercial considerations. The Victoria County History was funded by Archibald Constable and Company, the London publishing firm, and they certainly saw the market for the books among the country landowners. The evidence of early subscriber lists suggests that this supposition was correct, and the inclusion of natural history, as well as sport, and particularly hunting, shooting and fishing, was probably designed with the target auddience in mind. The Haddon House series on country sports published by Dent, and the Country Life Library of Sport, were both linked to the foundation of Country Life in 1897. The Victoria County History was aware of the need to appeal to the landed establishment, as well as to those who wished to join them by carrying their new money into county society. The desire for a formal link to the National Trust reflects similar considerations.26

Amateur and professional experts Given this context, the Victoria County History emphasis on natural history makes good sense, and an early decision was taken to employ specialists to undertake the work. This raises questions about the criteria that were used to select the experts and the methods taken to ensure that the information collected was consistent and accurate. A much travelled naturalist, Aubyn Trevor-Battye (1855–1922), was brought in to oversee natural history. Known for his interests in ornithology, and flora and fauna, Trevor-Battye was elected a fellow of the Royal Geographical Society in November 1896. In the spring of 1899 he was invited to take charge of the Victoria County History’s natural history work, which was to include geology, flora and fauna. Trevor-Battye was to be paid ten pounds for each county entry that he edited, and one pound per thousand words for any text he contributed himself. Doubleday was anticipating around one hundred pages.of around five hundred words each, per county, which amounted to around two million words in total.27 Trevor-Battye was active in searching out and signing up expert contributors to fill the gaps which he was unable to cover himself, but having started the ball rolling he seems to have dropped out of the project, and by 1903 there was no overall editor for natural history.28 Instead, a number of separate section editors had been appointed for geology (Clement Reid, Horace R Woodward), palaeontology (Richard Lydekker), and flora and

Natural History and Local History in Late Victorian and Edwardian England 65 fauna (G. A. Boulenger, F. O. Pickard-Cambridge, H. N. Dixon, G. C. Druce, Walter Garstang, Herbert Goss, R. I. Pocock, Reverend T. R. R. Stebbing, B. B. Woodward and others).29 Lydekker, a geologist and palaeontologist of long standing reputation on the staff of the Natural History Museum, was signed up by Trevor-Battye in summer 1900 to write the palaeontology section for all forty counties. His attitude towards the work is clear from his letter of acceptance: I presume the palaeontology includes only fossil mammals, birds, reptiles and fish, and excludes Invertebrates (which would be endless). If this is so, I think I can undertake what you require. In a county like Hants, which has a large fauna of fossil reptiles, I should require 4 pages to make it readable. But even if the publishers reduce this number to 3 pp. I should ask £2.2s for the contribution. Also a similar amount for other counties with a large fauna. In the case of counties like Hertfordshire, where vertebrate fossils are scarce, a couple of pp. would probably suffice. A more usual scale of pay is £2 2s 0d per 1000 words, but in the above conditions (that is a minimum fee of £2 2s for the counties with large fauna) and the further proviso that payment is to be made within a month of having the proofs for press, I am willing to undertake the task. If you let me know your assent to these terms forthwith I can let you have the Hampshire MS early next week. The Northamptonshire as soon after as you like.

Other national experts were also signed up for the whole series. Reverend Thomas Roscoe Rede Stebbing (1835–1926) of Ephraim Lodge, Tunbridge Wells, the son of Henry Stebbing who had edited The Athenaeum, described himself as ‘a serf to natural history, principally employed about Crustacea’ and ‘an early and enthusiastic convert to Darwinism’. He wrote on ‘Darwinism, natural history, and theology’, including Essays on Darwinism published in 1871, and he became ‘increasingly unorthodox in his religious beliefs through the years’, as he developed a view that religion should be ‘consistent with the logic of science, but its roots were transcendental, emanating from a god of love and unselfishness.’30 Stebbing wrote on crustaceans for all forty counties. In March 1905 William Page, general editor 1902 to 1904 jointly and from 1904 to 1934 alone, sent him a timetable showing ‘the order and dates we shall want the articles on Crustaceans for the next three years’ for nine counties. Herefordshire was due on 1st September 1906.31 A letter of 1909, replying to a note from Page suggesting that there would be publication delays, reveals that Stebbing’s working methods included visiting the counties he was writing about. Acknowledging the likely delay, he pointed out that: We are due in Gloucestershire at the end of this week, for County History research. Having engaged lodgings there and given our servants a holiday here, we are bound to go. But there will be no harm done by having the work ready for the chance of its being utilized in the future.

He had heard rumours about ‘the financial position of the Victoria History’ and noted that the ‘merit of the History itself is so conspicuous that any shortcoming in the sale of it can only be due to the want of sufficient advertisement’ and he proposed that ‘some pressure should surely be put on the publishers to let wealthy country gentlemen know in their several counties that such a work is in course of production’.32 In August 1915, and now ‘over eighty’ he noted in another letter to the Victoria County History that he

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had ‘proofs for 29 chapters, so that apparently there are ten besides the present one still only in manuscript or typewritten’.33 The true extent of Stebbing’s commitment to the Victoria County History is shown almost poignantly in a letter of August 1915 in which he ‘troubles’ Page with his fortieth chapter on Crustaceans for the Victoria County History. He notes that ‘As I am now over Eighty, it would please me to have an early opportunity of correcting the press’. He is aware that Page’s hands are probably ‘quite tied under existing circumstances, so that you cannot be influenced by autobiographical details. I merely give the information on the slender chance of its bearing fruit.34 Many of these chapters were never published, or even paid for. Stebbing was still owed eighty-two pounds after the war for his unpublished essays. Despite advancing years, he went on to publish Faith in Fetters (1919) and Plain Speaking (1926), books in which he ‘used the rationality of Darwinism to account for the origin of human behaviour and morality and to criticize tenets of the established church’ such as the divinity of Jesus and miracles.35 Other experts with a national remit on a county basis included F.O. Pickard-Cambridge who wrote on spiders for twenty-two counties and B.B. Woodward on non-marine molluscs for twenty-eight. Others came and went more sporadically including William Warde Fowler who contributed articles on beetles to ten counties.36 Doubleday preferred to work with such men. Not only were they reliable, although Stebbing had a tendency to write too much, but they met Doubleday’s required standards for natural history ‘where scientific methods are required’.37 To achieve this, careful guidelines were laid down showing what was needed for each county, and the ‘system and nomenclature to be followed’.38 Yet he recognised that for both political and practical reasons he could not ignore natural historians specialising in particular areas. Writing to Sir Roper Lethbridge, who was busy in late 1899 recruiting support for the Victoria County History in Devon, he asked to be informed of any suitable authors for the natural history sections not already covered by national experts, although he admitted to some reluctance in employing such men: ‘it often happens that those who are locally based require a good deal of direction and assistance’.39 This scepticism was reflected in Doubleday’s offer to Professor James Clark, Principal of the Truro Central Technical Schools, to contribute on natural history to the Victoria County History Cornwall. The tone of Doubleday’s written invitation to Clark on 24th June 1902 suggests that he was not exactly first choice: Among the subjects for which writers are yet wanted are several on various branches of Natural History, and it has been suggested that I should write to you and ask whether you would be so good as to get the following written: Entomology, Fishes, Reptiles, Birds and Mammals.40

Clark subsequently wrote almost all the zoology section and contributed as well on fishes, reptiles and mammals, although the slow pace at which he worked delayed the publication of Victoria County History Cornwall Volume 1 and annoyed the Central Office. Fast producers like Lydekker, who were used to writing to deadlines in order to make their incomes, were much to be preferred over provincial writers who might have the knowledge but could not be guaranteed to produce the goods. Clark’s view that the work could not be governed by deadlines provided a sharp contrast.41

Natural History and Local History in Late Victorian and Edwardian England 67 The selection of experts in Herefordshire and Nottinghamshire Our two case study counties provided very different challenges for the selection of suitable experts for the natural history sections of the Victoria County History. In Nottinghamshire there was a well established, large natural history museum associated with the University College founded in 1881. By contrast, in Herefordshire there was only a small museum and no institution of higher education. Moreover, in Nottinghamshire there had been no county history since the 1790s, whereas a competing study was in progress in Herefordshire when the Victoria County History was founded. The two counties also had very different geographies, with Nottinghamshire heavily industrialised and urbanised by 1900 whereas Herefordshire remained sparsely populated and agricultural. In Nottinghamshire the great majority of the different sections within natural history, apart from those written by the London specialists, was contributed by John Wesley Carr (1862–1939). Carr had a degree in Natural Sciences from Cambridge and was a Fellow of both the Linnean and Geological Societies. He had been appointed curator of Nottingham University College’s Natural Science Museum in 1886 and was Professor of Natural Sciences between 1893 and 1927.42 The historian Professor A. C. Wood assessed his talents rather waspishly: ‘Primarily he was an entomologist, and belonged to the museum rather than the classroom. He possessed a wide knowledge of insects, loved collection and classification, and was never so happy as when bending over his trays of empaled Lepidoptera’. Wood thought that: His botanical information did not cut quite so deep, and it was noticed that his lectures were sometimes apt to follow closely the same lines as the standard text books. As so often happens to the scholar, in his later years the ever advancing tide of knowledge overtook and passed him.43

Despite this appraisal, Carr’s enthusiasm and depth of knowledge was amply demonstrated in his Victoria County History contributions. On occasion, his entomological fieldwork actually took place within his museum: he recounts with relish how he found ‘several examples’ of Lathridius bergorothi on 13th November 1900 ‘feeding on a dried specimen of burdock in a parcel of British plants which I was incorporating in the herbarium at Nottingham University College’.44 One of Carr’s colleagues, Professor J. F. Blake wrote on geology and the section on birds was compiled by the leading Nottinghamshire ornithologist Joseph Whitaker (1850– 1932), a wealthy naturalist and sportsman who lived at Rainworth Lodge. His memoirs Nimrod, Ramrod, Fishing-Rod and Nature Tales (1909) included chapters entitled ‘How five guns shot 187 brace of partridges on a November day’, ‘A wonderful run with the South Notts Hounds’ and ‘The best rabbit day I ever had.’ He wrote several books on shooting and ornithological topics, but of most relevance to the Victoria County History was his Descriptive List of the Birds of Nottinghamshire written in 1879 with W. J. Sterland.45 The selection of experts in Herefordshire was rather more complicated. Writing to Doubleday on 24th April 1899, George Strong of Ross, Herefordshire, was able ‘to enclose the names of some scientific gents, who may assist in your grand undertaking’.46 He noted that ‘For myself, my contribution has been “The Heraldry of Herefordshire”,47

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& “Handbook to Ross & Archenfield”’.48 The first of these had been published fiftyone years previously and the second, which included sections by other authors on the geology and botany of the Wye Valley, had been published in 1863. The ‘scientific gents’ he named were ‘Mr Henry Southall, Ross, a learned & prosperous Tradesman, Capital Botanist & Meteorogist (sic). Rev. W. H. Purchas, Aston Vicarage, Ashbourne, Derby. Botany & Trees of Herefordshire . Mr James Davis, Solr Hereford. Antiquarian. Dr Moore, near The Cathedral, Hereford. Rev . . . Ley, Sellack vicarage, Ross. Birds.’ Some of these provided further names, and the Reverend Augustin Ley later wrote a section of the Victoria County History, albeit on botany rather than birds. Strong’s book of 1848 was intended in part to ‘form a supplement to Duncumb’s county history’. This history had been a long time in the writing. Initiated by the Duke of Norfolk in 1780, the first volume written by John Duncumb, consisting of a general history of the county and the city of Hereford, was published in 1804 and the first part of a second volume in 1812. This second volume was completed by Judge W. H. Cooke in 1866 who published another volume in 1882. In what appears in hindsight like a frenzy of activity, another volume was completed in 1897. It was at this point that letters advertising the new Victoria County History were received locally. This created potential conflicts of interest for men who had previously joined the Herefordshire county committee for the long running project. Joseph Carless, a Hereford solicitor, told Doubleday that: Within the last 3 or 4 years a County Committee consisting of Sir G. H. Cornewall Bart, Sir Herbert Croft Bart, Revd W. Poole, Messrs Michael Biddulph, M.P. and Paul Foley took into hand the continuation of the History and since then a further part has been published under the editorship of an eminent local historian, a literary man, Revd M. G. Watkins, Vicar of Kentchurch in this County.

Carless was concerned that ‘having regard to the advertising of your County History Series’ three hundred pounds that had been guaranteed ‘may be lost and the work incident to the publication under the auspices of the Local Committee have to be given up’. He hoped that the Victoria County History might ‘take up the work and keep up the old name and so continue it’ and offered ‘every help’ in providing access to ‘invaluable papers local archives . . . collected over a series of years.’ The Victoria County History was designed to be a new study and Doubleday was not interested in taking over existing projects. As a result, Herefordshire found itself briefly in the Edwardian period in the luxurious position of being subject to the scrutiny of experts composing two major county histories. Volume 1 of the Victoria County History for Herefordshire was published in 1908, and Volumes 5 and 6 of Duncumb’s history, compiled by John Mathews, were published in 1912 and 1913. There is little evidence of interconnections between the two histories although some surviving correspondence between Lord Biddulph and Doubleday indicates that the local committee asked advice about the appointment of a new editor. Doubleday told Lord Biddulph, in a rather Olympian manner, in 1903 that ‘The qualifications needed for the post are possessed by but few people, and in the case of the Victoria History I have had to arrange a system whereby the work is not dependent on expert local assistance’.49

Natural History and Local History in Late Victorian and Edwardian England 69 As elsewhere, the final list of Herefordshire writers included a mixture of nationally established figures, who were specialists in particular groups of species, and local men, and one woman, who had years of experience. They were listed in the Victoria County History as follows: Geology Palaeontology Botany Introduction: Botanical Districts: Cryptogamia Vascularia Filices (Ferns and Fern allies) Equisetaceae and Lycopodiaceae Musci (Mosses): Fungi: Zoology Molluscs: Insects: Orthoptera (Earwigs, Grasshoppers, &c.) and Neuroptera (Dragon flies Lace-wings, &c.) Coleoptera (Beetles) Lepidoptera (Butterflies and Moths) Diptera (Flies) Spiders Crustaceans Fishes Reptiles and Batrachians Birds Mammals

Linsdall Richardson F.G.S. Richard Lydekker F.R.S., F.L.S., F.G.S. Rev. Augustin Ley, M. A. Rev. Augustin Ley M. A. Rev. Augustin Ley M. A. Rev. Augustin Ley M. A. Rev C. H. Binstead, M. A. Carleton Rea, B.C.L., M. A. B. B. Woodward, F.L.S., F.G.S., F.R.M.S. Edited by the Rev. Canon W.W. Fowler, M.A., D.Sc., F.L.S., F.E.S. W. J. Lucas, B.A, F.E.S.

Rev. Canon W.W. Fowler, M.A., D.Sc., F.L.S., F.E.S. J.H. Wood, M.B. J.H. Wood, M.B. Rev O. Pickard-Cambridge, M.A., F.R.S. Rev T.R.R. Stebbing, M.A., F.R.S., F.Z.S. J.F. Symonds Gerald R. Leighton, M.D., F.R.S.E. E. Cambridge Phillips, M.B.O.U., M.P.I.O.C. Miss B. Lindsay

The motivesof the selected experts were of course varied. Most of them were not expecting to make much money from their writing and in the case of enthusiasts such as Augustin Ley and Carleton Rea the payments, although useful, were clearly not of enormous importance. At the other extreme were those for whom the payments were essential, such as the extraordinary and entertainingly troublesome Clifford Cordley, who was commissioned to write the section on sport for Herefordshire. He lived in the village of Colwall, near Malvern, and was in his own words ‘a man in a good social position, & I have been well-known in the realm of letters & journalism for 30 years’. He was the author several short stories including ‘Up in a Balloon’, Chums (5th April 1893) and pieces such as ‘The Second Horseman’; ‘A Poor Man’s Stud’ and ‘A Quist Crusade’ for Fore’s Sporting Notes and Sketches descriptive of British, Indian, Colonial and Foreign Sport (Vol. XX, 1903). But he was very short of cash and used a long string of reasons why Doubleday should pay him in advance for his contribution. On New Year’s Eve 1908 he wrote that: I am overdrawn at two reputable banks. I have dependent upon me (morally, but not legally) two widows & their offspring. You have had my sporting matter for HEREFORDSHIRE for nearly

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nine months. I have no claim upon you; but I do ask you to send me, as an act of grace & kindness, £10 on acct.

This seems to have worked because in April 1909 he noted that ‘I have already received £10 on account’ but that: Although I am a person of birth and breeding, I am always “short,” because I have made it a rule of my life – a life of 45 years – to live beyond my income, whatever it may be. . . .And bankers, though obliging, are apt to be troublesome.

And a month later he begged: I loathe to worry you. Though my work was done more than a year ago, I do not conceive that I have any claim, beyond the appeal of a struggling literary man. Bis dat qui cito dat. A “Tenner” now would appease my bankers for a long time.

But these later demands were in vain, and in the end his section on sport still remains to be published.50 Some of the local experts had considerable national as well as local knowledge. Carleton Rea (1861–1946) was a leading botanist and mycologist who was secretary of the British Mycological Society from 1896 to 1920 and President in 1908 and 1921. He was also President of the Worcestershire Naturalists’ Club from 1902 to 1906, 1934 to 1938 and 1946. With John Amphlett he published Botany of Worcestershire in 1909 and British Basidiomycetes in 1922 and a fungus, Hygrophorus reai Maire was named after him. Rea was born and died in Worcester and practised as a barrister on the Oxford Circuit although he is reputed to have ‘spent most of his time on circuit playing billiards’ and ‘he gave up his profession as his expenses were barely covered by his fees’. His fellow mycologist, Dr J. Ramsbottom, noted that ‘neither his manner nor his speech were such as to inspire the confidence necessary for legal success’. He was ‘difficult to follow’ and his ‘reading of a paper was nearly always an affliction on the audience, for he read badly, and would delight in making the subject-matter mostly strings of names’. He was left well off by his father, who had been City Coroner of Worcester and although friends claimed he was ‘at heart. . . kindly and courteous’ his ‘displeasure if arrangements were not entirely to his liking often struck terror into the hearts of more timid members’. He would stay up until two or three in the morning, writing up notes for the British Mycological Society, and then ‘come down at eleven in the morning, wanting a proper breakfast – so trying for the servants!’51 Carleton Rea wrote to Trevor-Battye in 1900 providing detailed advice on the nomenclature and classification of fungus, drawing on international literature: The most recent work on this subject (though at present it is unfortunately incomplete) is Massee’s British Fungus-Flora 4 vols52 this work I always follow as regards nomenclature in drawing up lists for the British Mycological Society of which I am the Hon. Sec. but I do not follow the order that in his work is x.y.x. instead of A.B.C. this I reverse + keep in the order of Fries’ Hymenomycetes Europaei53 but maintain Massee’s elevation of the sub-genera to generic rank as is now universally adopted on the continent in all their works + is followed by the Soci´et´e Mycologique de France.54

This rapidly changing state of knowledge and shifting international classifications made the choice of nomenclature to be used by the Victoria County History problematic. There

Natural History and Local History in Late Victorian and Edwardian England 71 was also a more practical problem of access to costly information by field workers. Rea noted that the: Absence of any complete work dealing with British Fungi either compels us to follow Cooke’s Handbook of British Fungi bringing it up to date from the works previously quoted or else we must follow Saccardo’s monumental work55 that includes the description of every fungus published up to the time when this work appeared.

He pointed out, however, that as Saccardo’s work was ‘very costly’ it was ‘in the hands of few mycological workers’ and that ‘though they are obliged to consult it from time to time at our national institutions’ the ‘adoption of this book as a basis would cause our present mycologists great difficulty’. Carleton Rea highlighted the rapidly changing state of knowledge about the existence and distribution of fungi. Like other specialists he regretted the relative lack of interest in his area of enthusiasm. He thought that ‘few botanists seem to care to take up this neglected branch of study’ but argued that were they to do so ‘what great additions thereto should we not have to record’. Indeed ‘my own private opinion is that the British list is nearer 6000 than 5000 + will continue to increase’. He stressed that if the Victoria County History required full lists of species then ‘they will be very long, if short no mycologist will know how to compress it as at present the distribution is entirely unknown + what is common in one area may be a good thing in other parts’. Although Carleton Rea had initially raised many difficulties with the collection, collation and categorisation of information about the fungi for the Victoria County History he did eventually agree to contribute a section for the Herefordshire volume. He told William Page that: The Revd Augustin Ley has asked me to undertake the enumeration of the fungi of Herefordshire + I have replied to him that I am willing to do so provided that I have from you that you are prepared to pay the same fees as I received for the other work that I have done for the Victorian (sic) County Histories.56

Augustin Ley is a good example of a deeply rooted local specialist. He was commissioned by Doubleday to be responsible for the whole of the Botany section of the Herefordshire Victoria County History and agreed to subcontract responsibility for mosses and fungi to two other experts: ‘Would you kindly allot the 20,000 words allowed for the whole article among the various sections. May I leave it, therefore, with you to communicate with the Rev. C. H. Binstead and Mr Rea with regard to their subject?’57 Augustin Ley and Charles Binstead were both Herefordshire clergymen. Augustin Ley (1842–1911) was born at Hereford and after Oxford went on to become a clergyman like his father. He was a curate at Buxton from 1867 to 1871 and then ‘returned to Sellack in order to assist his father with his duties at Kings Caple, and lived in his home county for the rest of his life’. He married in 1878, but his wife died the same year and he: Immersed himself in his clerical duties and pastoral cares, and found further solace in botany. For the next thirty years Ley ransacked Herefordshire and neighbouring counties on the

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Welsh border for plants, all the while recording, collecting, and discovering many uncommon species.

When his father died in 1887 Augustin Ley became vicar of Sellack and Kings Caple, where he remained until his retirement. He travelled widely including visits to Norway, the Alps, the Riviera and Scotland. He wrote, with Reverend William Purchas, A Flora of Herefordshire (1889) and many papers for the Transactions of the Woolhope Naturalists’ Field Club. Ley was also keen bryologist but did not join the Moss Exchange Club founded in 1896 ‘probably because by then his eyesight had begun to deteriorate’.58 In later years he specialised in the identification of difficult groups of plants including Rubus (brambles) and Sorbus. In 1896 he discovered a new species of whitebeam which was named after him in 1934: Sorbus leyana. Charles Herbert Binstead (1862–1941) was brought up in the Lake District, moved to Herefordshire in 1890 and spent most of the rest of his life as curate, vicar and rector of a succession of Herefordshire parishes: Eardisley (1890–1897), Breinton (1897–1906), Whitbourne (1906–1912) and Mordiford (1915–1923). He was a founder member of the Moss Exchange Club in 1896 and President of the British Bryological Society from 1926 to 1928. In addition to the work for the Victoria County History, he wrote papers on mosses of the English Lake District and the French Riviera.59 Both Ley and Binstead were deeply immersed in Herefordshire natural history and together they brought years of expertise on the botany of Herefordshire that they could rapidly deploy and summarise for the Victoria County History. Indeed Ley was able to reply to a Victoria County History request in February 1906 that ‘I shall be happy to undertake it, so far as regards the flowering plants: and my friend Rev. C. H. Binstead has agreed to undertake the mosses: indeed the m.s. of these parts is now practically ready.’60 Expert contributors were offered a fee of one guinea per thousand words, and they were sent a copy of ‘Instructions to Contributors on Natural History subjects, in which you will see the form of the article required’.61 The careful balance required between scientific and popular language is revealed in the correspondence between William Page and Lindsall Richardson who was writing on the Geology of Herefordshire. Page asked Richardson to modify his article telling him that he should ‘keep in mind that the article is not only for the expert geologist but for zoologists, botanists, antiquaries and historians. I should be much obliged if you would kindly revise your article’. Equally, the articles should not be too popular. Page had received a referee’s report from ‘one of the Jermyn Street geologists’ which commented that: ‘“Archæn plutonics” is rather slangy – the plutonic rocks of Archæn age or the Archæn plutonic rocks would be preferable’. The referee asked ‘What is “sinuine”? The use of unintelligible words is to be deprecated. It may be of American origin; but every reader cannot keep up to date with the new words that are coined in that country.’62 Richardson replied to Page within a month: ‘I send you another article, which I hope will be nearer your requirements than the first. I have endeavoured to make it more generally readable. . .. I have. . . cut my remarks down & popularised.’63 The fear of popularising worried other potential contributors to the Victoria County History, among them Joshua Brooking Rowe who held out for several

Natural History and Local History in Late Victorian and Edwardian England 73 years against Doubleday’s invitations to play a significant role in the Victoria County History Devon.64 State of natural history knowledge Carleton Rea’s concern about the rapidly changing state of knowledge in relation to the existence and distribution of fungi was replicated with other groups of species. What the Victoria County History did, or at least what it set out to do, was to capture the state of knowledge about species distribution at the end of a century of amateur collection, identification and classification. London based experts understood what was meant by capturing the current situation, but where the Victoria County History encountered difficulties was with men like Clark in Cornwall who insisted on doing new research: ‘Your last letter’, he told the Victoria County History general editor in 1906: Suggests to me that I have taken the natural history articles for the Victoria History of Cornwall too seriously. To make them worthy of the publication I devoted three years to the accumulation of material for the work and spared no exertions or money to make the articles a faithful record. A year ago I sketched out every article and arranged with several friends to collect throughout the summer as these orders had received little attention. . . .. I may safely say I have trebled the number of county species known.65

This type of concern came to the surface on other occasions, for example in discussion of the extent and quality of knowledge for groups such as flowering plants and birds. Charles Binstead was reasonably happy with the state of knowledge on mosses. He argued that the publication of the detailed county flora by Purchas and Ley in 1889 had popularised the study of botany and mosses. He noted that the mosses of Herefordshire: Had been worked with such thoroughness by the authors of the Flora of the county, that since 1889, when it first appeared, further investigation has resulted in the addition of only fifty species to the list given with localities and interesting notes in that work.66

But many of the experts expressed varying degrees of disquiet about the lack of interest in their groups of species, the poor quality of information and the importance of one or two individual collectors and enthusiasts. Professor Carr emphasised that the: Mycology of Nottinghamshire has until quite recently been a much neglected study, and although various references to the fungi of the county exist, the records chiefly occur in obscure publications which are not readily accessible and are almost unknown to the majority of workers in the subject.

The rapid increase in knowledge about fungi in the county is emphasised by the fact that most of the list published in the Victoria County History was the result of a four day visit of the British Mycological Society to Sherwood Forest based at Worksop in September 1897. This ‘systematic investigation of the fungi of Sherwood Forest’ resulted in the addition of 250 species ‘to the fungus flora of the district’. One of the key identifiers was Carleton Rea and Professor Carr stated: To Mr Rea especially I am indebted, not only for his valuable assistance on this occasion but also for naming all my subsequent gatherings of fungi from the neighbourhood of Nottingham, many of which had not previously been found in the county.

Here the national amateur expert was educating the local academic professional.67

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Canon Fowler stressed that the state of knowledge about insects in Herefordshire was poor. He noted that: The following account of the insects of the county is a very imperfect one with regard to most of the orders. . .. Very little has been done at Coleoptera, and with a few striking exceptions, the list is chiefly remarkable for the absence of all but common species: nothing practically is known about any of the other orders.

He emphasised the importance of the enthusiasm of individual experts ‘the list of the Lepidoptera is by far the best, and that of the Diptera is also a valuable one: these are due to the work of Dr Wood of Tarrington, Hereford’. J. H. Wood was the author of the sections on butterflies, moths and flies in the Victoria County History. But Fowler uses the dismal state of knowledge as a call to arms for further investigation: Should this meagre list induce any entomologist of the county to turn his attention to these very much neglected orders, he should record all species, however common; for, judging by what we have before us, no one would be justified in asserting that a dragonfly or a mayfly forms part of the fauna of the county, or that the common earwig even, or the kitchen cockroach, may be found within its borders.68

The extent of knowledge was patchy, depending on where individual entomologists lived and different areas were classed by the experts as ‘worked’ and ‘unworked’: The Leominster district, on the Old Red Sandstone, and that of Woolhope on the Silurian Limestone, have been pretty exhaustively worked – the former (especially in the Macros) by the late Mrs. Hutchinson and her family, and the latter by the present writer; but elsewhere much remains to be done.

Moreover knowledge of the underlying geology was used to predict areas of the county where entomologists should focus their activities: ‘The north side especially, where the surface is bold and in part mountainous, and the Silurian Limestones have broken through the Old Red just as they have in the south-east, is quite unworked ground.’69 Evidence of the novelty of natural history knowledge and its precarious base on one or two experts is provided by Diptera. Doctor Wood noted in Victoria County History Herefordshire that: A dozen years ago nothing was known of the Diptera of the county. But about that time Colonel Yerbury visited Herefordshire and laid the foundation of our local acquaintance with the order. Since then he has repeated his visit on more than one occasion, making his head quarters either at Ledbury or Tarrington. Mr. Wainwright also has collected for brief periods at Westhide and the Malverns, his most remarkable capture being an example of Mallota cimbiciformis at Westhide in July, 1899. Besides these two and the present compiler, no one else seems to have touched these interesting insects.70

The Reverend Octavius Pickard-Cambridge, ‘foremost expert on the spiders of these islands’,71 and one of Trevor-Battye’s nominated national experts, was in a good position to judge the state of knowledge about spiders in the different counties. And he was particularly critical of the state of knowledge in Herefordshire. He starts with a complimentary if distant tone:

Natural History and Local History in Late Victorian and Edwardian England 75 The materials placed in my hands for the preparation of the subjoined list have been in one respect very fairly satisfactory, which is in regard to the kind efforts of the only two gentlemen who have found themselves able to contribute materials. These materials, collected in, I presume for the most part, two localities only, give evidence of a rich field for at least one order of Arachnids (Araneidea true spiders) the result being ninety-five species.

But he goes on to emphasise that the listed species ‘are mostly, as a matter of course, among the common and generally distributed known British spiders’. He concluded that ‘It is evident that only ninety-five species of spiders, out of nearly or about 550 known British forms. . . are not an adequate representation of the Arachnids of a county like Hereford’. He gave out some hope that ‘a little more expert and close collecting would very soon double or treble the number of species met with.’ 72 Here the Victoria County History was being used as a platform from which both to castigate the lack of interest in spiders and to encourage new research. The Nottinghamshire experts expressed a similar view. John Carr felt that ‘nothing whatever appears to have been known concerning the arachnids of Nottinghamshire before 1903 when the present writer began to pay attention to them for the purposes of this History.’ He collected 169 species of spider in ‘the course of two seasons’ and considered that ‘more extended research will doubtless result in the discovery of many more species’. Here we see the Victoria County History actually instigating interest in a species group. Indeed Carr noted that ‘in a group so little worked as the arachnids, and one presenting so many difficulties in the identification of the more obscure or closely allied species, it is of the utmost importance that the determinations should be beyond question’. Consequently, he sent his entire collection to ‘our highest authority on those creatures, the Rev. O. Pickard-Cambridge, F.R.S., who most generously undertook the examination of the entire collection’ and vouched for the correct identifications.73 The story is repeated for molluscs: Herefordshire was ‘not a very happy hunting ground, the soil not favouring molluscan life’, and moreover B.B. Woodward noted that ‘Several records have had to be rejected on account of error in locality, a collection in the Hereford Museum having been labelled “Hereford” that had been brought together from many parts of England.’ It was hoped, however, that ‘several more species should be forthcoming with further research.’74 Thomas Stebbing stressed the lack of research on his own group, crustaceans, but used this to enthuse naturalists to study them. He argued that: In this county carcinology has been treated as the Cinderella of the sciences. How absolutely neglect and indifference have been its portion, the records of the famous Woolhope Club bear witness. While those transactions teem with the virtues and vices of fungi, the problems and identifications of fossils, the figures of noble trees, and a wealth of valuable information in general, the living crustaceans of Herefordshire scarcely engage a passing allusion.

But in the: Very scantiness of this catalogue there is one redeeming feature. The local naturalist whose enthusiasm is first awakened to explore the wells and weedy waters, the gardens and woodlands, the old walls and quarries of this county for their carcinological treasures, is sure of an unexhausted territory for his researches.

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He held out great hope that ‘there are numbers of species for him to find, and almost every one of his discoveries will be a new record for Herefordshire’. He notes that ‘land crustaceans’ were often ignored and had their ‘true place in classification disguised by the nickname of woodlice’.75 Stebbing saw the Victoria County History as a means of popularising his Darwinian approach: The general organization makes it sufficiently clear that these shrimps of the garden and the woodland are derived from aquatic progenitors. It may be asked what inducement they had to forsake their natural element. Possibly hostile pursuit gave the impulse. Just as in naval warfare a sloop might find refuge in shoals and intricate recesses of the coast whither frigate and man-of-war cannot follow it, small crustaceans may have beaten a retreat from depth to shallow, from shallow to spray-moistened shore, and so on by slow degrees to situations merely humid or completely dry. In this progression it would not be surprising if the branchial pleopods derived from marine ancestors experienced some modifications in favour of subaerial respiration.76

Geography of natural history The space given to natural history in the Victoria County History was a cause for concern among the historians. As The Times put it, ‘the birds of Norfolk do not differ essentially from those of Suffolk and Essex, though the northern county catches a few migrants that do not visit the neighbours’.77 Neither, of course, do flora and fauna generally recognise where one county begins and another ends, and some of the topographical writers objected that the emphasis on natural history took up space that they could much more usefully devote to local history. Reverend William Oswald Massingberd, appointed local editor for Lincolnshire, complained in 1906 that ‘One wishes the birds and creeping things could be put into a smaller space, the more as most of them are the same as in other counties’. His complaint was rejected by the General Editor, but since Victoria County History Lincolnshire Volume 1 was a victim of the financial crisis which temporarily stopped all work on the Victoria County History in 1908, the material was never published anyway.78 The natural historians could in any case argue the importance of local differences. Augustin Ley identified several important features of Herefordshire which tended ‘to enrich the flora of Herefordshire’. These included the large area of woodland: Which is almost certainly part of the primitive forest of Britain. This woodland, after diminishing rapidly in the earlier half of the nineteenth century, is not likely under the present conditions of agriculture to diminish in the near future.

Other positive features were the ‘influence of the Wye system and the Welsh borderland which adds a good many montane species’. He also recognised limitations: the complete absence of sea coast and tidal estuary; the very small and diminishing area of bog and marsh land; and the comparatively small area of open common and heath land. Taken together these conditions greatly limited the number of species.79 Ley was generalising from a lifetime’s knowledge of the botany of the county, and he used arguments which would be taken up sixty years later by historical ecologists on the difference between long

Natural History and Local History in Late Victorian and Edwardian England 77 established woodland and plantations, to provide an original understanding of woodland history: It is mainly to its heirloom of aboriginal woodland that the rich development of the fruticose Rubi in Herefordshire is due. The commons and open waste lands of the county are both small in amount and poor in bramble forms. On the contrary the woodland is extremely rich both in forms and individuals. This fact, when contrasted with the poverty of the planted ‘spinneys’ of Leicestershire and other English counties, affords a strong presumption that the Herefordshire woods are really aboriginal.80

He also understood that woodland management was crucial for the survival of certain species: ‘A grass rare inland (Gastridium lendigerum) occurs occasionally in and near dry Herefordshire woods, appearing after the coppice has been felled and then disappearing for many years’.81 Entomologists also valued particular types of habitat. Apple orchards were particularly common in Herefordshire at the end of the nineteenth century and J. H. Wood makes special mention of two insects: Connected with that characteristic feature of the county – the orchard. One, the lovely Cerostoma asperella, whose right to inclusion in our lists was fast verging on the traditional, was re-discovered by Mrs. Hutchinson at Leominster, in 1865, and continued to be taken at intervals by herself or members of her family up to 1886.82 The other, Ditula woodiana, though rather secluded in its habits, is by no means scarce wherever old apple trees well covered with mistletoe are to be found. At present it is exclusively a Herefordshire insect, and has not occurred elsewhere either at home or abroad.83

Several of the Victoria County History authors identified specific areas in the county rich in groups of species or rare species. Ley picked out the Doward Hills of the lower Wye Valley as particularly meritorious: ‘The area of these hills is about 2,126 acres; and in this limited space 682 species and named varieties of flowering plants and ferns and 223 of mosses have been recorded’. He emphasised the richness of this area by noting that ‘In a single winter day’s ramble on these hills the writer saw and catalogued 120 species of mosses. These totals are year by year being added to.’84 J. H. Wood who wrote on butterflies, moths and flies, emphasised the importance of small, sometimes ephemeral, habitats. At Tram Inn the value of ‘rough unreclaimed pastures very wet in places, in which snipe still breed annually, and with a flora as interesting as the fauna’ was celebrated. ‘Scattered about are certain shallow circular depressions, under water in the winter, but drying up in the course of the summer. These curious places are the special habitats of various good Sciomyzids.’ The: Leech Pool, almost under the shadow of the old ruined castle of the lords of Clifford, is a natural piece of water (probably part of an ancient bed of the Wye) close to the Welsh border. Almost choked with water plants of all sorts, and with a sallow carr in the middle, it is the special locality for certain species that are not known to occur elsewhere in the county.

While: Cusop Dingle, a most fascinating place, is a deep valley some four miles long among the foothills to the north-east of the Black Mountain. In the lower half its little stream forms the divide

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between England and Wales, but in the upper and more interesting portion both sides are wholly in Herefordshire.

In these celebrations of particular places, the diversity of insects merges with picturesque aesthetic and local pride. Nottinghamshire did not have a large number of flowering plants compared to some neighbouring counties and John Carr argued that the ‘apparent poverty of our flora’ was largely due to the lack of coastlines and mountains and the ‘comparative lack of variety in the physical conditions of Nottinghamshire combined with the highly cultivated state of most of its area.’ He argued that: There is scarcely any uncultivated ground with the exception of certain parts of Sherwood Forest, and this being situated on the dry and arid Bunter sandstone possesses only a poor and scanty flora: even in the wooded parts of the forest the undergrowth consists almost entirely of bracken.85

But Sherwood Forest was a celebrated for other groups of species. Carr noted that the ‘rich district of Sherwood Forest – perhaps one of the best collecting grounds in the country – has been thoroughly investigated. . . and many rare species’ had been discovered by workers such as the Reverend Alfed Thornley, M.A., ‘who has devoted many years to the investigation of the Coleoptera of the county, and who has generously placed all his records at the writer’s disposal.’86 Another enthusiast was the Reverend A. Matthews who studied rare beetles associated with the ancient oaks: Trichopteryx carbonaria was found ‘by sweeping under oaks’; Trichopteryx obscaena was ‘once taken in faggots by Mr. Matthews in Sherwood Forest’ and Ptilium halidayi was ‘under bark of dead oak’.87 Joseph Whitaker celebrated ‘the considerable area of ancient woodland, largely consisting of fine old oaks, with a sprinkling of birch and an undergrowth of bracken,’ surviving in Sherwood Forest as excellent for birds.88 The ‘rare’ Woodchat Shrike, for example, had ‘occurred once in Nottinghamshire, when a male was shot in May 1859 in Sherwood Forest near “The Buck Gates”, Thoresby Park, by Mr. H. Wells’.89

Threats to natural history The natural historians of the Victoria County History were not ignorant of the threats to which their favourite species were exposed. For some this was seen as a natural consequence of agriculture. Gerald Leighton wrote that ‘the civilisation of the low-lying land under farming operations has driven the adder to seek the seclusion of bracken and lonely woods of Garway Hill and neighbouring districts’.90 At the same time he reminded the reader of the potency of this snake by recounting ‘A fatal case in a Hereford cow, which had captured the adder lying beside its victim on a farm on Garway Hill. As is usually the case the bite was on the udder.’ Ferns were also thought to be threatened by agriculture. Augustin Ley argued that the climate of Herefordshire was ‘too dry to admit of a vigorous growth of those plants, and moreover it is becoming drier through progressive denudation of timber and other causes, and the fern flora is consequently shrinking or dying out’. A rare example of the loss of a species of fern was ‘Tunbridge filmy fern (Hymenophyllum tunbridgense)’. Found in the Ross district in 1883, this ‘has since that time disappeared, not through depredation, but entirely through climatal change’.91

Natural History and Local History in Late Victorian and Edwardian England 79 In Nottinghamshire the effects of industrial and residential development were plain to see. John Carr noted that: A modern account of Nottinghamshire botany, when compared with [early nineteenth century floras] furnishes melancholy evidence of the large number of interesting plants which, once common, have now become exceedingly rare or altogether extinct. The enormous growth of the city of Nottingham has covered some of our best collecting grounds with buildings, while the cultivation of waste grounds, the drainage of bogs, the multiplication of railways and collieries, and the conversion of large areas of arable land into pasture, have all been potent agents in the destruction of our native plants.

He knew there had been many introductions of new plants, but recognised these as neither beneficial nor as a potential threat: Nor are we compensated for their loss by the numerous aliens – waifs and strays from foreign lands – which are making their appearance along railway lines and canals, and about malt kilns and grain warehouses, brought over with grain, fodder, and other merchandise from abroad.92

Some introductions appear to have been welcomed for their exotic novelty: An introduction of note is Stenogyra goodalli, a West Indian form that occurs in hot-houses where it has been introduced in the soil with plants. . . Mr Pearson obtained it at Chilwell near Nottingham feeding on the roots of the bulbs of Eucharis.93

Birds were recognised as particularly under threat, but it was here that the tension between capture, killing and identification was most telling. In Herefordshire, E. Cambridge Phillips described the short eared owl as ‘a rare winter visitor to the county, where also very few have been observed’, but it was noted that specimens had been shot in the county at Kington, Mordiford, Marden and Ross. The common buzzard was: Now no longer common, although still fairly frequent in the adjoining county of Brecon. . . In 1883 a fine specimen was trapped on the Leys Estate. . .. In September, 1890, several buzzards passed over Graftonbury, and a fortnight later Mr. Andrews of Much Birch sent Ashdown a good bird for preservation. . .. Mr. Southall remarked some years since that the game keepers had destroyed nearly all the large birds of prey in the county.

The paradox of preservation and shooting is brought out by comments on the hobby: In 1895 Mr. Blathwayt reported that during the month of August his son had several times seen three hobbys in the neighbourhood of Bromyard. Another was killed in Penyard Wood, near Ross, by Mr. Thomas’s keeper, and was preserved. About the middle of December, 1905, one was killed in Coldborough Wood, Yatton, by a Perry-stone shooting party, but, unfortunately, it was not preserved.94

While the bittern was ‘Formerly a not uncommon resident here, but now very rare, if not extinct. . .. The Hereford Museum specimen was shot at Eastnor Castle in 1854, and was one of a pair which might have bred if unmolested.’ In Nottinghamshire Joseph Whitaker recounted several stories of rarities which could only be listed because they had been shot and preserved for identification. The role of the provincial taxidermist in natural history remains underestimated. A two-barred crossbill which was ‘in most beautiful plumage’ and ‘a most interesting county specimen’ had been

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shot by George Emery at Southwell in 1875. It was taken in the flesh to F. Schumach, the local taxidermist for preservation. After his death it was given to Whitaker by his son. Sometimes the taxidermists did not know the value of what they held. Whitaker recounted how: Stanley, the bird-stuffer of Nottingham had a specimen in fine plumage brought to him with some small birds which had been caught near Nottingham in 1886. The Rev. J. Ashworth seeing it there and noticing that it was something out of the common expressed a wish to have it; Stanley at once gave it to him, little thinking how rare it was. It was identified by Professor Newton. Only three others have occurred in Britain.95

Some of the descriptions of birds amount to a plea for landowners to reduce the intensity of their game keeping. The black grouse was ‘an occasional resident’ although a few birds had been shot in recent years including ‘on 22 November, 1894, the Rev. G. H. Davenport forwarded to Ashdown a grey hen taken at Foxley’. E. Cambridge Phillips noted that ‘If the grey hens were spared for a few years this beautiful game bird would undoubtedly increase’.96 The essay on mammals, written by Miss B. Lindsay, the only female natural history contributor in Victoria County History volumes before the First World War, noted that: The development of industrial activity, while it adds to a district wealth and population, yet at the same time tends to rob the ground of nearly everything that is of interest to the student of nature. In Herefordshire no such industrial development has taken place and hence we find the natural fauna of rural England for the most part survives. Much of the county consists of hilly ground, well wooded; and here as a rule the wild life is not interfered with except by the gamekeeper. . . . within the memory of people now living the wild cat and the marten also were still found there, as well as the polecat, now nearly extinct.97

This sentiment was reinforced by an anecdote involving Reverend S. Cornish Watkins. He recounts that on: 29 August, 1904, I was driving in Staunton on Arrow, and noticed a female weasel with several young by the roadside. The young dived into the grass, but the old weasel stood with her head and neck above the grass chattering at me. I got down and touched her with the handle of the whip and turned her over, but she only bit it . . .. She tried to run up the whip to attack me, and made no attempt to escape. I never saw such an example of courage in a small creature.

Miss Lindsay saw this almost as a parable: ‘We should not have to deplore the rapid extinction of our native fauna, if other naturalists would copy the example of Mr. Watkins, who adds: “Needless to say, I did not do her or the young any damage”’.98 The erasure of natural history The general enthusiasm that greeted the Victoria County History, together with the not unnatural tendency to start at the beginning, ensured that a disproportionate number of volume 1s made it into print before the Victoria County History ran into major financial difficulties in 1908. In the years preceding the First World War the Victoria County History published the first volume for no fewer than twenty-seven counties. Since the average length was proposed as 100 pages of 500 words per page, this was somewhere in the region of 1.4m words, without any doubt a major addition to the literature.99 When

Natural History and Local History in Late Victorian and Edwardian England 81 work on the Victoria County History resumed in the 1920s following a hiatus during the First World War, further natural history sections were published for Huntingdonshire (1926), Cambridgeshire (1938) and Oxfordshire. Victoria County History Oxfordshire Volume 1 noted that although published only in 1939, most of the work was undertaken before the First World War. The natural history articles were taken to represent the state of knowledge up to the end of 1936. Given that three-quarters of all English counties had their natural history written and published there was clearly less to be done in the future, and given also that for financial reasons the Victoria County History has been more successful in producing the first volume of each county set than any of the others, it might be argued that it was purely a statistical aberration that so much natural history was written and produced. In fact, there was a change of thinking. For work undertaken since the Second World War in counties which had not previously had a Volume One in their sets, the Victoria County History omitted natural history as a separate section. The first volumes for Cheshire, Middlesex and Wiltshire simply include a brief discussion of geology. Since much of the material for these, and other counties without a Volume One, had been written but not published, questions were posed as the value of the material. In January 1950 Miss Joan Gibbons of Lincoln borrowed the unpublished Lincolnshire botany section. This had been written by the noted local natural historian and pioneer ecologist Reverend Adrian Woodruffe-Peacock, and delivered to the Victoria County History on 4th August 1903.100 Miss Gibbons subsequently suggested to the Victoria County History Central Office that rather than keep the material ‘in cold storage’ it might be published separately. She convened a meeting in Lincoln to consider publishing the material on flora, and she learnt that another contributor had received proofs of the Lincolnshire mycology and cellular cryptogams to check, ‘but as publication was delayed he put them in his strong room and never returned them’. Miss Gibbons pressed the Victoria County History Central Office further in 1952 and again in 1954, when she was told that: If and when the Lincolnshire VCH is started up again arrangements will have to be made ad hoc. For this reason, the Editor feels that we must keep any material on Lincolnshire Natural History until we know what use we may make of it. We are, however, always ready to grant access to our material by such proper accredited persons as may care to apply for it.101

Despite this claim, no one chased up Miss Gibbons, who still had custody of the botany sections in 1965 when manuscripts, typescripts and proofs of unpublished natural history sections for Cheshire, Dorset, Lincolnshire, Westmorland and Wiltshire were deposited in the Natural History section of the British Museum. This was tacit evidence that the Victoria County History had now definitively abandoned natural history in its pre-First World War form.102 Unfortunately this material now seems to have been lost altogether since the British Museum, the British Library, and the Natural History Museum, have no record of it amongst their deposits.103 The intellectual climate changed in the course of the twentieth century as science splintered into separate disciplines such as physiology, botany, zoology, geology and palaeontology, leaving the term ‘natural history’ to become, much like ‘antiquarian’,

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something of a term of abuse directed at amateurs operating outside science proper. In this process it was also clear that natural history was less to do with history than it was to do with science, now a separate discipline. Only in the study of biology, and particularly ecology, does it survive in any recognisable form. County and local societies continue with their recording role, but it is now seen in a scientific rather than a historical context. Local history has instead followed the path of economic and social history, and is now concerned rather more with landscape and environment.

Conclusion Topographical writing to the Edwardians was descriptive, but today it has come to be aimed more firmly at describing landscape, and landscape features, or ecology. The understanding of landscape as a way of appreciating the past is usually linked in the local historical mind to the work of W.G. Hoskins, particularly through his book The Making of the English Landscape, although Hoskins was in some senses developing earlier ideas which had not at the time been very clearly formulated.104 As a subject, the study of landscapes in order to understand the history of the people who populated them, is an innovation which enables us to move away from the purely documentary approach of earlier generations of local historians. The study of landscape is now fundamental to the study of local history, but landscape is not, and never was, natural history, even if it is the history of the habitat of many of our natural species. It does, however, help to explain the position taken by the post-war Victoria County History when it used ‘Physique’ as an awkward way of describing the natural environment in which settlement evolved, notably the geological sub-strata. Historical ecologists, historical geographers and environmental historians now place enormous value on knowledge of the historical distribution of plants and animals. Historical ecology has only developed as a distinct sub-discipline in Britain over the last thirty years or so. The key to the approach is the combination of very different forms of evidence to develop an understanding of the history and development of a particular piece of vegetation or habitat. This evidence may include surveys of present day flora and fauna; historical maps and documents; oral history; land management practices; literary descriptions; pollen and soil analysis; photographs, drawings and paintings; field observation of the form of trees, wood banks, ditches and hedges, and so forth. Historical ecology has its roots in local history, natural history, historical geography and field ecology. It stems from a strong amateur tradition of interest in local landscape history which has been fostered by a wide range of local history societies and county wildlife trusts. This amateur interest has been greatly strengthened by the work of professional ecologists, historians and other writers who have excited the interest of many people in the history of plants and animals and the landscape in which they live. Several people had been researching, writing about and discussing historical ecology between the 1960s and the 1980s. These include the historical geographer John Sheail (1980) and the ecologists Colin Tubbs (1968) and George Peterken (1981). The research and publications of this group, many of whom had a strong interest in woodland ecology, fostered the development of an historical imagination amongst ecologists in Britain. The publication in 1976 of Oliver Rackham’s Trees and Woodland in the British Landscape was to many a formative event in

Natural History and Local History in Late Victorian and Edwardian England 83 their understanding of the history of vegetation and the importance of linking a thorough knowledge of historical documents with a practical understanding of plant ecology.105 This approach is gaining ground in Europe and America: in Italy, for example the work of Diego Moreno and Roberta Cevasco emphasises the crucial importance of combining ecological and local history in developing an understanding of the many processes of environmental change.106 This type of approach at the local level enables historians, particularly when they team up with scientists, to do some interesting work on reconstructing both landscapes and economies in the past. A recent article on the south Yorkshire township of Wombwell made use of fieldnames, field work, and an understanding of ecology to reconstruct the landscape and farming economy of the community before the introduction of coal mining brought great changes to the landscape in the nineteenth century. By using the skills of an historian and a scientist together, it was possible to describe the pattern of open fields, river meadows, moors, assarts and communal woodland. The end of coal mining in recent years has meant the regeneration of the landscape yet again.107 All this is a long way from the natural history which was so prominent in the work of the Victoria County History before the First World War, but it is also a reflection of how thinking about environmental and ecological issues has changed since the Edwardian era. Today we understand the landscape, and the environment in which it is set, as sources from which to interpret the past. When the Victoria County History began in 1899, no such assumptions were in order. What may seem peculiar to us, would have been entirely reasonable to the founding fathers with their initial interest in the history of the county, rather than of its particular places. In a copy of Victoria County History Hampshire Volume 1 at the Natural History Museum, there is a handwritten note to the Museum Director, by B. Woodward, himself previously a major contributor to the Victoria County History natural history sections, saying ‘We have constantly been asked for this work’.108 Today, the museums cannot even find the material deposited with them in 1965, and the Victoria County History has no plans to publish natural history in counties for which there is as yet no Volume One in the set. Local historians have moved on. The American local historian, Joseph Amato, has visualised the rethinking of settlement in terms of environmental history, proposing that this should help us in studying and understanding landscape. What this suggests is that rural local history needs to take into account the context of sustainability and biodiversity, and to view settlement and landscape in terms we might think of as environmental history.109 This should not obscure the very real importance of the early Victoria County History work in this area. In the Edwardian era it was not easy for naturalists to obtain widely circulated recognition of their work in print. The Victoria County History can be celebrated as a compendium of historical ecological knowledge which provides an understanding of environmental issues and different styles of plant and animal classification at the time. Subsequently the volume of natural history became so overwhelming, and the emergence of specialisms in academic biology so rapid, that the Victoria County History was no longer relevant to the needs of the naturalist, hence the abandonment of this section. But that should not detract from its importance to the world of natural history between its foundation in 1899 and the outbreak of the First World War.

84

John Beckett and Charles Watkins Notes .

1. 2.

3. 4. 5. 6. 7.

8.

9. 10. 11. 12.

13. 14. 15. 16. 17. 18. 19.

20. 21.

Thomas Stebbing, Crustaceans, Victoria County History Nottinghamshire (London, 1906), Volume 1, p. 151. We have not discussed geology in this paper, despite close links to natural history in the period we are discussing. All the first volume in pre-First World War Victoria County History county sets included thirty pages or so on geology written by some distinguished scholars, most notably perhaps, Horace Woodward. Linsdall Richardson wrote on Herefordshire and Professor J. F. Blake on Nottinghamshire, the two counties discussed in this paper: for background see E. J. T. Collins, ed., Agrarian History of England and Wales Volume VII 1850–1925, part II (2000), especially pp. 1623–7. Richard Clutterbuck, The History and Antiquities of the County of Hertfordshire I (London, 1815), pp. iii-v. W. Bartlett, ed., History and Topography of Essex (first edition by Thomas Wright, London, 1851), pp. 14–22. J Nichols, History and Antiquities of the County of Leicester, Volume 1, Part 1 (London, c. 1795), pp. clxxvii-ccviii. John Hutchins, History and Antiquities of the County of Dorset (3rd edn, London, 1861), pp. lxxviii-cxlvi. Michael Darby, ‘WANHS and Natural History’, in J.H. Thomas, ed., Wiltshire Archaeological and Natural History Society: the first 150 years (Devizes, 2003), pp. 210– 11. www.wiltshireheritage.org.uk, accessed 10th February 2010; Phillipa Levine, The Amateur and the Professional (Cambridge, 1986), p. 46; The Wiltshire Archaeological and Natural History Society 1853–1953: A Centenary History (Devizes, 1953). www.sanhs.org (accessed 10 Feb 2010). David Elliston Allen, The Naturalist in Britain: A Social History (London, 1976), pp. 94– 117; Collins, Agrarian History, 1627–31. Levine, Amateur, pp. 63–4. Lincolnshire Archives, Goulding Papers, 5/6 includes information on plants and insects, botanical specimens, lists of plants etc., 1897–1928 as well as nomination slips for the Lincolnshire Naturalists’ Union and correspondence with the Louth Naturalist Society. N. Jardine, J. A. Secord and E. C. Spary, eds, Cultures of Natural History (1996). Allen, Naturalist, p. 106. David Elliston Allen, Books and Naturalists (2010). Anne Secord, ‘Corresponding Interests: Artisans and Gentlemen in Nineteenth-century Natural History’, British Journal for the History of Science 27 (1994), p. 385. Collins, ed., Agrarian History, p. 1621; VCH A58. January Searle, Leaves from Sherwood Forest (1850), pp. 72, 104; George Searle Phillips, 1816–89: Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. Samuel J.M.M. Alberti, ‘Placing Nature: Natural History Collections and their Owners in Nineteenth Century Provincial England’, British Journal of Science, 35 (2002), 291– 311. Natural historians were also of crucial importance in the identification, collection and dissemination of plants and animals around the world, but this is not a topic we cover in this paper. See, for example, Fa-ti Fan, British Naturalists in Qing, China: Science, Empire and Cultural Encounter (2004), and Setsu Tachibana and Charles Watkins, ‘Botanical Transculturaltion: Japanese and British Knowledge and Understanding of Aucuba Japonica and Larix leptolepis 1700–1920’, Environment and History, 16 (2010), 43–71. R. J. Morris, ‘Clubs, Societies and Associations’, in F. M. L. Thompson, ed., The Cambridge Social History of Britain, 1750–1950 (1990), chapter 8. David Elliston Allen, Naturalist, pp. 170–2; Collins, ed., Agrarian History, p. 1633.

Natural History and Local History in Late Victorian and Edwardian England 85 22. 23. 24. 25. 26. 27. 28. 29. 30. 31. 32. 33.

34. 35. 36.

37. 38. 39. 40. 41. 42.

43. 44. 45.

46. 47.

John Chandler, The Reflection in the Pond: A Moonraking Approach to History (London, 2009), pp. 67–8. VCH A37, 1903 report. The Times, 22nd May 1900. See also Chandler, Reflection, p. 65. List taken from early prospectuses. Copies in VCH Archive, box A37. VCH Archive, A30, Hugh Blakiston to Doubleday, 14th June 1899, See also Roy Strong, Country Life, 1897–1997: The English Arcadia (London, 1996). VCH A 21 H.A. Doubleday to A. Trevor-Battye, 5th June 1899. Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, 95419 (2004). The biography is by Martin H. Evans. VCH A51 includes Trevor-Battye’s incoming correspondence. VCH A37. Report (1903) prepared for a meeting of the Victoria County History Advisory Council. Eric L. Mills, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. William Page to Stebbing, 8th March 1905, VCH Archive. Stebbing to William Page, 22nd June 1908, VCH Archive. VCH Archive, A57, Stebbing to Page, 18th February 1908; Page to Stebbing, 20th February 1908, Stebbing to Page, 24th August 1915. This file also reveals that Stebbing regularly wrote more than he was asked for and then resisted being edited for length. Stebbing to William Page, 24th August 1915, VCH Archive. Eric L. Mills, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. VCH A37, ‘Natural History in The Victoria History’. Also H.A. Doubleday and W. Page, eds., A Guide to the Victoria History of the Counties of England (c.1903), pp. 27–32, which includes a list of approved sources that should be used. For Thomas Roscoe Rede Stebbing, see Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, 38300 (2004), William Warde Fowler Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, 33229 (2004); Henry Horatio Dixon Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, 32838 (2004); and George Clarence Druce Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, 32898 (2004). Victoria County History correspondence with them is in VCH A51–57. VCH Archive, A21, Doubleday to Sir Roper Lethbridge, 1st December 1899. VCH Archive, A37, Printed list: ‘Natural History in the Victoria History’. VCH Archives, A21, Doubleday to Sir Roper Lethbridge, 1st December 1899; A22 Doubleday to Lethbridge, 1st August 1900. Cornwall Record Office, X1254, Doubleday to James Clark, 24th June 1902. See below. The correspondence can be followed in Cornwall RO, X1254. N. S. Turner (2000) ‘Catalogue of the type, figured and cited fossils in the Nottinghamshire Natural History Museum, Wollaton Hall, Nottingham, U.K.’ The Geological Curator, 7 (3), 111–21. A. C .Wood A History of the University College of Nottingham 1881–1948 (Oxford, 1953), p. 37. VCH Nottinghamshire, Vol 1, p. 101. Joseph Whitaker (1909) Nimrod, Ramrod, Fishing-Rod and Nature Tales (Nottingham, 1909). See also W. J. Sterland and Joseph Whitaker, A Descriptive List of the Birds of Nottinghamshire (Mansfield, 1879); Joseph Whitaker, A Descriptive List of the Deer Parks and Paddocks of England (London, 1892); Joseph Whitaker The Birds of Tunisia (London, 1905); Joseph Whitaker, Notes on the Birds of Nottinghamshire (Nottingham, 1907); Joseph Whitaker, British Duck-decoys of Today (London, 1918). George Strong to H. A. Doubleday, 24th April 1899, VCH Archive, A8. George Strong, The Heraldry of Herefordshire being a collection of the armorial bearings of families which have been seated in the county at various periods down to the present time, illustrated with richly emblazoned shields; Together with the Commission of the Peace for the year 1847, &c. adapted to form a supplement to Duncumb’s county history (London, 1848).

86 48. 49. 50. 51.

52. 53. 54. 55. 56. 57. 58. 59. 60. 61. 62. 63. 64.

65. 66. 67. 68. 69. 70. 71. 72. 73. 74. 75. 76. 77. 78. 79. 80. 81. 82.

John Beckett and Charles Watkins George Strong, Handbook to Ross and Archenfield; also notes on the geology (by W. S. Symonds) and botany of the Wye Valley [by W. H. Purchas], (Ross, 1863). Arthur Doubleday to Lord Biddulph, 24th July 1903, VCH Archive, A8. Clifford Cordley to William Page, 31st December 1908; 12th April 1909; 3rd May 1909, VCH Archive. Mary Munslow Jones The Lookers-Out of Worcestershire (Worcester, 1980), pp. 133–4. ‘He was a study in brown. . . brown-shaded tweed knickerbocker suit, brown woollen stockings; brown brogue shoes, well polished, snowy white shirt and stock; with his ruddy face, piercing eyes and gleaming monocle, he was a very distinctive figure around Worcester over so many years.’ George Massee, British Fungus-Flora. A Classified Text-book of Mycology (London, 1894). Elias Magnus Fries Hymenomycetes Europaei (Uppsala, 1874). Carleton Rea to A. Trevor-Battye, 2nd July 1900, VCH Archive, A8. Pier Andrea Saccardo Sylloge fungorum omnium hucusque cognitorum (Padua,1882–90) 9 vols. Carleton Rea to Page, 20th February 1906, VCH Archive. Arthur Doubleday to Augustin Ley, 20th February 1906, VCH Archive. Mark Lawley, A Social and Biographical History of British and Irish Field-bryologists at http://britishbryologicalsociety.org.uk/. Mark Lawley, A Social and Biographical History of British and Irish Field-bryologists at http://britishbryologicalsociety.org.uk/. Augustin Ley to Arthur Doubleday, 17th February 1906, VCH Archive. William Page to William de Winton, Zoological Society of London, 21st February 1906, VCH Archive. William Page to Lindsall Richardson, 8th January 1907, VCH Archive. Lindsall Richardson to William Page, 2nd February 1907, VCH Archive. VCH A6, Lethbridge to Doubleday, 13th December 1899, 14th , 22nd February, 13th August, 17th November 1900; Sir Roper Lethbridge, ‘Apple Culture and Cider-making in Devonshire’. Transactions of the Devonshire Association, 32 (1900), 142–94; and xxxiii (1901) for his presidency. VCH A49, James Clark to Page, 11th January 1906 VCH Herefordshire, Volume 1, p. 54. VCH Nottinghamshire, Volume 1, pp. 68–9. VCH Herefordshire p. 80. VCH Herefordshire, p. 86. VCH Herefordshire, Volume 1, p. 96. David Elliston Allen, Books and Naturalists (London, 2010) p. 271. VCH Herefordshire, Volume 1, p. 109. VCH Nottinghamshire, Volume 1, pp. 132–3. VCH Herefordshire, Volume 1, p. 77. VCH Herefordshire, Volume 1, p. 112. VCH Herefordshire, Volume 1, p. 118. The Times, 23rd August 1901. VCH Archive, A44, W.O. Massingberd to W. Page, 3rd April 1906; Page to Massingberd, 5th April 1906. VCH Herefordshire, Volume 1, p. 39. VCH Herefordshire, Volume 1, p. 40. VCH Herefordshire, Volume 1, p. 42. This insect was exhibited at the Entomological Society of London, 6th December 1905; “Mr. E. K. Bankes showed . . . a specimen of Cerostoma asperella, L., discovered by Mrs. Hutchinson near Leominster, on September 21st , 1881, and only taken, as regards Britain, in

Natural History and Local History in Late Victorian and Edwardian England 87

83. 84. 85. 86. 87.

88. 89. 90. 91. 92. 93. 94. 95. 96. 97. 98. 99. 100. 101.

102. 103.

104. 105.

106.

107. 108. 109.

Dorset (formerly), and Herefordshire very rarely” The Entomologist, XIX. (January 1906) 512, p. 48. VCH Herefordshire, Volume 1, p. 86. VCH Herefordshire, Volume 1, p. 42. VCH Nottinghamshire, Volume 1, p. 45. VCH Nottinghamshire, Volume 1, p. 93. VCH Nottinghamshire, Volume 1, p. 100. Alfred Russell Wallace in Island Life noted that ‘the excessively minute Trichopterygidse described by Mr. Matthews’ were distinguished ‘by very minute and obscure characters’. VCH Nottinghamshire, Volume 1, p. 156. VCH Nottinghamshire, Volume 1, p. 161. VCH Herefordshire, Volume 1, p. 128. VCH Herefordshire, Volume 1, p. 53. VCH Nottinghamshire, Volume 1, p. 43. VCH Nottinghamshire, Volume 1, p. 75. VCH Herefordshire, Volume 1, p. 138. VCH Nottinghamshire, Volume 1, p. 163. VCH Herefordshire, Volume1, pp. 142–3. VCH Herefordshire, Volume 1, p. 149 VCH Herefordshire, Volume 1, p. 153. VCH A21: HAD to Trevor-Battye, 5th June 1899. Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, 72414 VCH Archive, Q40, Miss M.K. Dale, to Miss E. Joan Gibbons, 23rd January 1950, Ralph Pugh to Miss Gibbons, 30th March 1950, 13th March 1952; Gibbons to Pugh, 25th June 1951, 18th March 1952; Susan Reynolds to Gibbons, 24th , 27th May 1954. VCH Archive, Catalogue of MSS, A-L, p. 10. The Natural History Curator at the British Museum told John Beckett that library collections (books and manuscripts) went to the British Library in 1973 (19th February 2010), and the Library and Information services at the Natural History Museum are not aware that they have it (22nd February 2010). Nor has it turned up in the Western Manuscripts in the British Library (25th March 2010). Landscapes, 7: 2 (2006), 96, 100; Chandler, 64; Richard Muir, The New Reading the Landscape (Exeter, 2000) Colin Tubbs, The New Forest: An Ecological History (Newton Abbott, 1968); John Sheail, Historical Ecology: The Documentary Evidence (Abbotts Ripton, 1980); George Peterken, Woodland Conservation and Management (London, 1981). See also Emily Russell, People and Land through Time: Linking Ecology and History (New Haven and London, 1997). Diego Moreno, Dal documento al terreno. Storia e archeologia dei sistemi agro-silvo-pastorali. (Bologna, 1990); Roberta Cevasco, Memoria Verde. Un nuovo spazio per la geografia (Reggio Emilia, 2008). See also R. Balzaretti, M. Pearce, and C. Watkins, eds. Ligurian Landscapes: Studies in Archaeology, Geography and History (London, 2004). David Hey and John Rodwell, ‘Wombwell: The Landscape History of a South Yorkshire Coalfield Township’, Landscapes, 7: 2 (2006), 24–47. Email from Dr Lisa Tommaso, Natural History Museum, 22nd February 2010. Joseph Amato, Rethinking Home: A Case for Writing Local History (Berkeley, 2002). See also John Beckett, Michael Turner and Bethanie Afton, ‘Agricultural Sustainability and Open-Field Farming in England, c.1650–1830’, International Journal of Agricultural Sustainability, 1: 2 (2003), 124–40; Timothy Cooper, ‘British Environmental History’: www.history.ac.uk/making history, 9th March 2010.