FORMER SUFFOLK NATURALISTS 1. John Stevens Henslow IN the prefaces of Hind's Flora of Suffolk 1846 and the Flora of 1889 there are mentioned many local botanists who contributed Information incorporated into these books. It is interesting to note how many of these were clergymen, who quite evidently were deeply immersed in the knowledge of their own localities, studying not only natural history and geology but also local history and archeology. Amongst the most interesting of these was John Stevens Henslow whose name was included without his consent, with Edmund Skepper as joint author of the Flora of Suffolk 1846. He was a Student of St. John's College, Cambridge (B.A. 1818, M.A. 1821) and had a wide interest in every aspect of natural history and in 1818 became a Fellow of the Geological Society. He wrote a paper on the geology of the Isle of Man, taking some students with him on his visit there. He walked forty miles in one notable day carrying his geological hammer and a knapsack of specimens on his back and on his return to his hotel he danced all through the night. An article on this expedition was published in the first volume of the Proceedings of the Cambridge Philosophical Society and it was considered of such outstanding value that the whole edition was soon sold out. In 1822 he was appointed Professor of Mineralogy but in 1825 he was made Professor of Botany and it is in this chair that he made his reputation, for he brought to this department learning, energy and great gifts of teaching. In consequence he raised the Botany School to renown from the obscurity in which it had sunk during the professorship of Thomas Martyn, who had held the post as a sinecure. In 1837, he was appointed Rector of Hitcham, in West Suffolk and he remained there until his death in 1861. He conscientiously carried out his duties as parish priest but also at Easter each year gave a series of lectures at the Botany School. When he first took up his duties in Hitcham, in 1837, the condition of the farm labourers, who made up the greater part of his care, was a State of destitution and it is reported that the Parish Rate in 1834 had amounted to ÂŁ1,016, being an average of twenty-seven shillings for every man, woman and child in the village. This was the result of the "Speenham land policy" which augmented agricultural wages with poor relief. This practice was brought to an end by the Poor Law Act of 1834 and left behind it great resentment and distress especially in the South and in East Anglia as there was no alternative employment to agriculture as was the case where new industrial expansion was taking place. The only education available in Hitcham was a dame school and children were not being brought to church to be christened nor their parents to be married.
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Henslow began by establishing a school largely from his own income first of all, as he met with Opposition from the farmers who were afraid of anything that would improve the lot or increase the independence of their labourers and their families. The school became known to a wider public than the village for Henslow introduced botany into the curriculum to arouse an interest and initiative formerly lacking in the children. He published a list of Hitcham Plants, a copy of which was given to every child taking part in the botany expeditions. T o help the labourers themselves, he organised ploughing matches in 1838, enthusiasticaily supported by the labourers, but so obstructed by the farmers that fairplay was impossible. In 1849 he set out to establish allotments, but could get no help from the farmers. He, therefore, used a part of his own glebe to provide fifty allotments of a quarter of an acre each in size. T o encourage those who worked them, he planned an annual flower show in the Rectory garden and gave prizes for the best products. There were also prizes for the children's nosegays of labelled wild flowers. Fireworks at the end of the day added to the fun of the occasion. Gradually his kindness, wisdom and pertinacity wore down the Opposition, when farmers found to their surprise that the men working on the allotments did not steal their seed nor scamp their farm work. The use of the Poors' Fen came up for consideration and the trustees, instead of letting it for grazing agreed that it should be used for further allotments and so another hundred quarter acre plots were made available. Henslow was an enthusiastic collector and the Rectory became a veritable museum, but when he had been influential in founding the Ipswich Museum in 1846 he sent many of his specimens there and others to Cambridge and to Kew. It was he who recommended Darwin, a contemporary of his at Cambridge, as naturalist to the Beagle, and he received and looked after many of the specimens sent home from that expedition. In this way he was in part responsible for the fact that Darwin read his historic paper to the Linnean Society in 1858 " O n the tendency of species to form Varieties" instead of Wallace alone. He had a great gift of lecturing to awaken interest in all types of audiences, from children in the village to the Royal Family in Buckingham Palace, in natural history and geology. In his Flower Shows he would give 'lecturets' at intervals through the day. It was through his lectures that he won the regard of the farmers of his neighbourhood, for having discovered 'phosphatic nodules' m the crag formations he told them in a lecture to the tarmers' club in Hadleigh of the value that these would be as a torm of artificial manure, and soon "coprolite pits" honeycombed Suffolk and Norfolk.
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He was also a leader in educational advances, helping to found the University of London and being one of their examiners and sitting on the Senate. He used his influence in Cambridge to introduce the natural science tripos. He developed the University Herbarium and the Botanical Garden when it was moved to its present site from the centre of the City. He was in close touch with Kew as his daughter Frances had married Sir Joseph Hooker. In addition to all this he remained the pastor of his flock and was not absent from Hitcham for a single Sunday for fifteen years. BOOKS CONSULTED
Memoir of Life of Henslovi. Rev. Leonard Blofield (his brother-in-law) also named Jenyns. Dictionary of National Biography vol. 26, p. 90. Henslow, Rev. J. S. (1861) A Biographical Sketch. Gardners' Chronical
pp. 505, 527, 551. M a n d e r , R. P.
T h e F a r m Labourers' Friend.
East Anglian
Magazine
10, 537. Gentleman's Magazine (1861) vol. 12, p. 90. Trevelyan, G . M . English Social History vol. 4, p. 77. D.
J. MARTIN