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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