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A Victorian Phenomenon: Amateur Naturalists' Field Clubs in the North of IrelandAuthor(s): Timothy CollinsSource: The Linen Hall Review, Vol. 4, No. 2 (Summer, 1987), pp. 10-11, 14Published by: Linen Hall LibraryStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/20533899 .

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Belfast Naturalists' Field Club founder members Left to right: S.A. Stewart, Ralph T?te, William Gray and Joseph Wright.

(From Some Irish naturalists, by Robert Lloyd Praeger, courtesy of Dundalgan Press, Dundalk)

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In the relatively stable society which existed in the cities and larger towns of the British Isles following the industrial revolution, a new middle class was

making its presence felt. This was especially true of the northeast of Ireland where, in the industrial centres around Belfast, this new hard-working

middle-class was beginning to enjoy the fruits of its own industriousness. That something constructive and creative yet socially acceptable was needed to fill the leisure time of this group of people was

proven conclusively in Belfast in the early 1860s. In the winter of 1860-61, under the auspices of the

Science and Art Department, South Kensington and the Belfast Natural History and Philosophical Society (at the time the only intellectual forum in the

region for naturalists) a series of lectures was

given by Joseph Beete Jukes, then Director of the Irish Geological Survey, on geology, to an enthus iastic audience. (Set up in 1852, the Science and Art

Department inaugurated science classes in various

regional centres around the British Isles.) During the winters of 1861-62 and 1862-63 these winter lec tures were given by Ralph T?te on botany, zoology and geology. So popular were his lectures, which

incidentally were remarkable for the stress put on

fieldwork, that on their conclusion many of those

attending resolved to follow up what they had learned by continuing to study the subject on their own. Thus it was that in March 1863 the Belfast

Naturalists' Field Club held its first public meeting. The founder-members, many of whom went on to carve reputations for themselves in their chosen

fields, were ably assisted by Ralph T?te himself, who also managed to find the time to compile his Flora Belfastiensis, one of the earliest Ulster floras.

The first President (then called Chairman) was Canon John Grainger of Broughshane. The son of a Belfast ship-owner he was primarily a collector.

Initially specializing in Pleistocene fossils, then later in all things zoological, botanical and archaeo

logical, he filled his house with specimens and

objects from all parts of the world. This collection, some 60,000 items in all, ranging from a fair-sized dolmen to New Zealand weapons, flint flakes, stuffed birds, beads, crystals and microscopic shells, was donated by him to the Belfast Municipal

Museum in Royal Avenue in 1891, the year of his death. The Secretaries were Ralph T?te and W.T.

Timothy Collins surveys

A Victorian Phenomenon Amateur Naturalists' Field Clubs in the North of Ireland

page 10

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Chew, a young businessman with an interest in

entomology. Among the original committee were Alexander F. Herdman, whose family had a

flourishing manufacturing business at Sion Mills near Strabane and Samuel Alexander Stewart, a trunk and cabinet maker who had a shop at Lower

North Street where those interested would meet after business hours to plan the Saturday excursions.

Although Stewart devoted much time to the study of local geology, his reputation as a scientist rests on

his botanical work. He helped T?te with his Flora

Belfastiensis and helped George Dickie with his Flora of Ulster published in 1864. A general study of the flora of the north east with a young friend Thom as Hughes Corry, who tragically was drowned

while studying the flora of Lough Gill, resulted in 1888 in the publication of A flora of the north-east of Ireland. This flora, which in the last 99 years has been through two editions with many supplements compiled in the main from information collected

during Field Club outings, is still an essential source of reference today. Stewart succeeded Wil liam Darragh as Curator of the Museum in College Square North in 1891, and died aged 83 in 1910

following a traffic accident. Also on the committee was William Hugh Patterson, a member of the well known family of science and a keen naturalist and

archaeologist. As a man of letters, he distinguished himself with the publication of a Glossary of words and phrases used in Antrim and Down. Published in 1880, it is a comprehensive study of Ulster dialect.

The list of members who have contributed some

thing to the Belfast Naturalists' Field Club is a long one, and details are to be found elsewhere. What is remarkable is the fact that the Club was so success ful. Unlike other popular pursuits it did not fade into obscurity when the founding members became inactive through ill health and old age. Each

succeeding generation has produced active mem bers who followed up the work of their predecessors out of love of nature. As Robert Lloyd Praeger, librarian, naturalist and second generation Club

member, said in his book Some Irish naturalists, the Belfast Naturalists' Field Club was "... a second

university in which I formed friendships which,

despite disparity of age, remained warm and intimate and through which I acquired a knowledge of field-lore, botanical, zoological and geological,

which stood to me throughout life". The Great War and the social unrest following

the 1916 Rising slowed, but did not halt the work of the Club. Even after the" Civil War and the treaty

which resulted in the division of this island into the Irish Free State and Northern Ireland, Club outings continued to be held in various parts of the province.

Perhaps a prime example of the influence the Belfast Naturalists' Field Club had on its members is the large number of similar field clubs that were set up during this period in the smaller towns of

Northern Ireland. Founded mostly by ex-members of the Belfast Club, the first of these was the Route

Naturalists' Field Club. Set up in 1923 by the Rev. E.M. Gumley, rector of Ballintoy and the Hon. Helen Macnaughten, the Route held many success ful outings in the Coleraine and Ballycastle area.

Similar clubs which came into being were the Ramblers based in Armagh, and Mid-Antrim based in Ballymena. Other town with Clubs in

cluded Cookstown, Derry, Dungannon, Limavady, Omagh and Rostrevor. All were affiliated to the Belfast Naturalists' Field Club, which meant that

lecturers went from Club to Club in the winter months and joint outings were organised in the summer months. Sadly many of these clubs did not survive the Second World War.

The question, though, must be asked: what real contribution did the amateur naturalists' field clubs of the nineteenth century make? Were their mem bers merely 'stamp collectors', as one contemporary critic termed them? Before answering, one must consider the rivalry that existed between the amateur naturalist and the professionally qualified botanist and zoologist. This stemmed from a radical difference in attitude towards their chosen

speciality between the professional or closet naturalist and the amateur or field naturalist. The

professional naturalist studied and dissected dead, preserved specimens in the privacy of the laboratory or Closet'. The field naturalist on the other hand studied living animals and plants in their natural environments. In the nineteenth century the closet naturalists relied on the field naturalists merely to

bring them specimens for study. Being profess ionals they held all the top scientific posts and

rarely ever went out in the field. That this led to

acrimony is not surprising. T.H. Huxley called closet naturalists "spider-stuffers and hay botan ists" who were sometimes unable to recognize living animals and plants when they saw them.

This simple lack of real-life knowledge often led to

professional naturalists making absurd mistakes. As Lynn Barber in her book The heyday of natural

history recounts: ... there was, for instance, the famous case of the legless

Birds of Paradise which arose because ail the first Birds of Paradise sent to England had their legs cut off to

facilitate packing. Leglessness thereupon became enshrined as a characteristic of the species, and popular writers went into rhapsodies at the thought of the little creatures spending all their lives in the air. Only the eventual arrival of a Bird of Paradise complete with legs put paid to these ethereal fantasies. As late as the 1870s, John Edward Gray, Keeper of Zoology at the British

Museum, perpetrated a similar gaffe when he attacked a

book on Indian fauna, published by naturalists attached to

the Indian service, because it depicted a certain species of

mud-turtle without any holes in its flippers. He had examined many museum specimens of the turtle and knew that it always had a hole between the second and third digits and it was, he maintained , negligent of the illustrator not to have noticed this. Whereupon the

authors, field naturalists all, replied icily and publicly that, as everyone in India knew, the holes were made by the fishermen who caught the turtles tying their flippers together to prevent them escaping. But obviously a closet

man could not be expected to know this.

In the colleges and universities, degree courses in

botany and zoology contained no fieldwork and little laboratory work, thus widening the gap

between amateur and professional. Robert Lloyd Praeger in The way that I went paints a grim picture of what it was like to study natural history in the 1880s:

... my scientific life began in the field, and has continued

there. When I was promoted from a small private school to the 'Inst.' in Belfast I knew a good deal about local

plants ? where they grew, when they flowered, what their

roots and seeds were like as well as their blossoms: and I

eagerly joined the small group of boys who attended a bi

weekly botanical class. But when I found that botany consisted in drawing a series of adnate parallelograms and entering in the blank spaces such terms as

'monochlamydeous' and 'gamosepalous' I fled in terror, and later, at college, I did not venture again to approach

my favourite subject as seen through the eyes of a teacher of Victoria's glorious days. Indeed, Queen's College, as it

continued page fourteen

page 11

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Booklore continued from previous page

consisted of travel works. About twenty works were published in the series called Books for the

People, published at sixpence, also in pale yellow glazed boards. These consisted of portions of Parlour Library and Parlour Novelist volumes. I have also heard of a religious series, but have never come across one or seen it listed.

What became of the firm after 1853? They continued to issue new editions of their steady selling school textbooks, but the imprints of these show a shrinking of their business. Up to 1857 their London address continued to hold price of place, but

by 1860 they were using only their Belfast address,

and had added the name of Longman & Co., and

by 1863 Simkin & Co. as well, as their London

agents. By this time, also, the firm seems to have been run by R. Simms alone (presumably the

grandson of the co-founder) ?

though the imprint remained firmly Simms and M'Intyre. Like most of their Parlour Library volumes, the books were not printed in Ireland. Probably the last public ation to bear the famous name was an edition of Robert Patterson's Introduction to zoology, issued in 1870. By 1872 Patterson was being published by

William Mullan of Belfast. Longman & Co. seem to have taken over the works of James Thomson. It

was a sad end to a long and exciting career, but by this time the star of Marcus Ward was in the

ascendant, and Belfast publishing was still a force to be reckoned with.

A Victorian Phenemenon continued from page nine

was then, was a rather forbidding and comfortless place. The professors for the most part arrived five minutes before lecture-time, talked for an hour, and departed again to the fastnesses of University Street or the Lisburn Road. There were no laboratories or practical work except in chemistry

? and for the medical students, of course,

anatomy. In each of the three Colleges that constituted the

Queen's (later the Royal) University there was a chair of Natural History. 'Professors of Creation', as A.C. Haddon used to call them. This is much too wide a field for any man, and it is not surprising that some of the

subjects were treated in a rather perfunctory manner. If

you were adrift between lectures, the only place where you could even sit down was on a wooden bench in a small severe room off the main hall, where a silent man with a

white beard, as uncommunicative as the Professor of

Metaphysics, served plump buns and weak coffee at a

reasonable charge. I took geology lectures, necessary for

the engineering course, but never handled a rock

specimen or a fossil, though I was allowed to peer at some

through the dusty glass of museum cases. But all the time

I was fast learning geology and zoology and botany of another kind through the Belfast Naturalists' Field Club. All the same, I have felt continually the want of the

laboratory training in the natural sciences which I never

got: that is a bad handicap in modern scientific work of

whatever kind: but it was not to be had in Belfast fifty years ago, and as I always preferred the field as a

laboratory, I have continued to have a wonderfully good time without it.

Although this division between amateur and

professional was more pronounced in other parts of the British Isles, the smaller numbers of specialists in Ireland meant that there was more cooperation, and even grudging respect between the two groups. Field Club members were invited by professionals to take part in many major projects such as the study and dating of the estuarine clays and raised beaches of the north-east of Ireland and the deep sea

dredging expeditions off the south coast of Ireland. Field Club members took part in various learned

disputes such as the 'Larne Gravels Controversy' and important trials such as the 'Broighter Gold Ornaments Trial'.

The legacy of the amateur naturalists of the nineteenth century is to be seen clearly today.

Natural history is now a respected subject and an

accepted part of the curriculum right down to

primary school level. The amateur naturalists' field clubs themselves still attract people who are

interested in acquiring a knowledge of field-lore

and, equally importantly, in passing this inform ation on to others. Their contribution to the well

being of society cannot be underestimated. Praeger, page 14

in reflective mood in old age, commented that his fellow naturalists were:

... men and women to whom the contemplative and gentle life has appealed

? love of the beautiful in whatever

manifestation, a wide tolerance, a reverence for the

lowliest creature, a shrinking from 'the strife for triumph more than truth', a belief that happiness is not to be

measured by mere wordly success.

These are the people who, regardless of background, are an essential part of civilized society today.

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