But death is everywhere the spring and herald of life. Though for a time there was no regular society, meetings continued to be held in a more private way, and, as generally happens after an interregnum, new and better principles of management were introduced, resulting in the formation of those numerous and excellent local societies which started botany afresh, and several of the best of which are still at work. The late venerable John Mellor, of Royton, near Oldham, is generally considered to have laid the foundation of the new school. Associated with him were the celebrated John Dewhurst, first president of the collective meetings, and George Caley, well known to the scientific as the botanist who accompanied Sir Joseph Banks to the South Seas. The society which lays claim to primogeniture is that at Middleton, or, at all events the Middleton District Society. Its former president, the late Mr. John Turner, possessed a letter written from Australia in 1800, in which Caley warmly acknowledges his obligations to the members, as having first given him a love for plants. The Mottram Society is also of long date, having celebrated forty–four anniversaries.[25] To make this matter of relative age more intelligible, it may be observed that the local societies group themselves into “districts,” and that the name of a local society is sometimes the same as that of a district society. For instance, the Ashton–under–Lyne district takes in Ashton, Stalybridge, Mottram, Glossop, Tintwistle, &c., and has both monthly meetings and “bye–meetings;” the Rochdale district comprises Rochdale, Middleton, Milnrow, Todmorden, Harpurhey, &c.; the Bredbury district includes Stockport, Disley, Hatherlow, &c.; and so with the others. The Prestwich local society, the nearest, and in many respects the most interesting to Manchester, has been in existence thirty–eight years, having been established September 11th, 1820. (Now, of course, extended to sixty–two.)
Gradually, after this fresh start, the whole of the country lying north–west, north, and north–east of Manchester became animated with the love of botany; as far even as from Disley and Todmorden came the echo of the new music; and under the successive presidentships (after John Dewhurst’s) of Edward Hobson, the great bryologist, then of John Horsefield, and subsequently of James Percival, a man of extraordinary information, both in accuracy and amount, the meetings have gone on uninterruptedly and happily, and never were they more satisfactory than at the present moment. The list for 1858, printed along with the rules, announces twenty–six of the grand general gatherings, or a meeting every fortnight, and fifteen different places of assembly. The most successful meetings have been at Prestwich, Ashton–under–Lyne, Blackley, Bury, Rochdale, Middleton, Oldham, Whitefield, Eccles, Ringley, Radcliffe, and Harpurhey; and the best attended, the last year or two, those held at Prestwich, Whitefield, and Bury. The meetings, as at the beginning, are held upon the Sunday afternoon, at some respectable tavern, such being the only place where working men can assemble inexpensively; and though this may seem to some persons detrimental to good order and sobriety, no religious service was ever more decorously conducted. Working men can assemble at a tavern, and not abuse it, quite as well as gentlemen; in either case, all depends on the ideas they carry in with them. It is the peculiar characteristic of intelligent delight in the objects of nature, that, with very rare exceptions, it brings with it a moral and harmonising influence on the heart, so that men who gather together as our Lancashire botanists do, albeit in a public–house and on a Sunday, are the most likely of all in their station of life, to conduct themselves in a manner becoming intelligent beings. When the churchwardens or other peace–officers think proper to walk in, as sometimes happens, they always express themselves satisfied. Twice only, during upwards of seventy years, have the meetings been interfered with by the authorities, and in neither case has it been from disapproval of them, or because of misconduct on the part of the members. The second occasion, which alone had notoriety, fell in November, 1850, when the men had assembled, as often before, at the “Ostrich,” in Rooden Lane. The landlord of the house had made himself obnoxious to the law, but in such a way, whatever it was, that he could only be reached by the unfortunate botanists being made the scape–goat.[26] The ale is not forgotten, nor would it be wisely forgotten if it were. Water is good, but so, in their season, are good wine and good ale. “My specimens,” once said old Crowther, in his quaint, quiet way, when nearly eighty years had silvered his hair, his eyes twinkling as he spoke, “my specimens always look best through a glass!” Capital botanical libraries are possessed by the societies at Todmorden, Ashton, Oldham, Miles Platting, Prestwich, and Boothstown. Several of the societies also possess herbariums. The Prestwich collection, which fills nearly one hundred and sixty volumes, contains a beautiful series of specimens prepared by the celebrated Mr. Shepherd, once curator of the Liverpool Botanic Garden. Many of the members further amuse themselves by cultivating curious plants, the roots of which have been chiefly obtained by making excursions, for the special purpose, into North Wales, the Lake district, and the more romantic parts of Derbyshire and Yorkshire.
Once a year, on a Sunday fixed as near the height of the flower season as possible, there is an extra grand meeting, when deputations from all the societies in the neighbourhood make a point of attending. That of 1858 was held on the 11th of August at the “Golden Lion,” Harpurhey, twenty or thirty different societies being represented. The proceedings were reported by the writer of these pages in the Manchester Weekly Times of the ensuing Saturday, the account, after some preliminary observations, continuing as follows:—“The botanists began to assemble soon after two o’clock, and at three, when the proceedings commenced, there were present no fewer than two hundred and twelve, all, with the exception of four or five, working men, and not more than the odd dozen or so unconnected with one or other of the societies. It is a striking and most pleasing fact, for the consideration of intelligent people, that there should be in and about Manchester a body of naturalists able to send two hundred zealous and well–informed representatives to an annual meeting where the object of assembly was purely social. Whatever else the cotton manufacturing districts may be in the eyes of people at a distance, here, at least, is a characteristic that cannot be disputed, and such as no other system or trade in the country has tended either to develope or encourage. The meeting took place on the large bowling–green behind the inn. At the lower extremity was placed a table, some twenty yards long, and covered throughout its whole length with specimens of flowers, mostly curious and uncommon, and about half of which were British, with the addition of a few stove and greenhouse plants, contributed by gentlemen’s gardeners. After a little time spent in conversation, the president, James Percival, was called to the chair, from which he gave the names of about one hundred and fifty of the most remarkable exhibits, first the Latin, and then the English, often with some little remark upon their nature or place of growth. The accuracy of his naming was not more remarkable than the correctness of the pronunciation, showing how mistaken is the popular notion that the Latin or scientific names of plants are harder to learn than the English ones. Percival having concluded, his place was taken by John Nowell, of Todmorden, who similarly named a quantity of mosses, and when these were finished a box of beautiful ferns was opened by Mr. Tom Stansfield, of the same town, and the contents disposed of in the same manner. If any difference of opinion arose as to the correctness of a name, the specimen was handed about for criticism, but it rarely happened that either of the three spokesmen had made even so much as a slip of the tongue. The plants having all been named and distributed, some routine business was transacted, and the meeting, as to its formal part, broke up, having lasted very nearly three hours. The remainder of the evening was spent, like the commencement, in friendly chat. This was in many respects quite as interesting as the regular business, the opportunity being afforded for intimate converse with one after another of two hundred as thoroughly good–hearted and intelligent men as ever met together, full of anecdote of themselves and their companions, never vainly putting forth their knowledge without call for it, but never allowing the slightest error to pass unchallenged. No discussions of learned doctors were ever more vigorous and entertaining than those of our botanists on the green of the “Golden Lion.” Among the chief botanists present, in addition to those already mentioned, were George Hulme, Prestwich; Edwin Clough and Henry Newton, Ashton–under–Lyne; Tom Bleackley, Whitefield; John Shaw, Eccles; Isaac Ollerenshaw, Glossop; John Darbyshire, Newton; William Bentley, Royton; James Devonport, Droylsden; John Turner, Middleton; Richard Buxton, John Crowe, and John Warburton, Manchester; William and James Horsefield, sons of John; Mr. Isaac Williamson, of Stockport; and Mr. Lund, president of the Rochdale Society. Mr. Edwin Waugh, Mr. Henry Robson, and several other visitors from Manchester also attended.”
Not the least pleasing feature of the meeting in question consisted in the number of men in advanced years who were enjoying its incidents,—fine specimens of youth carried along into mature life,—that most admirable and noble condition of human nature, and looking as if they were never going to be old. They showed how true it is that spirit is youth, and that the want of spirit is age,—that life measures not by birthdays, but by capacity for noble enjoyments, and that he who would be a Man, must never forget to be a Boy. It avails nothing for a man to live sixty or seventy years, unless he carry along with him the freshness and cheerfulness of his youth, and nothing so powerfully contributes to keeping the heart green, as simple and true love of country pleasures and country productions. This is the true old age, and that which we should set ourselves to attain. Our first duty is to live as long as we can; and our chief wisdom, after the fear of God, is to cultivate those tastes which make youth of spirit last till birthdays come no more. The actual longevity both of naturalists in general, and of many of the Lancashire men in particular, is a fact of no mean significance. Crowther was seventy–nine when he died; John Mellor, eighty–two; Elias Hall, the geologist, eighty–nine. Timothy Harrop, of Middleton, with whose work, as a bird and animal stuffer, the British Association were so well pleased when they visited Manchester in 1842; and Josiah Nuttall, of Heywood, were also very old men. Whether this longevity is to be attributed to the quiet and temperate habits which the study of natural history almost invariably induces, or to the continual out–door exercise inseparable from genuine pursuit of it; or to the quickening of the intelligence and affections, and the invigoration of the bodily health, which, by a beautiful law of nature, always so gratefully ensues;—there is evidently a something about natural history—other circumstances being equal—wonderfully promotive of length of days. Men never step into the presence of nature with affection and reverence, but they come back blessed and strengthened with a reward.
Let us now look a little more closely at the individuals. The lives of some of them are before the world,—told in those interesting, though “short and simple annals,” which have appeared in the local press from time to time, such as the autobiography of John Horsefield, who died March 6th, 1854, and the obituary notice of Crowther, which filled a column and a half of the Manchester Guardian, of January 13th, 1847, a week after his decease. Crowther was a Banksian, and one of the most simple–hearted men that ever lived; willing to travel any distance, and undergo any amount of fatigue, so that he secured his flower. As one of his old companions remarked to me some years ago, “he was not learned, but he was very loving.” It is worthy also of record that Crowther never touched his wages for purposes of botanical pleasure, but took home every penny, and trusted to fortunate accidents for the means of supplying his scientific wants. Of the indefatigable and acute George Caley, who was born at Craven in 1770, and died May 23rd, 1829, there is a pleasing memoir in the “Magazine of Natural History,” vol. ii., p. 310; and vol. iii., p. 226. A similar memoir of Edward Hobson, who died September 7th, 1830, may be seen in the “Transactions of the Manchester Literary and Philosophical Society,” vol. vi., 1842. Buxton’s is prefixed to the “Guide,” and several other memoirs have since been given by Mr. Cash in his delightful little book, “When there’s a Will there’s a Way.” These appear to be the whole of the memoirs of any length that have been printed, though there have frequently been short notices when death has carried off another of the band. It would be well were they reprinted in a collective form. Unmarked though they are by stirring incidents, the lives of these men are such as no person of feeling and intelligence, and sympathy with pure, hearty, honest endeavour after knowledge and self–improvement, can peruse without emotion. Science owes more to them than has ever been confessed, and it is anything but honourable to public taste and public morals, that while the lives of murderers and rascals of all descriptions are read with avidity, and the minutest incidents of their abominable careers demanded and fed upon, the lives of the modest, unassuming votaries of science, both the dead and those who are yet with us, are never so much as inquired for. They have their reward. If it be not in the notoriety of a great criminal, it is in the perennial enjoyment of the highest faculties of our nature, such as are brought out only by loving conversance with the works of God.
Scarcely anything is recorded of the earlier Lancashire botanists. Of John Dewhurst, mentioned as the first president of the restored botanical society at the beginning of the present century, little more is known than that he was a fustian–cutter by trade, and lived at Red Bank. John Shaw, now of Eccles (since deceased), remembers seeing him in his “pride of place” at the “Lord Nelson,” at Ringley, where the annual meeting was at that time accustomed to be held, the first Sunday in May, Mr. S. being then a child, and this the first botanical meeting he was present at. Dewhurst died in Salford, about 1820, at the age of about seventy. He was of a good and well–to–do family, but in the position of “poor relation.” A kind friend of the Lancashire botanists in those days,—Mr. Mitchell, of Bradford Hall,—gave Dewhurst and Hobson a piece of ground adjoining his house for a botanic garden. In this they were accustomed to deposit the roots of plants procured in the course of their rambles, going up every Monday morning for the purpose. It happened at that time that there were great operatives’ political meetings. One day, in 1812, it came to Mr. Mitchell’s ears that the two botanists were engaged to attend one of them, and at the same moment he had private information that the magistrates intended to disperse it, and send the leaders to prison,—Hobson being one of the marked, and certain to be apprehended. Luckily for all parties, the meeting was appointed for the very day when the two botanists were accustomed to visit their garden. Up they went as usual, early in the morning, from which time till late in the afternoon their host contrived, probably without much difficulty, to keep them engaged with liquid refreshment, and thus saved Hobson at all events from imprisonment. As the two men journeyed homewards, they met the soldiers and their captives on the way to gaol. One of Dewhurst’s intimate associates was old William Evans, of Tyldesley, now long deceased, a friend from boyhood of Dr. Hull, Dr. Tomlinson, and Dr. Withering, and companion also of George Caley. “He was always after botany,” says a letter respecting him, “and travelled many thousands of miles in quest of plants.” That excellent botanist and worthy old man, Joseph Evans, of Boothstown, to whom we have had occasion to express our acknowledgments in the “Manchester Flora,” is son of the renowned William. Born in 1803, the lad, when only ten years of age, used to be taken to the meetings, walking, of course, every inch of the way, both there and back. He was also his father’s constant companion in the fields. Ah, how much is imbibed under such kindly teaching, and how much more than we actually learn is excited and animated! It is not so much what a man, even one’s own father, tells us, tutor–fashion, that does the good for one’s entire life–time, as what he inspires us with. The man, or the woman either, upon whom we look back as having supplied the aurora of our mental day, when we think it out carefully, is he or she who taught us not so much how to write and cast accounts, as how to see and to feel—to see the wild–flowers, and the snow–crystals, and the darting dragon–flies in their beautiful blue corselets,—to listen to the hum of the busy bees and the songs of the birds, and to feel that “he prayeth best who loveth best all things both great and small.” Evans was taught, when no more than ten years old, how to contemplate the immortal beauty of nature. Like his father before him, he had very little book–learning, but he fed abundantly on the best and truest source of all great and worthy ideas. A vigorous frame and an admirable constitution enabled him to undertake journeys on foot that to many would be positively affrighting. He knew the contents of every wood and pond within twenty miles of his home, the results of his long rambles plainly declared in the trim little garden adjoining his cottage. The number of plants we once counted in it, all curious, exceeded three hundred. Evans died June 23rd, 1874, and was followed to his grave in Worsley churchyard by more than a thousand people, including a hundred and seventy young children. For of the little folk, especially girls, he was always immensely fond;—they went to the churchyard more of their own accord than because led. His sympathy with them was the sweetest of all sympathies—the sympathy of tenderness and simplicity; no wonder that many of them carried little chaplets of midsummer field flowers. We often hear of magnificent funerals—chariots and plumes; they may not, after all, be such as we should so well care to be the pattern of our own. The cottage itself wherein he resided was clean and bright as a sea–shell just washed by the waves. If the love of the clear purity of wild–flowers kept alive in old Evans the love of one thing more than another, it would seem to have been that of a home absolutely spotless, still maintained, we believe, by one who always reminds us of a rose in the snow. In figure Joseph Evans was tall and thin, a lofty forehead conferring a dignity upon his appearance which invariably attracted strangers. Never was this more observable than at a natural history meeting once at the Manchester Athenæum.[27]
No botanist contemporary with the elder Evans attained greater celebrity than John Martin, of Tyldesley. He was especially well–informed respecting Carices, and first drew the attention of the botanists of Manchester to the richness of the neighbourhood, supplying, in regard to them, names and localities they knew not of, as well as many facts respecting the botany of Tyldesley in particular, with which he has never been properly accredited. This eminent veteran was among us till so late as August 13th, 1855.
The mantle of these old men has fallen well. Very few of the botanists mentioned above are still alive—I am glad to be able to add to the short list the name of Richard Hampson, of Tyldesley; but they have plenty of successors, and never more energetically than at the present moment was natural history pursued as a pastime in South East Lancashire.
The peculiarities of the original race are fast disappearing, a circumstance plainly attributable to the facilities of travel given by the railway system, to the multiplication of books, and to the more general diffusion of knowledge. At the period when the celebrity of the old Lancashire botanists was established, say during the first quarter of the present century, they lived in comparative isolation. Now the isolation alike of abode and opportunities has been cancelled, and as a consequence the class of men who as individuals, somewhat conspicuous in their way, gave it colour, have slowly disappeared. The ancient spirit, nevertheless, is as keen as ever, and the love of botany in particular is quite as honourably and intelligently represented as at any preceding time. If we can no longer single out men very particularly remarkable, it is because the estates of the patriarchs have been divided, as it were, among whole troops of worthy descendants.