FIG 19. Ruined cottages on Samson, photographed during a visit to the island by a party of geology students in the 1890s. (Gibson collection)
FIG 20. On Samson primroses still grow near the ruins of the cottages. (Rosemary Parslow)
Besides their ruined dwellings, kitchen middens and other artefacts, the inhabitants of Samson left other mementos. They left behind several trees, tamarisk Tamarix gallica, elder, privet Ligustrum ovalifolium hedges (the latter now apparently lost, as only wild privet L. vulgare is found on the island today), burdock Arctium minus and primroses Primula vulgaris, which are still found not far from the ruins (Fig. 20). They also left the stone hedges that marked the boundaries of some of their tiny fields. Despite the history of Samson, Kay (1956) was of the opinion that it was the sort of place where a couple of enterprising young men could earn a healthy living with a flower farm and a few cattle. He had earlier heard of a Scillonian who had been offered a deal on the island, £10 per year rent for twenty years, then £250 per year afterwards. His friend did not take up the offer, his new wife not fancying a life on an uninhabited island – and it is probably fortunate for Samson that it has remained uninhabited by humans.
CHAPTER 4 Naturalists and Natural History
A singular circumstance has been remarked with respect of these birds [woodcock], which, during the prevalence of strong gales in a direction varying from East to North, are generally found here before they are discovered in England, and are first seen about the Eastern Islands and the neighbouring cliffs. May not this circumstance tend to elucidate the enquiries of the naturalist relative to their migration?
George Woodley (1822)
SOME OF THE early visitors to Scilly played their part in contributing to our knowledge of the flora and fauna of the islands, and some of them will be mentioned in these pages. Today, Scilly is a popular holiday destination, and many naturalists visit the islands. Universities and other groups also make field trips to Scilly to study various aspects of the ecology, especially the marine biology. Another large group that has contributed greatly to scientific information about Scilly is the diverse body of professional biologists who continue to carry out surveys and all manner of research projects on the flora and fauna, often on behalf of statutory agencies such as English Nature. Clearly there are now too many people to do more than acknowledge the contribution of a few of their number. The selection is necessarily subjective, covering mainly the earlier naturalists, but also people I know, and those whose work I have drawn upon. It is becoming increasingly difficult to acknowledge everyone who has added to our knowledge of the natural history of Scilly – especially when it comes to birds and plants. So I hope those mentioned here will stand as representative of the rest.
Prior to the early 1900s the only notes on the natural history of the Isles of Scilly were occasional comments in reports of broader interest such as that by Robert Heath (1750), after he had spent about a year in Scilly. When J. E. (‘Ted’) Lousley published his Flora in 1971 he gave a comprehensive account of botanists who had contributed to the discovery of the flora of the islands. In this he commented on the paucity of botanical records from Scilly before the early twentieth century, which he put down to the inaccessibility of the islands. So when Sir William Hooker, the first Director of the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, spent ten days in Scilly in spring 1813, visiting all the larger islands and making only the most miserable of comments on a few species he had observed, Lousley is scathing in his assessment of the great opportunity lost.
Fortunately things picked up a little from then on. In 1821 a Warwickshire botanist, the Reverend William Thomas Bree, visited Scilly and listed a few plants, including the first record of balm-leaved figwort Scrophularia scorodonia. Other botanists also visited the islands: Francis King Eagle collected white mignonette Reseda alba in 1826, and Matilda White discovered orange bird’s-foot Ornithopus pinnatus in 1838 (Fig. 21). Fifteen species of Scilly ferns identified by Edward William Cooke were published by North (1850). The year 1852 was apparently a good one, with four excellent botanists visiting the islands in the shape of Joseph Woods, John Ralfs and the two Misses Millett. These ladies spent five weeks on Scilly in June and July and listed 150 flowering plants and ferns. Lousley is full of praise for the competence of the sisters and only regrets they did not include localities for their finds. Another botanist who paid a short visit to Scilly was Frederick Townsend, who stayed at Tregarthen’s Hotel on
FIG 21. Miss Matilda White discovered orange bird’s-foot on a visit to Tresco in 1838. (Drawing by Alma Hathway)
St Mary’s (the hotel is still there). Although he only spent ten days in the islands, he recorded 348 species and published his list in 1864. Unfortunately Lousley found 21 records on the list were probably mistakes, some of which were later corrected by Townsend himself in his own copy of the report (Lousley, 1971). As botanists at the time did not have the competent floras and identification aids we have now, I have nothing but admiration for their achievements. As more and more botanists managed to get to Scilly, some of them made a greater contribution than others to the flora; their records are acknowledged by Lousley (1971).
It was fortunate that Ted Lousley, a well-known and respected amateur botanist, visited the Isles of Scilly in September 1936, when he personally added western ramping-fumitory Fumaria occidentalis to the flora. He was so taken with the islands that he continued his visits, recording many additional species and experiencing every month from March to September during the next four years. The first manuscript version of the Flora was completed in 1941 and then hidden away during the war years to be finally completed and published in 1971. The last visit Lousley paid to Scilly was in May 1975 when he stayed at Star Castle Hotel on St Mary’s, conducting a group of botanists around the islands and showing them dwarf pansy Viola kitaibeliana. Lousley, by profession a bank manager, was at some time Honorary Curator of the South London Botanical Institute. As it happened this was where many of the specimens, correspondence and manuscripts from botanists who had visited Scilly had been deposited. Among those whose material he had access to were Hambrough (visited Scilly 1845), Woods (visited 1852), Beeby (visited 1873) and Townsend (visited 1862).
Lousley’s own herbarium specimens are now at Reading University. Some of his notebooks, letters, photographs and papers, as well as the manuscript of the Flora, are held in the archives of the Isles of Scilly Museum on St Mary’s. He also wrote a number of reports on the flora for the Nature Conservancy Council during 1946, 1954, 1957 and 1967, of which the latter three have been consulted in preparing this book, the earliest report having apparently been lost.
It was an early visit by Cambridgeshire classics don and well-known amateur naturalist John Raven to St Agnes in March 1950 that added the least adder’s-tongue fern and early meadow-grass Poa infirma to the flora (Raven, 1950). Raven spent ten days in March and April in Scilly accompanied by his father and Dr R. C. L. Burges. He found early meadow-grass was abundant and widely distributed on St Mary’s, Tresco and St Martin’s but not on St Agnes (he did not get to Bryher). While having a picnic on Wingletang Down, St Agnes, Raven found the least adder’s-tongue fern. He had seen dead fronds on a previous visit but it was too late to identify them. Another plant that he discovered was dwarf
FIG 22. In 1950 naturalist John Raven found several