Book contents
- Frontmatter
- CONTENTS
- Dedication
- Acknowledgements
- List of Figures
- Introduction: A Biography of a Scientific Region
- 1 Confined to a Small Round
- 2 Healthy Recreation and Headwork
- 3 The Sweet Road to Improvement
- 4 The Depths of the Billows
- 5 A Large Natural Greenhouse of England
- 6 More Facts, More Remains
- 7 A Furious Tempest
- Conclusion
- Notes
- Works Cited
- Index
4 - The Depths of the Billows
- Frontmatter
- CONTENTS
- Dedication
- Acknowledgements
- List of Figures
- Introduction: A Biography of a Scientific Region
- 1 Confined to a Small Round
- 2 Healthy Recreation and Headwork
- 3 The Sweet Road to Improvement
- 4 The Depths of the Billows
- 5 A Large Natural Greenhouse of England
- 6 More Facts, More Remains
- 7 A Furious Tempest
- Conclusion
- Notes
- Works Cited
- Index
Summary
Eight years after the death of its author in 1870, the Royal Institution of Cornwall reissued Jonathan Couch's A Cornish Fauna. The Fauna had originally been published in three volumes from 1838 to 1844 and coauthored by Jonathan and his son Richard. The 1878 edition was published in one handy volume and combined the work of father and son with substantial additions from a new group of Cornish naturalists: Joshua B. Rowe, Thomas Cornish, E. H. Rodd and C. Spence Bates. In a revised preface, edited by his son Thomas after his death, Jonathan Couch made a forthright claim as to Cornwall's value to natural history more generally:
Whether we regard its geographical position, at the extremity of the kingdom, and surrounded so much by the sea as almost to partake of the character of an island; or whether we take into account the irregularity and diversity of its surface and soil, with the peculiarity of its climate and prevailing winds, there is no county in England that presents such variation of aspect from all besides, as does the county of Cornwall; and as the ocean which surrounds its in general rocky coasts is to be considered as a portion of itself, and the depths of the billows are constantly presenting to the observer some new object of animal life, it will be long indeed, before the curiosity of an inquirer will be satisfied, or the subject can be regarded as exhausted.
Couch also noted the lack of need for any defence of or apology for ‘the study of the natural productions of a limited region’, saying that:
it is highly gratifying to find that such an explanatory apology is now no longer necessary. It is admitted on all hands that such a work is useful. By the scientific naturalist it is confessed that many of his most valuable contributions towards the progress of knowledge have been poured into the common stock from this source; and the local resident has felt a pleasure in discovering that he may become acquainted with the natural objects which surround him.
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- Information
- Regionalizing SciencePlacing Knowledges in Victorian England, pp. 81 - 100Publisher: Pickering & ChattoFirst published in: 2014