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VICTORIAN NATURALISTS IN TENBY Margaret Davies, C.B.E., M.A., Ph.D. The mid-19th century saw a remarkable surge of interest in plants and animals, and, particularly, in the fascinating and colourful life of the seashores of expanding holiday resorts. Victorian energy and inventiveness, which expanded the railway network and produced the salt-water aquarium, led to the 'heyday of natural history'.1. Tenby, on its rocky peninsula, flanked by superb beaches and outlying islands, played its part in this heyday, attracting biologists of the calibre of T. H. Huxley and P. H. Gosse. Both were befriended by a resident marine zoologist, Dr. F. D. Dyster. In 1850 Tenby town still lay largely within its medieval walls. Cottages and fine town houses lined the Norton, originally a medieval 'suburb'. The Croft had its dignified terrace of lodging houses, and a few villas set in 'pleasure grounds' had been built on Greenhill and in Heywood Lane, overlooking the Green2. Developments by Sir William Paxton. the Town Council and leading townsfolk had made the resort attractive to well-to-do visitors from London, the Bristol-Cheltenham area and South Wales. Tenby was also becoming well-known as a healthy retreat for invalids and for the retired, especially military and naval officers. By 1854 the main London- Haverfordwest railway brought passengers to Narberth Road (Clynderwen) station, from which they travelled to Tenby in coaches supplied by the Cobourg or Lion hotels. The naturalists of mid-19th century Tenby had distinguished predecessors. Edward Lhuyd, while visiting Scotsborough, collected Carboniferous fossils and living starfish near Tenby. Edward Donovan, a Fellow of the 16-year-old Linnean Society, said in 1804 that "no situation whatever can be more ad- mirably adapted than the neighbourhood of Tenby for the study of the productions of the sea coast"3. Donovan was astonished that the attractions of Tenby had been neglected "till within the last twenty years". By 1804 the virtues of sea water were well advertised and the naturalist at rock pools was liable to find "the female peasantry enjoying, without disguise, the delicious coolness and delight of bathing in the open sea". Donovan also observed starfish, sea urchins and crabs feeding on the overfished oysters of the beds between Caldey and Penally; he identified many of the profuse shells of the Tenby beaches and listed the sea birds of Caldey and watched its incubating puffins. Tenby's fishermen, with their small open boats, had dredged and pickled oysters for fifty years. Now they were being displaced in fishing and dredging by Torbay men who had larger boats; they sent their catches twice weekly to Bristol and came into Tenby for weekends. Because the Tenby men had refused to pay their fish tithes and to worship at St Julian's Chapel on the old curved pier, the chapel had been transformed by Esau Jones "an in- telligent apothecary of Haverfordwest" into Tenby's first bathing house. In 1847 two physicians, who lived in the handsome St Julian Street houses which overlook the south beach and Caldey, were fostering interest in natural history among both residents and visitors. Dr Randle Wilbraham Falconer founded Tenby Literary and Scientific Society in 1847; its well-stocked reading room and meeting room were at the Paragon end of Cresswell Street. His opening address drew attention to the need to record local plants and animals, for geological work and for a local museum to exhibit the results and to demonstrate the archaeological interest of the locality. Falconer published