The pioneering botanists of the Norwich Botanical Society

The conservation movement has been built up on the researches of numerous individuals who painstakingly produced evidence of the rich diversity of our natural and cultural heritage which we have come to believe is worth preserving. To form the basis of such a movement these studies must not consist simply of the disconnected pursuits of isolated individuals but be the product of the individuals linked as groups that are able to share knowledge and begin to influence others. These beginnings can be traced back to the seventeenth century, when books began to be published and knowledge shared. The intellectual curiosity given freedom by the Renaissance, and coupled with advances in printing, encouraged the study of the natural and ancient world to develop and the results of research to be circulated. This was part of the general awakening of interest in scientific investigation reflected in the founding of the Royal Society in London in 1660. Although it met and was based in the capital its influence spread to the provinces, encouraging the publication of scientific books. it gave the study of such subjects as zoology and botany a social standing and respectability.

Sir Thomas Browne (1605–1682) is a typical product of this new curiosity. Having trained as a doctor in England and Europe he settled in Norwich in 1637, where he attended the wealthy citizens and gentry on their sick beds. By the time of his death, however, he was a writer of international repute. His output not only covered religious subjects but his surroundings, including natural history and archaeology, in which he took a keen interest. His enquiring mind and systematic observations led him into such topics as the diseases associated with the climate of iceland, the results of imprisoning a viper, a mole and a toad together under glass, and the workings of the human eyelid.1 unlike many of his contemporaries, he was convinced that migration, not hibernation, accounted for the absence of certain species in the winter. A prolific essayist, his ‘Discourse on the Spechral urns found in Norfolk’ was published in 1658, while at the same time he was collecting stuffed birds and their eggs. His ‘Account of the birds found in Norfolk’, published after his death in 1682, is the earliest attempt at a species list for the county.