N is for Nature Study and Naturalists ...

Tide right out – is the best time to study the rocky shore, especially at low spring tide ...

... throughout history scientists and researchers have studied our shore lines to understand the way nature works and the way nature is changing ...

Studying our shores ... we all enjoy whichever pastimes we chose: children paddle, surfers ride the waves, naturalists study plants and animals, bird watchers watch, walkers stride or perambulate ... while anyone can appreciate the beauty ...

1929 Illustration

Tools and ideas that may help ... a bucket and spade, a net or two, a ‘heavy’ net with a wooden leading edge for sifting through wet sand, various water-proof items: a torch, pens and ‘paper’, a camera, perhaps an artist’s kit ... tide tables could be a sensible idea ...

Low tide

... another suggestion to keep many amused: stretch a piece of string from low-tide to high-tide marks ... and moving up the string from low-tide ... records the commonest types of sea-weeds and creatures at each stage ... but waaaaatch out ... that tide comes tumbling back in ...

Claude Monet (1865)
France: "La Pointe de la Heve at low tide"

Sift through the wet sand to see ... shrimps, cockles and other edible shore creatures – sadly we may have over-shrimped many shores ...

Draw and record your findings ... write them up when you get home ...

We should be amazingly grateful to those N for Naturalists, who so meticulously recorded life at the shore, on the land and in the air ...

Gosse's illustrated plate;
British sea anemones
and corals (1860)

In my Aspects of the British Countryside, N was also for Naturalist ... and I wrote about four of our British early nature lovers, who recorded so much for posterity ... and set the standards ...

... today I add two more: Philip Gosse (1810 – 1888) studied shore life in Devon – his son, Edmund, described how his father would “wade breast-high into one of the huge pools and examine the worm-eaten surface of a rock ... there used often to lurk a marvellous profusion of animal and vegetable forms” ....  

In 1865 – Philip Gosse’s Year at the Shore was published ... he was also a talented artist and had illustrated and drawn the specimens he collected during his trips.

 

Mary Anning with her dog 'Tray'
who was killed in a mudslide from
the Black Ven cliff

Mary Anning (1799 – 1847), is a lady, who deserves mention; her unusual life story attracted increasing interest ... Charles Dickens wrote of her in 1865 that “the carpenter’s daughter has won a name for herself, and has deserved to win it”.

In 2010, one hundred and sixty-three years after her death, the Royal Societyincluded Anning in a list of the ten British women who have most influenced the history of science.

The Jurassic coast of Dorset, where Mary Anning found
her large reptiles in the shales of the Black Ven, with
Golden Cap in the background.

Anning was a British fossil collector, dealer and palaeontologist who became known around the world for a number of important finds she came across in the Jurassic marine fossil beds at Lyme Regis, Dorset.

Anning’s gender and social class prevented her from fully participating in the scientific community of 19^th C Britain ... she struggled financially for much of her life.  Her family were poor, and as religious dissenters, were subject to legal discrimination ... yet look at the recognition now: it takes its time!

Charmouth is found between Black Ven and Golden Cap ... Golden Cap is the highest point along the south coast of Britain at 191m (627 feet).  Golden Cap is so called for the distinctive outcropping of golden greensand rock present at the very top of the cliff.

That is N for Nature Study and Naturalists ... a natural subject for Aspects of British Coasts ...

Hilary Melton-Butcher

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