86 SCIENTIFIC SURVEY OF LEICESTER AND DISTRICT 
to write on botany in the Gentleman’s Magazine, and had sent some papers 
to the Royal Society. His mind had been guided to botany by an uncle, 
his mother’s brother. 
In 1764 he went to Edinburgh to get the degree of M.D. He got it 
without spending time in residence. In the same year he went to London 
and was introduced to William Pulteney, who in 1742 had been made Earl 
of Bath. The Earl recognised him as a kinsman and made him his own 
physician. Very soon the Earl died. Dr. Pulteney then went to Bland- 
ford in Dorset. He quickly made a fortune by a very widely spread 
practice. He devoted his leisure to botany and conchology. His most 
important works were A General View of the Writings of Linneus (1781), 
and Historical and Biographical Sketches of the Progress of Botany in 
England (1790). Among his minor writings was ‘ A Catalogue of rare 
Plants found in the Neighbourhood of Leicester, Loughborough, and 
Charley Forest.’ This was contributed to Nichols’s great book on 
Leicestershire. 
Richard PuILuips (1767-1840) came to Leicester and opened a com- 
mercial academy in 1788. He is not eminent as a man of science, but he 
did, in conjunction with William Gardiner, Leicester’s most famous 
amateur musician, found a society for scientific investigation. It was 
called ‘ The Adelphi.’ A number of young men joined it. It was, so 
far as the compiler of these notes can ascertain, the first attempt in 
Leicester to initiate the co-operative scientific study of a society, as dis- 
tinguished from the studies of individual persons. The society had a 
short life. It was suspected of sympathy with the French Revolution 
and soon suppressed by the Town Authority. In 1790 Richard 
Phillips opened a shop for books and medicines. He was imprisoned for 
eighteen months for selling The Rights of Man by Tom Paine. In 1796 
he went to London. He became a remarkably successful publisher of 
educational and scientific books. In 1807 he was Sheriff of London. 
In 1808 he was knighted by George III. Sir Richard Phillips lived till 
1840.1 
In 1845-46 a friendship began in Leicester between two young men 
who both afterwards became famous. Henry Walter Bares (1825-1892), 
a native of Leicester, and Alfred Russel WALLACE (1823-1913), who was 
at that time an assistant master in the Collegiate School.2 H. W. Bates, 
after some education at Creaton’s boarding school at Billesdon, had been 
apprenticed to a hosier, his duties comprising opening and sweeping up 
the warehouse between seven and eight in the morning. Subsequently 
he worked as aclerk. ‘ His scanty leisure he devoted to self-improvement 
at the liberally managed Mechanics’ Institute. His holidays when 
possible were spent in scouring Charnwood Forest with his brothers ; 
for he was already an enthusiastic entomologist and collector. His first 
contribution to entomological literature was a short paper on ‘ Coleopterous 
1 An Old Leicester Bookseller, by F. S. Herne. 
* The first headmaster of the Collegiate School was William Thompson, then 
Fellow and afterwards Master of Trinity College, Cambridge. J. F. Hollings 
was a master and F. T. Mott a scholar at the Proprietary School. (They will be 
mentioned later.) (Leicester Memoirs, by C. J. Billson.) 
