+ THE WILTSHIRE ARCHAEOLOGICAL AND NATURAL HISTORY MAGAZINE 
a bond between social ranks. Josiah Eyles 
Heathcote nurtured plants in a greenhouse and in 
melon frames,** and banker Charles Tylee used a 
‘garden engine’, perhaps afterwards browsing in his 
New Botanic Garden with its 133 rich plates.” 
Brewer James Gent possessed a greenhouse with 
stove and pipes, filled with choice plants, and his 
library contained 15 volumes of Langley’s Botany 
and Sowerby’s English Botany,” of special interest to 
his wife, who was a botanist and geologist. 
The Georgian period was a time of classification 
of the natural world and a great fact-finding stage in 
the development of biology. The growing number 
of natural history publications in the second half of 
the eighteenth century and the popularity of works 
such as Goldsmith’s History of the Earth and 
Animated Nature (1774) and Gilbert White’s Natural 
History of Selborne (1789) illustrate a widespread 
interest in the natural universe as a manifestation of 
God’s goodness. This prompted an enthusiasm for 
collecting specimens such as fossils, shells, flowers 
and seeds and Southey noted the ‘English passion 
for collecting rarities’.*! Furthermore, a large 
section of society could now afford to do this. 
Brewer James Gent’s wife corresponded with the 
famous naturalist and artist, James Sowerby (1757- 
1822), sending him fossils ‘of my own finding’ from 
Fyfield near Marlborough and receiving nine 
specimens from his collection in return. *Sowerby 
even named a fossil shell after her, Helix genti.** Mrs 
Gent also asked him to send models of ‘your 
Crystallography’. She subscribed to the magazine 
British Mineralogy, which she obtained through the 
local bookseller. The correspondence of William 
Wroughton Salmon with Sowerby throws some 
light on his botanical interests. On 6 May 1800 he 
dispatched in a basket by one of the London 
coaches a vernal variety of Colchicum autumnale 
which he had not been able to identify ‘in any 
British Flora’. Along with a friend ‘who is in the 
habit of collecting indigenous plants’, he had seen 
this colchicum in a pasture field near Devizes and 
asked Sowerby if he would show it to geologist Dr 
William Smith.“ On 21 May 1810 he sent further 
variegated specimens of the plants, promising to 
forward some cockscomb oysters and fossils from 
the chalk pits, which Sowerby had requested.* 
Interest in palaeontology was perhaps stimulated 
by the discovery of spars and fossils during the 
canal excavations, while the proximity of pasture 
land and the chalk downlands provided a fertile 
field for botanical investigation and geological 
collection as well as for walking. Elizabeth 
Blackburn, on her visit to Devizes in 1810, recorded 
expeditions to Roundway and Hartmoor and 
rambling in nursery gardens by the side of the 
canal, where they observed the construction of 
bridges and locks.” ‘Airing’ was considered healthy 
in the eighteenth century, and in Devizes the 
countryside was conveniently close. 
During the later Georgian period, there was also 
widespread interest in agricultural improvement, 
reflected in the establishment of agricultural 
societies, of which there were 50 by 1800, and the 
proliferation of journals such as The Farmer’s 
Magazine (1776) and The Annals of Agriculture 
(1784). Agriculture was a predictable interest for 
the propertied classes in the rich farming area 
around Devizes. James Sutton discussed farming 
matters with Henry Addington: ‘I have much to say 
to you on the subject of farming when we meet and 
shall hope you will find yourself able to visit my 
new building and make the tour of my Fields’”’ 
Concern about the weather’s effects on the harvest 
is apparent in their letters: ‘:I have, great and small, 
114 mouths grazing before my window and only 
two acres cut for winter provender; of course our 
anxiety rises or is depressed by the appearance of 
every cloud’.**Professionals and traders, too, had 
close involvement with agriculture. Lawyer 
Wadham Locke farmed at Melksham, Orcheston 
and Rowde and grocer Charles Simpkins had a farm 
at Avebury, nine miles distant. Brewer James Gent 
kept stock and grew crops in Rowde, two miles 
away, his horses, cows and pigs doubtless being fed 
during the winter on waste mash from the 
brewery.” 
Local interest in agricultural improvement is 
illustrated by several applications for premiums 
made from the Devizes area to the Royal Society for 
the Encouragement of Arts, Manufactures and 
Commerce, founded in 1754. Farmer Thomas 
Twittey from nearby Bromham submitted a recipe 
for destroying turnip fly in 1759.*°Six years later 
Devizes wheelwright Robert Dowse’s description of 
his newly invented 4 h.p. plough for draining land 
was witnessed by twenty-two of the town’s leading 
inhabitants, including John Anstie, the Rev. 
Edward Innes, Wadham Locke, William Salmon 
and John Tylee. *! In 1768 brewer Charles Rose 
applied for a premium for cultivating the greatest 
quantity of the English madder plant upon an acre 
of land, detailing the planting process and the 
manufacture of different qualities for which he had 
found a ready local sale.*’Ten years later clothier 
John Anstie presented a machine for slicing turnips 
