376 MR. T. SOUTHWELL ON OLD-TIME NORFOLK BOTANISTS. 
Robert Marsham, F.R.S., who was born in 1708 at Stratton 
Strawless, where, with the exception of the foreign travel 
which at that time formed part of the education of an English 
gentleman, he constantly resided, could not be styled a 
systematic botanist, in fact, at that time system in Natural 
Science was practically unknown ; but he was an ardent lover 
of nature and a most devoted and skilful arboriculturalist, 
he delighted in planting and experimenting on the treatment 
and growth of trees, some of which are still to be seen at 
Stratton Strawless. His Calendar of the “ Indications of 
Spring,” commenced in the year 1736 and continued to the 
present day by his successors, is the most remarkable con- 
tinuous register of natural phenomena in existence ; but 
although he lost no opportunity of adding to his knowledge 
of arboriculture both at home and abroad, he did not neglect 
other branches of Natural History, and we are indebted to 
him for the first detection of a beautiful Continental bird, the 
Wall Creeper, in Britain. How lovingly he followed his 
favourite pursuit may be judged by his remark when writing 
directions for the pruning of trees. “ I love them as my 
children,” he writes, “ and cannot act with my own judgment”; 
it is said that no gardener should thin out his own grapes, 
and Marsham’s tenderness for his trees rendered to him their 
effectual pruning a painful operation. How greatly he was 
esteemed by his correspondent, Gilbert White of Selbourne, 
may be judged by the latter’s pathetic exclamation in one of 
his letters, “ O, that I had known you forty yeai's ago ! ” 
He died at Stratton in 1797. 
Contemporaneous with Marsham and six years his senior, 
born at Wood Norton in 1702, was Benjamin Stillingfleet, 
the close friend and frequent visitor to the former ; never in 
affluent circumstances, Gray says that on his removal -to 
London, he lived in a garret that he might support some near 
relations, but being always employed he was always cheerful 
and happy. His voluminous writings extended from politics 
to the ‘ Power of Harmony,’ which latter, the latest of his 
works, Dr. Burney characterised as a " Masterly perform- 
ance ” ; but it is his botanical works which concern us. When 
