378 MR. T. SOUTHWELL ON OLD-TIME NORFOLK BOTANISTS. 
in their finds ; Sir J. E. Smith mentions several such and of one 
he writes, in a letter printed in the Linnean Trans, in 1793 
(vol. ii. p. 315), “ to do justice to unostentatious ingenuity,’' 
that Joseph Fox, a journeyman weaver of Norwich, was the 
first to raise a Lycopodium from spores. “ He showed me 
in the year 1779, young plants [of Lycopodium selago] raised 
from seed in his own garden. This humble observer,” he 
adds, “ whose name has not yet appeared in any book, is 
the original discoverer of many rare plants in the County of 
Norfolk, and it is with pleasure 1 commemorate his former 
assistance to myself.” We who are aware of the marvellous 
phenomena which attend the development of a Cryptogam 
from its spore can well imagine the wonder and delight with 
which this all but unknown weaver must have watched the, 
to that time, unknown process. We can hardly conceive 
in the present day the hardships these men endured ; it is 
stated that in the year 1801 there were in Norfolk 12,000 
looms for the manufacture of shavls, crapes, bombazines 
and camlets, employing in the aggregate 72,000 workmen 
who were paid, some of the best weavers 14s. to a guinea 
a week, weavers in general not more than 6s.,* and it may 
be imagined, wheat being 146s., 168s. and 180s. per quarter 
in the first three months respectively of that vear,f the hard- 
ships these poor men must have endured whilst it is also 
said that at the same time the annual export value of Norwich 
manufactures was £1,200,000 — but this is a digression. For 
some reason — possibly owing to the grinding poverty these 
men endured and the gradual cessation of hand-loom weaving 
in Norfolk — we hear very little of these amateur botanists after 
the period to which I am now referring; but iome of them 
long survived as “ herbalists,” or medical botanists, students 
of Gerard and the early writers — one such I was acquainted 
with not long ago who was a curious mixture of intelligence 
and mysticism. 
We have now reached a period when a definite system of 
classification gradually came into use and botanists were no 
longer simple collectors. 
* Fenland ‘ Notes and Queries,’ vol. vi. p. 376. 
t ‘Norfolk Remembrancer,’ 1801. 
