Environmental Engineering Reference
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cies 'recently discovered by G. Montague, Esq. F.L.S.' will not be recognised by today's naturalists. A
revised volume of the Swansea Guide was published in 1823.
In July of the same year that Oldisworth produced his guide, Gower was visited by Edward Donovan,
the celebrated author of British Zoology , an enormous work published in 20 volumes. He recorded his
visitinatwo-volumeaccountofhistravelsinSouthWalesentitled Descriptive ExcursionsThroughSouth
Wales and Monmouthshire in the Year 1804 and Four Preceding Summers , with a certain amount of un-
derstatement:
Before we left Swansea, this tract of country was represented to us as an inhospitable region,
black, barren, and rocky; thin of inhabitants and destitute of accommodation for the stranger. A
statement we have since observed to be not perfectly correct in every particular, although in a
certain meaning true … Upon the lofty rocky verge of the shore to the left, the fogs arising from
the sea rolled heavily; the air was cold, and the rains beating violently in our faces from the west-
ward in the space of an hour after we first set out, had nearly drenched us to the skin. Under these
circumstances we evidently surveyed the country to a lamentable disadvantage.
Despite the evidently appalling weather Donovan and his party did get to Pennard castle, and he goes on
to record that he collected specimens of yellow whitlowgrass Draba aizoides. In the second volume there
are also a number of references to marine molluscs at Oystermouth and Oxwich.
One of the rarest plants in the British flora, small restharrow Ononis reclinata , was discovered by
DanielSharpe'onrocksatPort-Eynon'in1828.Sharpewasaveryableandobservantgeologist,whowas
President of the Geological Society in 1856, but died in London, as the result of an accident, in the same
year.Itseemslikelythatthesitethathediscovered,attheageof22,wouldhavebeentheoneimmediately
west of, and above, Culver Hole cave on the seaward face of Port-Eynon Point. The original specimen
was sent to Joseph Woods, the famous architect and botanist, and was incorporated into his herbarium.
Small restharrow still exists in four localities, between Port-Eynon Point and Worms Head, the two west-
ern locations only being discovered recently. It is difficult to find, though, as the number of plants and the
period in which they flower varies noticeably from year to year.
John Gutch, who lived in Swansea for a number of years in the early nineteenth century, maintained
Swansea's first reliable weather records and published two local lists of plants, the first in the pamphlet
The Medical Topography, Statistics, Climatology and Natural History of Swansea. In it Gutch remarks,
'I am well aware that the foregoing list is comparatively of no value without the insertion of the various
habitats.' This defect was rectified in his second list, entitled simply A list of plants met with in the neigh-
bourhood of Swansea, Glamorganshire , which was published in the first volume of The Phytologist in
1841. Gutch's list of some 550 plants is of great interest, containing as it does references to stinking iris
Iris foetidissima , a familiar plant of the limestone coast, hoary rock-rose Helianthemum oelandicum and
sea campion Silene uniflora.
By this time natural history had become the favoured activity of a number of the local gentry, in par-
ticular the landowner Lewis Weston Dillwyn (1778-1855) (Fig. 8). Dillwyn had come from London to
liveinSwanseain1802whenhewas24tomanagetheCambrianPotteryonthebanksoftheRiverTawe,
and was an enthusiastic naturalist. Indeed he managed to link his two interests by specialising in natural-
history designs on pottery. He became an important figure in the county, being High Sheriff in 1818 and
a Member of Parliament from 1832 to 1841. In 1805, with Dawson Turner, he produced a Botanist's
Guide Through England and Wales , but is particularly remembered for producing one of the first sys-
tematic works on algae, British Confervae , in 1809. Using only simple lenses that gave small magnific-
ations, he described and illustrated a large number of marine and freshwater species, many of them col-
lected in Gower. Dillwyn followed this in 1829 with Memoranda Relating to Coleopterus Insects Found
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