Country Rambles, and Manchester Walks and Wild Flowers: Being Rural Wanderings in Cheshire, Lancashire, Derbyshire, and YorkshireGrindon, Leo H. (Leo Hartley)
History
Country Rambles, and Manchester Walks and Wild Flowers: Being Rural Wanderings in Cheshire, Lancashire, Derbyshire, and Yorkshire
Grindon, Leo H. (Leo Hartley)
England -- Description and travel; Natural history -- England -- Manchester
Like the rocks of Whaley Bridge, Kinder Scout, Greenfield, and Seal
Bark, those of the Hebden valley consist of millstone-grit, alternating
with shale, the latter cropping out chiefly along the course of the
river. It was among these shales, though perhaps more particularly
in portions laid bare during the construction of the line along the
main or Todmorden valley, that Samuel Gibson, the once celebrated
blacksmith-naturalist of Hebden Bridge, pursued his researches in
connection with fossil shells, as described in the first volume of the
_Transactions of the Manchester Geological Society_ (1841). His work
is said, in the volume in question, to have been carried on in "High
Green Wood," and as regards the common use of this name, correctly
so, as it is applied very generally to the entire valley, or from the
village up to the insulated rocks. Properly, however, it denotes only
a small portion near the latter. Gibson, a man wholly self-taught,
and who kept to his anvil till nearly the time of his death, in
the spring of 1849, possessed a vast amount of knowledge of almost
every department of natural history. A considerable portion of his
collection, comprising a cabinet of seeds of British plants, ferns,
lichens, Marchantias, shells, and insects, was purchased, after his
decease, for the Peel Park Museum. Another portion went to the museum
once existing in Peter-street. The herbarium of flowering plants,
valued at £75, went into the hands of Mr. Mark Philips. Most men suffer
from some kind of constitutional malady. Poor Gibson laboured under
an infirmity of temper which constantly brought him into collision
with his fellow-students. He always meant well, as proved in his last
famous battle over the _Carex paradoxa_; and probably had his life
been a less lonely one the roughness would have got smoothened, and he
would have been as friendly with all other men as with the writer of
this little notice, which is intended rather to preserve the memory
of a singularly acute and industrious observer of nature, working
single-handed, in the face of enormous difficulties, than to imply the
least reflection on his tendency to warfare. The distance of Gibson's
home, twenty-four miles of coach-road, prevented his often coming to
Manchester; but no man was ever more welcome. How different some of
those he came among! As for old Crozier, whose name we have already
mentioned two or three times, and whose work was so largely identified
with White Moss, Boggart-hole Clough, and Bamford-wood, in temper and
disposition he was Gibson's completest antithesis. No man has ever
done more, in his own circle, to foster and diffuse the love of nature
and of natural science--accomplishing this, as Crozier did, not so
much through the variety and exactitude of his knowledge, as through
the urbanity of his manner. Few are now living who remember Crozier;
it may be allowed, therefore, to repeat what we said of him in 1858,
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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