VICTORIAN MOSS MANIA
[BRITISH MOSSES.]
Two volumes of window-mounted moss samples, with manuscript captions.
[England, 1860s.]
Two vols, 4to, pp. 25; 16; thick card borders, samples numbered in light blue ink up to 560 but not all numbers correspond to a sample (evidently where the particular species was hard to come by), manuscript captions on Linnean taxonomy in black ink; light foxing and spotting throughout; bound in contemporary pebbled black roan over wooden boards, covers panelled gilt with floral cornerpieces and lettered direct, white watered silk endpapers, edges stained red; joints cracked, some wear to corners and edges, greeting card loosely inserted to vol. I (see below).
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Two volumes of window-mounted moss samples, with manuscript captions.
A charming nineteenth-century herbarium comprising 560 moss specimens.
The systematic collection of mosses, ferns and seaweeds was a particularly Victorian obsession, made possible by a spate of mid-century guides to the practice. Here a committed collector has evidently followed a guide but has been unable to find examples of some of the mosses required.
The compiler of our albums accounted for constant changes within the field of bryology in nineteenth-century Britain, including newly taxonomised species such as Hylocomium splendens (splendid feather moss), which was first described by Wilhelm Philippe Schimper in the 1852 Bryologia Europaea. The album additionally represents notable ecological changes as well as shifting taxonomical classifications: Andrea crassinervia (no. 1) is now endangered, whilst Ptychodium plicatum is now known as Lescuraea plicata.
Provenance: Loosely inserted is a New Year’s greeting card decorated with dried fern samples, from ‘Mr and Mrs Tetlow’, most likely the Lancashire naturalist Levi Tetlow mentioned in records of the British Bryological Society and the Moss Exchange Club (fl. 1871–1880).
See Hayward and Rickard, Fern Albums and Related Material (2019).
