30/08/2017 Countryfile

Nestled in the heart of the Fens

is the pretty village of Swaffham Bulbeck.

It was the home of Reverend Leonard Jenyns,

a man who left an extremely precious gift for us today.

He was born right here at Bottisham Hall.

You could be forgiven for not knowing

who Leonard Jenyns is,

because his work has been almost totally eclipsed

by a good friend of his - Charles Darwin,

a man we've all heard of.

One man has almost been completely forgotten by history,

and the other one is a household name,

and I'm here to find out why.

Dr Richard Preece knows everything there is to know

about Jenyns and Darwin,

and I'm told it's got something to do with catching beetles.

-Hi there. You must be Richard.

-I am. You must be James.

-I understand we're going bug hunting. I've got my net.

-Indeed.

Shall we go? Just round the corner.

Two proper super-geeks of their generation,

they did great science, they were great friends.

-Yes.

-Yet we know one really well,

and I've never even heard of the other.

How did that happen?

Well, Jenyns was offered the opportunity to go on the Beagle,

this voyage around the world,

collecting specimens and so on.

He considered this for a day

and decided that his calling in Swaffham Bulbeck

was the higher calling.

But he did recommend Darwin, who was the younger man,

nine years younger, and the rest is history, as they say.

So where do beetles come in to this story?

Well, both Jenyns and Darwin were avid beetle collectors,

particularly Darwin.

Where did he collect these beetles?

He collected some of them right here, as well as in the Fens,

but we can go and have a look.

OK, this looks a good place for beetles.

-Shall we give it a go?

-Yeah - rotting wood, good sign.

Yeah.

I'll turn it, you see if you can catch them.

-Oh, look - what's that?

-There we are, look.

That is a beetle.

OK, there we are.

They say don't work with children and animals,

and this one appears on cue - it's amazing!

Darwin could have been right here, looking at the same things.

He's, like, my hero, and here, 150 years later,

I'm doing the same thing.

So, in 1831, Darwin set off on an ambitious voyage

around the globe, and his findings would revolutionise

our understanding of life on Earth.

But back home in Cambridge,

Jenyns set himself a remarkable task -

making an encyclopaedic record of our own flora and fauna.

He was a full-time vicar, and devoted to his flock,

but he spent every moment of his spare time

combing the local landscape, recording the different species

and documenting their habits in his legendary notebook.

-So here's the infamous book.

-Indeed - this is it.

So this is essentially an inventory of all the animals that were known

in Cambridgeshire in the second quarter of the 19th century.

So you have a snapshot in effect

of what the ecosystem looked like at the time.

Almost a Noah's Ark in written form.

I think the extraordinary thing is his handwriting - look at this.

It almost looks like it's been printed

in some kind of handwriting font,

and it just shows what a methodical mind

this guy must have had.

He records all sorts of animals in these notebooks

that are today extremely rare.

For example, what are we talking about?

One example is this fish called the burbot,

which he says here is "common in the Cam

"and in the navigable cuts communicating with that river."

So this is one of the last burbot ever collected in this country.

It still lives on the Continent, but in Britain

it became extinct in about 1970,

-and that's the last one.

-That's amazing.

Jenyns has left us vital information

to understand how the nature around us has changed.

By comparing the species he saw over 100 years ago

with what we can or can't find now,

we get vital clues as to how things like climate change and agriculture

transform the natural world we know and love.

I think you need to be a really special kind of person

to not only be that excited about nature,

but also that's dedicated to this almost creepy level

of methodical detail of which he noted it down

in this 19th-century version of a spreadsheet.

But it's that detail and it's that dedication

that means that information is so useful

and so valuable to us today.