Animals & Nature

Dogs, by 'Lô Debhar', 1862

7th May 2021
Header of Guernsey Mail and Telegraph and note by Samuel Elliott Hoskins FRS
The Guernsey Mail and Telegraph, February 22, 1862.  'To the Editor of the Mail and Telegraph.  As the following lines were the result of an hour’s innocently playful reminiscence, the Editor of the Mail and Telegraph might not be so terribly serious as to reject them.  Small localities like this for every reflective mortal who has lived much through the seven ages of life, unavoidably furnish temptations to personal allusion.  It is not the less true that, whether they be an FRS, a Sieur Pierre Robin, or an industrious and modest Charles Ozanne, not one of three acquaintances that LÔ DEBHAR* has presumed to notice here has ever inspired any other feelings than those of unfeigned respect and regard.'  This is from a cutting in the Priaulx Library collection. The note above was made at the bottom of the cutting by Samuel Eliott Hoskins, FRS.

Nicholas Roussel, Le Rimeur, 1807

Pigs from Bellamy's Guide, 1843, Priaulx Library Collection
From an editorial in the Star of December 12, 1836. The woodcut of a 'frisky' Guernsey pig is from Dr Thomas Bellamy's Pictorial Directory of 1843, in the Library collection. The writer comments on the credulity of those in the country parishes, who continue to venerate such impostors and quacks as Louis D'Orléan, about to face trial for imposition, and in doing so gives us details of the case of Nicolas Roussel which, although having occurred in 1807, 'is not yet forgotten, and just a few particulars respecting it will not, just now, be unacceptable'.

11 September 1248, rights of islanders in the time of King John

Extracts from the bound collection of transcribed MSS known as the Nicolas Dobrėe MSS. All in beautiful copperplate, they include versions of charters and other Royal Orders and Acts, and various letters patent and so on that were obviously regarded as highly significant by the volume's owner. Followed by a transcription made in 1730 of the Constitutions of King John, from 'an old translation into French from the original in Latin ... copied from the Book of Mr H Mauger, Comptrolleur,' part of a collection of legal documents probably belonging to former Bailiff Peter de Havilland.

A Farmer's Vacation, 1873

Guernsey, from an article in the influential American publication, Scribner's Monthly Magazine, September 1873; the article is one of a series eventually brought together as a book, A Farmer's Vacation, by George Wearing, published in the same year. Interest in the exportation of Guernsey cattle to North America and their management was bringing significant numbers of US farmers or their agents to Guernsey in this period. Wearing had first visited Jersey, to compare their agricultural procedures. Below is the Couture Water Lane in St Peter Port, admired by the author.

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