麻豆社

What is phenology? Felicity Evans visits Fenland Cambridgeshire to learn about an influential but largely unacknowledged Victorian vicar - the Reverend Leonard Jenyns - who made a lasting contribution to science.

Jenyns is certainly not as well known as Charles Darwin, even though he passed up the chance of sailing on HMS Beagle as the ship's naturalist. In fact, Jenyns never set foot outside the UK, yet his contribution to science was enormous. Felicity hears how phenology has become a key aspect of observing climate change, noting the first and last days of the seasons.

She finds out how much Fenland Cambridgeshire has been dried out since Jenyns' day, and the ways in which this rural vicar bore witness to the habitat destruction and species extinction in his own parish in the mid-Victorian period.

Producer: Mark Smalley.