Fauna Cantabrigiensis

The Rev. Leonard Jenyns was an important 19th century naturalist, who together with his brother-in-law J.S. Henslow, was offered the position of naturalist on HMS Beagle which he declined in favour of his friend Charles Darwin. All three made natural history observations in Cambridgeshire and collected local specimens.
Jenyns included these observations in a hand-written manuscript he completed in 1869 entitled 'Contributions towards a Fauna Cantabrigiensis'. The text of that manuscript is reproduced here in full for the first time, together with modern commentaries updating the nomenclature and putting the observations made between c. 1820 and 1849 into an historical perspective.

Richard Preece is Reader in Quaternary Malacology and Senior Assistant Curator in the University Museum of Zoology, Cambridge.
Tim Sparks is a senior lecturer at Coventry University and a leading international authority on phenology.