Priscilla Susan Bury née Falkner (1799-1872), microscopist and plankton artist
Priscilla Susan Bury née Falkner (1799-1872) was born on 12 January 1799 in Rainhill, Lancashire, the daughter of the wealthy Liverpool trader Edward Dean Falkner (1750-1825) and his wife Bridgett Tarleton (d. 1819). She married the railway engineer Edward Bury (1794-1858) in March 1830.
Today Bury is probably better known as a botanical artist, originally drawing specimens raised in the greenhouses of her family home. By 1829 she was keen to see her botanical studies in print so issued a prospectus advertising an illustrated work tentatively titled ‘Drawings of Lillies’. Despite having only 79 subscribers the folio work ‘A Selection of Hexandrian Plants’, comprising 51 aquatinted plates, was issued in ten parts between 1831-1834. She also contributed drawings to John Stevens Henslow’s and Benjamin Maund’s journal ‘The Botanist’ (published from 1836).
Bury’s study of a water lily from ‘A Selection of Hexandrian Plants’ (1831-1834). Source: Loy McCandless Marks Library, public domain.
In the Geological Society’s Library is a rather battered and incomplete copy of Bury’s most unusual publication, Figures of remarkable forms of polycystins, or allied organisms, in the Barbados chalk deposit (chiefly from that collected by Dr. Davy, and which he had noticed in a lecture delivered to the Agricultural Society of Barbados, in July, 1846). Windermere: Printed by John Garnett [1862/1864].
This was another of Bury’s self-published works but instead focuses on the microscopic forms of plankton found in the chalk specimens brought back from Barbados by the chemist John Davy (1790-1868).
The term ‘plankton’ was not coined until 1887. Instead these microorganisms were called 'polycystins' by the microscopist Christian Gottfried Ehrenberg (1795-1876) in 1846, after being sent samples of rocks from Barbados by the travel writer and explorer Robert Schomburgk (1804-1865). A small number of polycystins were figured by Ehrenberg and in Schomburgk’s English translation of Ehrenberg’s works, which in turn were reproduced in a few of the popular microscopy books of the time.
Plate 1 showing: Eucyrtidium Acuminatum of Ehrenberg & Podocyrtis Schomburgkii from: P S Bury, 'Figures of remarkable forms of polycystins...' [1862/1864]. GSL Library collection.
Note: her initials in the right hand corner. Click here to enlarge
Plate 9 showing: Petalospiris foveolate, Podocyrtis of Ehrenberg; Lithomelissa from: P S Bury, 'Figures of remarkable forms of polycystins...' [1862/1864]. GSL Library collection. Click here to enlarge
Bury’s intention was to depict far more of these extraordinary organisms outside of the scientific laboratory. ‘Figures of remarkable forms of polycystins…’ is highly unusual in that it eschews traditional methods of publishing images – ie woodcuts, engravings, lithographs, etc. Her drawings are instead reproduced as photographic albumen prints pasted onto the pages. However, photographs are not a particularly stable form of reproduction as they degrade and fade particularly after exposure to light.
The first edition of Bury’s book comprised 12 plates, but the Society’s copy has a rogue plate 18, indicating that it derives in part from a second series of plates issued in at least 1864. An official second edition was published in 1869.