The Life and Writings of Richard Quiller Couch

Introduction

This is a study of the life and writings of Dr Richard Quiller Couch (1816–1863), the oldest son of Dr Jonathan Couch. He was Q's uncle, but died shortly before Q was born. However, Q formed a close relationship with Richard's children in Penzance. The study is based on Richard's writings in the journals and reports of:

• Penzance Natural History and Antiquarian Society
• The Royal Geological Society of Cornwall
• The Royal Cornwall Polytechnic Society, particularly 'A Statistical Investigation into the Mortality of Miners’.
• The Royal Institution of Cornwall

The study also looks at the life of Richard Quiller Couch with special emphasis on his training at Guy's Hospital in London. 

Biographical Details

Birth

Richard Quiller Couch was born in Polperro, in south-east Cornwall, on March 14, 1816, in the first year of peace following the Napoleonic War. The previous June the Battle of Waterloo had been fought, with Napoleon abdicating soon afterwards and on July 7 the allied armies occupying Paris. In November, the Second Treaty of Paris was signed. France's star was on the wane, with that of Prussia rising. The year of Jonathan Couch's death, 1870, saw the defeat of France by Prussia.

Politically, London government under Lord Liverpool saw the established politicians driving under the forces of reform which the French Revolution had encouraged. In his Cambridge lecture 'Shelley (I)', Q castigates 'Sidmouth, Castlereagh and Canning' for their reactionary Toryism. In 1816, Polperro was surrounded by 'rotten boroughs' (boroughs with very few voters that were able to elect MPs and that were usually in the control of one individual or family). Looe had four MPs, with the boroughs controlled for local landed families by Thomas Bond. (For a short biography of Bond see The Mayor of Troy (Couch, 1906).) Jonathan Couch was a personal friend of Bond but not of his politics. Richard was born into a politically radical family.

Richard was the first child of Jonathan and Jane Couch, but he had an older half-sister, Jane Rundle Couch, the offspring of Jonathan's marriage to Jane Prynn Rundle. Jane died in childbirth on October 14, 1810. Richard was born on March 12 but he was not baptised until June 12, his parents’ first wedding anniversary. The baptism took place at Lansallos church, where Jonathan Couch and Jane Quiller had been married a year earlier. The gap of three months suggests that Jonathan, a Wesleyan, had little regard for the doctrine of 'baptismal regeneration' although it had been held by the Revds John and Charles Wesley.

Richard appears to have been the last Couch to be baptised an Anglican. Jonathan had led the Polperro Wesleyans out of Anglicanism in 1814, overseeing the construction of a Wesleyan chapel. The baptismal register for Polperro Wesleyan Chapel opens on March 15, 1818, when Mary Paul of Water Gate was baptised by William Jewel. The first Couch was Jonathan on November 28, 1821, with Thomas, Q's father, following on September 28, 1826. As Thomas had been born on May 26, 1826, there was a gap of four months. (There is evidence of dual baptisms on some registers!.)

When Richard later moved to Penzance he would have encountered the Branwell family. It was Maria Branwell of Penzance who married Patrick Bronte, with the Bronte novelists as offspring. The Branwells were also Wesleyan Anglicans. At least one branch moved out of Anglicanism at the same time as Jonathan Couch. The baptismal register for the Penzance Wesleyan Circuit, commencing in 1804, gives Joseph, son of Joseph and Charlotte Branwell, being baptised on December 26, 1813, with Richard following on February 18, 1816, and Thomas Bronte on April 20, 1817.

Adolescent Years

Central to Richard's life at this time was his father's rejection of authority, religious, political and scientific. Jonathan opposed the oligarchies which ruled the political life of the area, supporting the movement of reform which led to the Reform Act of 1832. He also opposed what he saw as the clericalisation of Wesleyanism, and in 1835 helped head a movement which led to schism. Scientifically, he believed in observation and experiment, not the tenets of any scientific establishment or medical school. Richard's mother appears to have been an eminently practical woman. When confronted by a fanciful notion from a young Couch, she would respond that 'it butters no parsnips!' Her health, however, was never robust, possibly owing to the traumas of having her father, her grandfather and other near relations lost at sea. This did not lead to an austere home. They were a family steeped in wide reading and with a penchant for watercolours. Many thought Thomas, Q's father, should have become a professional watercolourist. Nor was it religiously repressive, as academic histories and Bronte scholarship would have us believe of such homes. Wesleyan followed the central tenet of the Reformation, 'Salvation by faith through grace', not salvation through moral repression.

According to J.R. Johns in Doctor by Nature  (2010, p. 28), the Couch family moved into the Quiller house, by the bridge in Polperro, after the death of Jane's mother. The Quillers had been one of Cornwall's leading smuggling, privateering and coastal trading families before and during the Napoleonic period. Jonathan was amazed at the false beams, a wig-cupboard and a lazaret (a smugglers' hidey-hole), along with the key of a quadrant hung by Jane's father before his last journey. Q describes this in Memories and Opinions (1945, p. 4) and in a number of his stories. How Richard's youthful imagination must have been fired!

Of all Jonathan's children, Richard is the one who most took after him and of whom most was expected. He was educated at home, attended the Wesleyan chapel and collaborated with Jonathan on a number of zoological and geological projects. His aptitude for medicine was pronounced, with Guy's Hospital as the place chosen for his training. Such training was ruinously expensive, as all lectures and dissections had to be paid for in advance, and lodgings had to be procured. And Richard was the first of three to attend Guy's. Maybe some former Quiller money was put to use. 

Medical Training at Guy's Hospital in London

In 1835, Richard qualified for medical training at Guy's Hospital, following in the footsteps of his father. In August of that year, Jonathan went to London to make the arrangements. Bertha Couch's Life (1891) includes a letter he wrote back from Ryder Street, St James, where William Yarrell lived. The letter reveals the distinguished people Jonathan met while there: Bransby Cooper, nephew of his former teacher Sir Astley Cooper, Dr Hodgkin, a lecturer, William Yarrell and Mr Gray, who introduced him to Mr Daw, curator of the museum. These names appear and reappear in histories of the time.

Eminent Doctors by G.T. Bettany (1885) gives us insight into Guy's Hospital at the time Richard was in training. He would have attended lectures, worked in the dissecting room and gone on ward rounds. These would all have had to be paid for. He probably also purchased lectures at other hospitals.

One of the leading physicians at Guy's was Thomas Addison. In 1824 he was appointed Assistant-Physician and in 1827 given a lectureship. Two years later, in conjunction with John Morgan, Surgeon to Guy's, he published An Essay on the Operation of Poisonous Agents on the Living Body (1829). In Q's novel Poison Island, Dr Beauregard is an expert on poisons. As Addison was still at Guy's when Thomas enrolled, there is probably a fictional link between Beauregard and Addison, although in character they were quite different. Addison was elected full Physician in 1837 and appointed Joint-Lecturer on Medicine with Dr Bright. Richard would certainly have received instruction in the lecture theatre, the dissecting room and the ward from Addison, Bright and Morgan.

According to Bettany (1885), Addison was an 'innovator' who used ‘observations’ and ‘deduction’. On occasions he addressed Guy's Physical Society, where no doubt Richard heard him. His ‘clinical teaching in the wards was especially superior. He could most vividly illustrate on the patient, and most clearly define and demonstrate his disease.’ We can well see Richard standing beside the bed with notebook in hand. As a teacher Addison was popular: ‘His interest in his class was genuine and unfeigned; he was eager to draw out the talents of his students’.

The approach to medicine taken by Addison was not greatly different from that taken by Jonathan's teachers 35 years before. ‘His strong, positive and perpetual insistence upon the term “practical” … He was always ready to discuss newly-started theories, but he never for a moment allowed them to interfere with the results of his mature experience.’As a consequence, ‘He never reasoned from a half-discovered fact …’ but would ‘tax his mind with the minutest details...until he achieved the ultimate object of an industry of search, a correlation of facts deduced from scientific observation...’. There can be little doubt that Richard was deeply influenced, in his medicine and his other scientific papers, by this approach. (Bettany, 1885, p. xi).

Addison published little in medical journals, but many papers appeared in Guy's Hospital Reports. He did address the Guy's Junior Physical Society, where Richard would have heard him. Eventually, Addison was elected to the Presidency of the Royal Medical and Chirurgical Society or R.M.C.S. Interestingly, he was a 'zealous Tory', in marked contrast to the political opinions of Jonathan's teachers.

Addison was only one of the distinguished doctors with whom Richard came into contact. Another was Richard Bright, who was born in the same year as Jonathan Couch, 1789. Richard Bright and Jonathan Couch did not meet. In 1808, when Jonathan was arriving at the united medical school of Guy's and St Thomas', Bright was entering Edinburgh University. In 1810, when Jonathan was leaving, Bright was journeying through Iceland studying botany and zoology. On the completion of his travels, Bright did arrive at Guy's, where he made contact with Jonathan's former tutor, (Sir) Astley Cooper. Richard Couch would have reason to make personal contact with Richard Bright.

In 1820, 15 years before the entry of Richard Couch, Dr Richard Bright was elected Assistant-Physician at Guy's Hospital and in 1822 a FRS (Fellow of the Royal Society). In 1822 he began lecturing on Botany and Materia Medica, being joined in 1824 by Dr Cholmeley and some years after by Dr Addison. Bettany informs us that Bright was not a 'theorist' but an observer and a dissector, with his records showing care and detail. In 1836, the year after Richard Couch's entry, eight papers by Bright appeared in Guy's Hospital Reports and Richard would certainly have studied them. Having been elected a Fellow of the Royal College of Physicians in 1832, Bright was a censor in 1836 and delivered the Lumleian lectures on 'Disorders of the Brain' in 1837. He was a 'sincerely religious' man who married the third daughter of Dr Babington, snr, the close friend of Sir Humphry Davy.

A doctor who was associated with Guy's Hospital from 1823 to 1878 was Alfred Swaine Taylor. Richard, Thomas and John Couch would all have encountered him. He was an authority on geology, minerology and physiology. He studied chemistry under Allen and Aikin and won a prize at Guy's for anatomy. Guy's possessed its own chemical laboratory. He was an authority on poisoning and medical jurisprudence and in 1842 brought out Manual of Medical Jurisprudence which went through many British and American editions. He was frequently called to court as a witness in important legal cases. It is interesting that Richard Couch was also frequently called as a witness to Bodmin Assize for important and difficult legal cases. It is also interesting that Q deals with poisoning in The Haunted Dragoon, with Dr Gale providing the evidence, at the Spring Assize in Bodmin, upon which Madam Noy is convicted of poisoning her husband.

Richard Couch spent three years in London mixing with some of the most eminent physicians and scientists of his day. These provided him with more than information. They taught him a methodology, one he followed for the rest of his life. It emphasised the primacy of observed fact, dissection and experiment. It relegated theory and hypothesis to a secondary position. In other words, it drew a strict and uncrossable line between fact and theory. Fact was for the scientist and physician, theory for the philosopher. The test of fact was whether it led to positive results, whether it worked! Not whether it produced a good theory. In 1838, Richard passed his examination at the College of Surgeons on March 9 and received his diploma. On November 14 he passed his examination at the Apothecaries Hall. Richard subsequently returned to Polperro, turning his back on a career in London, as his father had done before.

The Return to Polperro from London, 1839 to 1844

Those desiring an overview of nineteenth century science in Cornwall at this time and the place in it of Richard and Jonathan Couch are directed to: 

• Regionalizing Science: Placing Knowledges in Victorian England by Simon Naylor, number eleven in the Science and Culture in the Nineteenth Century series, editor Bernard Lightman.

At a more biographical level:

• Doctor by Nature. Jonathan Couch: Surgeon of Polperro by Jeremy Rowett Johns.
• A Memoir of William Pengelly, edited by Hester Pengelly

 What is found below complements or challenges but does not replace the above and is taken from various sources.

Also valuable is the 'Private Memoirs of Jonathan Couch', as transcribed and edited by Alwyne Wheeler from the Journal of the Royal Institution of Cornwall for 1983.

At the time Richard was completing his course in London, Jonathan Couch was elected a Corresponding Member of the Royal Geological Society of Cornwall, a body of which Richard was later to be Secretary. Jonathan was proposed by its President, Davies Gilbert, a friend and relation of Thomas Bond of Looe, and the President of the Royal Society following from Sir Humphry Davy. The year after Richard's return, Jonathan attended the Meeting of the British Association for the Advancement of Science, being appointed one of the local secretaries. On returning to Polperro, Richard was not consigning himself to a scientific backwater.

In conjunction with Jonathan and others, Richard commenced a detailed investigation of the zoology and geology of south-east Cornwall, publishing studies of national importance. In August 1841, Richard was awarded a Silver Medal for his Natural History of Zoophytes by the Royal Cornwall Polytechnic Society, and in October 1843 was awarded the same for a paper on crustaceans. At the time he was working on the third part of Cornish Fauna, which was published in April 1845, with the drawings, transcribed with a steel pen to zinc plates, by Thomas Q. Couch, Q's father.

When Richard returned to Polperro around 1840, he must have expected a period of relative tranquillity back in the family home, assisting his father in the practice and continuing his zoological and geological investigations. The reality was somewhat different. There was considerable anti-Corn Law agitation which led to repeal and many tenant farmers leaving the land. Potato blight struck in 1845. In the same year Jonathan temporarily left the Wesleyan Methodist Association he had helped found, and in June 1847 came into direct conflict with the Anglican establishment over the burial of his granddaughter. As Richard appears to have joined St Mary's Anglican church on arrival in Penzance, it is significant that Jonathan wrote in his Private Memoir of June 1847: 'a church established by law, with exclusive privileges, is an established evil'. This was a minor breach between Richard and Jonathan which was later to widen.

The Private Memoir gives Richard as leaving Polperro on March 1, 1844. A letter home, dated March 19, outlines his hopes and plans. At the time he was working on section three of Cornish Fauna, having taken over the work from his father. Bertha Couch (1891) has him settling in Penzance in August 1845, possibly the month he established a practice at 10 Chapel Street. He lodged with Miss Swain, the post mistress. It was eight years before Richard married. On June 25, 1853, he wed Lydia Pearce, eldest daughter of Richard Pearce, merchant and later Mayor of Penzance. In September and October Jonathan visited Penzance and Penwith, staying for two weeks with Richard and Lydia in a house opposite the entrance or gate leading to the churchyard.

Lydia Pearce was a daughter of Richard Pearce, one of the most distinguished men of Penzance and at the centre of many activities. He was a manager of a local savings bank. He was also the Hanoverian and Belgian Consul, and the French, Danish, Swedish, Norwegian, Prussian, Spanish, Portuguese and Netherlands Vice-Consul. Furthermore, he was a Lloyds Agent and the Receiver of Wrecks. Richard Couch possibly initially came across Richard Pearce when he acted as consulting surgeon at the Public Dispensary and Richard Pearce was the dispensary's secretary.

Having his surgery at 10 Chapel Street, Richard Couch had distinguished neighbours. At number 15 stood Batten, Carne and Carne, a bank with Miss Elizabeth Carne as one of its directors. Elizabeth Carne contributed papers to the Transactions of the Royal Geological Society of Cornwall. Nearby lived Joseph Carne, FRS, MPIA, the society's treasurer. In 1864, the Misses Millett, who contributed studies in botany to the Penzance Natural History and Antiquarian Society, lived at number 35, although in 1856 they lived at 5 Clarence Place. An interesting name in Chapel Street in 1856 was Edmund Davy. Closely related to Sir Humphry Davy were two other scientists of distinction, Edmund Davy snr and Edmund Davy jnr. Maybe one retired back to Penzance.

Richard quickly established himself at the centre of the Royal Geological Society and the Penzance Natural History and Antiquarian Society. On May 28, 1854, Maria Jane was born, followed on March 21, 1856, by Sarah Lydia. Richard's mother died in Polperro, aged 67, in September 1857. On June 25, 1858, Richard jnr was born, an individual Q was to come to know. The first section of Richard snr's study on The Mortality of Miners was translated into French in the same year. However, in Polperro his father was courting Sarah Lander Roose, a much younger woman, in a relationship Richard strongly disapproved of. Jonathan and Sarah were married in Liskeard on October 23, 1858. Correspondence with Jonathan ceased, but was maintained with John Quiller Couch, Jonathan's youngest son, who was about to move to Penzance. On March 16, 1860, Margaret was born, but on July 5, 1862 a second son died soon after birth. Richard Pearce, Richard's father-in-law, died on August 23, 1862. In the following November Richard was elected an Alderman. He was also Staff-Surgeon to the western Battalion of the Duke of Cornwall's Rifle Volunteers and surgeon to the West Cornwall Railway Company. He was frequently subpoenaed for important cases at the Cornwall Assizes in Bodmin.

By 1862 Richard was a locally, a nationally and to a lesser extent an internationally known figure. He was at the height of his powers with a string of distinguished publications behind him and a well-paid practice to support him and his growing family.

Death and Aftermath

Richard Quiller Couch died in May 1863, aged 47. Some time before he had inoculated himself with poisonous matter from an unguarded nail-spring and his health had never properly recovered. In August 1862, Richard Pearce, Richard's father-in-law died. On March 2, 1863, Thomas Quiller Couch married Mary Ford of Abbotskerswell. In the middle of April Richard took a turn for the worse and in spite of the ill-feeling occasioned by Jonathan's third marriage, Jonathan travelled from Polperro to Penzance to assist recovery. After two weeks Jonathan returned home. Then a week later on May 8, at about midnight, Richard died, leaving a widow and four children, three daughters and one son. The family had intended a private funeral but this was not possible for such a public figure. At this time John Quiller Couch, Jonathan's youngest son, was in practice in Penzance. He gave the widow some assistance, but, being an irascible man, unusual in a Couch, soon fell out with her.

The funeral took place on Friday 15, with the Rev P. Hedgeland, incumbent of St Mary's Anglican church, Penzance, taking the funeral. The Corporation and representatives from various bodies took part. He was buried in Penzance cemetery.

The death of Richard was widely reported. When Bertha Couch came to write her Life of Jonathan Couch in 1891, she obtained information about Richard  from an obituary report in the Plymouth, Devonport and Stonehouse Gazette. Bertha Couch was the oldest child of Jonathan's third marriage, while Richard was the oldest from Jonathan's second marriage. Richard died in 1863, Bertha in 1942. it is unlikely that she ever met any of the children from the second marriage, even though Dr John Q. Couch of Penzance, the youngest of Jonathan's sons by his second marriage, was still alive when Bertha was writing her Life. The report is sufficiently long and detailed to suggest having been written by a member of the Couch family, possibly Thomas, Q's father.

The Plymouth report is considerably longer than the one found in The West Briton and Cornwall Advertiser on Friday, May 15, 1863:

'The funeral of the late Mr. Richard Q. Couch, surgeon, of Penzance, will take place on Friday morning, at eleven o'clock, on which mournful occasion there will, no doubt, be a very large attendance of the inhabitants generally, as well as many of his closest friends from a distance.'

In a different column is a report from the 1^st Penzance D.C.R. Volunteers of Monday 7 pm:

 'The lamented decease of the surgeon of the battalion, Mr. R. Q. Couch, was also made subject of a few kind and appropriate remarks by Captain Boase; after which the company proceeded to the prom and went through the light infantry evolutions...'

The paper also includes a report of the annual review of the Royal Cornwall Rangers Militia at Bodmin barracks. Thomas Q. Couch was surgeon to the militia. Q was born at Bodmin six months after the decease of Richard. As it says in Memories and Opinions (1945, pp.14-4), Q attended (with his father) the final reviews and rifle practice on Cardinham moors, an account of which also appears in Chapter II of the novel The Ship of Stars.

'On Tuesday last, the regiment was reviewed on Bodmin Beacon by Lieut.-Colonel Addision of the 2^nd (Queens Royal) Regiment of Foot...Lieut.-Colonel Addison accompanied by Lieut.-Colonel Commandant Coryton, arrived on the ground at 11 a.m. ...On Thursday they were dismissed.'

 In the 'Deaths' column appeared:

'At Chapel-Street, Penzance, on Saturday last, regretted by a wide circle of friends, and by many scientific and literary acquaintances, Richard Q. Couch, Esq., M.R.C.S., aged 46.'

This is a rare mention of Richard's literary side.

Nearby, under the heading The War in America, was reported the crossing of the Rappehannock by General Hooker as a prelude to the battle of Fredericksburg. The report appeared after the battle had actually taken place. The battle produced a famous photograph by Matthew Brady: 'Confederate dead at Marye's Height, Fredericksburg, Virginia'. The photograph was taken less than 20 minutes after the Heights had been stormed by Sedgwick's 6^th Maine Infantry, on May 3, 1863 (A.J. Russell/Brady Collection). A General Couch fought on the Union side during the American Civil War, but whether related is unknown.

In 1864, Miss Pearce and Mrs Richard Quiller Couch are given as living at 22 Chapel Street. Miss Swain, post-mistress, with whom Richard lodged before his marriage, is given as living at number 50. John Quiller Couch and Mrs Henry Rickard, presumably his housekeeper, are given at 10 Chapel Street, where the surgery was.

Richard's children appeared to have shared few of their father's interests. Richard Pearce Couch became a successful businessman in Penzance. In 1897, he was offered the mayoralty but turned it down. The following year he accepted. The Cornish Telegraph for Thursday, November 17, 1898, gives an account of the mayoralty banquet, which Dr John Q. Couch attended, and at which Q was the guest speaker. Q appears to have been close to his Couch relations in Penzance. No doubt he stayed with them while researching his western stories. The novella Ia, set in Hayle and St Ives, came out in 1896, with Dr Hammer being based on Dr John Q Couch, although devoid of irascibility. Dr Hammer has to deal with diptheria and typhus. He takes the practical steps of improving hygiene and sanitation after having followed the course of disease from the sites of infection to the various parts of the town. He uses fact and observation not theory to ameliorate the situation. What is true is what works!

Q's short and amusing speech was fully reported in the Cornish Telegraph. The speech also gives a little insight into family affairs:

'Not many of them had the honour of being kinsmen of the Mayor of Penzance. There at least he could congratulate himself. The Mayor's father and his father were brothers, and also very dear friends. Sad to say, all this was very long ago;'

'The Mayor was the latest representative of a family (Pearce) which had filled the Mayoral chain with dignity for many generations. But, if he was the latest, why should he be the last. (Loud applause and laughter). He felt certain that if they could only persuade him, if only they could convince him what lustre his dignity would take were it shared by a gifted and amiable partner, his term of office, which they all hoped would be a happy and successful one, would be remembered as such, and he would then admit that this happiness had at least been redoubled. (Applause.)'

The Penzance Natural History and Antiquarian Society

This is an investigation of the scientific thinking of Dr Richard Quiller Couch (1816-1863) as seen in his work for the Penzance Natural History and Antiquarian Society from 1845. Before dismissing Penzance, in the far west of Cornwall, as a scientific backwater, it needs to be remembered that two of the most distinguished presidents of the Royal Society in London, Sir Humphry Davy and Davies Giddy (or Gilbert) MP, came from the area and maintained links with it. Previous to this Richard Trevithick had conducted experiments in high-pressure steam at a local mine. Penzance was surrounded by tin and copper mines, smelting works and stone quarries. The minerals adorning Alexander Pope's grotto had been supplied for him by the Rev W. Borlase of Penzance. It was the Borlase family who provided the scientific foundation of Davy's later work. The mines, quarries and drowned landscapes of Penwith provided Davy with phenomena of a unique kind. In Mrs Borlase, an authority on seaweed, there was the foundation for female involvement in science, whose development can be seen in some papers published by the society from Elizabeth Carne and the Misses Millett.

The society possessed members of considerable distinction. When Richard first joined the vice-president was William T. Praed (1780-1846), MP for St Ives, of Messrs Praed, bankers of London; with the president as a local JP, John Paynter (1790-1847). Paynter was succeeded by Joseph Carne (1782-1858), FRS, FGS, MRIA, whose father had been a close friend of John Wesley. Carne produced writings on geology, minerology and metallurgy. His daughter was banker, geologist and travel writer Elizabeth Carne (1817-1873). It is not unlikely that the Carnes consulted Richard for medical purposes.

Any student of the scientific writings of the Couch family needs to treat works of popular science dealing with the first half of the nineteenth century with considerable scepticism, especially the erroneous idea that, prior to Charles Darwin, everyone understood the first chapter of Genesis literally, believing the world to have been created in seven units of 24 hours. The Hebrew mind gave to the numbers three, seven, twelve and forty a special symbolic importance, with seven signifying fullness or perfection. What people did take from Genesis was the notion of linear time and the notion of creation as a harmony. Coming from an area where an oral tradition remained strong, individuals like Davy and Richard Couch were well able to appreciate the oral basis of the written text of the Bible. They also appreciated that, as the creation is a harmony, it can be investigated experimentally.

Davy, a deeply religious man, realised that the Bible opened up not closed down scientific ideas. He also saw genius as a divine gift, as Dr John Davy's Life of Sir Humphry Davy (1839) shows, a gift not to be enclosed in transient theories or conventional thinking. About the time Richard was born Humphry Davy was speculating:

'Probably there is an analogy in all existence: the divided tail of the fish is linked in a strong succession of like objects with the biped man. In the “planetary system” it is probable that man will be found connected with a higher intellectual nature and it is possible that the monad, or soul, is constantly undergoing a series of progressions.'(Davy, 1839, p. 217)

Davy was fully aware of evolutionary thinking, as were many at the time, but refused to trap it within the narrow confines of materialism. John Davy informs us that his brother abided in the realms of materialism for a very short time, seeing materialism as incapable of explaining the world within which we exist. Richard Couch was not an original thinker and lacked the genius of Davy. But he followed Davy in rejecting materialism as a basis for understanding the nature of the world. In coming to Penzance he would have come across John Davy's Life of his brother and the alternative view of evolution it presented to the ideas of Charles Darwin, coming onto the market at the time.

What Q says in his printed lectures On Some Seventeenth Century Poets (1918) is worth considering in relation to the thought of Humphry Davy and his own scientific forebears. These lectures appear to be an exploration of the ideas of Donne, Herbert and Vaughan, commonly called the Metaphysical Poets, but are in fact Q's reflections upon them.

As with Jonathan and Richard Couch, Davy drew a firm line between fact, as directly observed or established by experiment, and theory:

'Our knowledge is little indeed: and scepticism in regard to theory is what we ought most rigorously to adhere to.(Davy, 1839, p. 69)

What Davy rejected is the idea of a purely material universe overseen by chance:

'Then, if matter is naturally inanimate, motionless and disorganised, it would ever have continued so,' and 'chance would have no influence... [However,] 'If every part of matter had been naturally inclined to motion, the world would have been a universe of dancing atoms, without regularity.' (pp. 69-71).

In Einstein, written by his friend Banesh Hoffman in collaboration with Helen Dukas, Einstein's long time secretary, Hoffman says: 'In Einstein's long battle over the interpretation of quantum mechanics one theme recurred again and again: his instinctive dislike of the idea of a probabalistic universe in which the behaviour of atoms depends on chance.' Or 'God does not play dice.' (1972, p.193). 

What is being said by Davy and Einstein is what Q said in his printed lecture Herbert and Vaughan, - 'the Universe is not a Chaos but a Harmony.'; and the job of  'poetry... is to harmonise the soul of man with the immense Universe surrounding him.'  Q rejects the idea found in William Paley's A View of the Evidences of Christianity (1794) the argument from design, a university text in the early part of the nineteenth century. It is not that the idea of God can be inferred from the order of the Universe, but that the order of the Universe reflects a rational God and cannot be understood on the basis of chance, randomness and conflict. Certain texts ascribe the argument from design to Jonathan Couch, but this is a profound error. Jonathan Couch, a dedicated Wesleyan, followed John Wesley in believing God to be known personally through revelation to the soul and the material world to be known, although imperfectly, through the five senses and through reason. See John Wesley's A Plain Account of Genuine Christianity (1761).

Jonathan Couch was training at the combined medical school of Guy's and St Thomas' from 1808 to 1810 when Humphry Davy was delivering his celebrated public lectures at the Royal Institution. In August 1835, Jonathan returned to London to arrange for the training of Richard at Guy's Hospital. While there he met Bransby Cooper, nephew of Jonathan's former tutor, Sir Astley Cooper, and Dr Hodgkin. He also met William Yarrell, with whom he had a close scientific relationship. When Thomas Quiller Couch, Q's father, went for training at Guy's the famous zoologist entertained him at his home and took him to philosophical meetings, as Simon Naylor relates in Regionalizing Science (2010, p. 87).  Presumably, Yarrell did the same for Richard. As Jonathan was in regular contact with some of Britain's leading zoologists, including Richard Owen, Charles Peach, John Gray and Frank Buckland, it is not difficult to understand the breadth and depth of Richard's education in London. The material Charles Darwin was sending back from his trip on The Beagle, from 1831 to 1836, must have been of central interest. It is vital for any student of Q to appreciate the scientific importance of the family at this time in the history of zoology, geology and medicine.

Richard quickly established himself as the leading figure in the Penzance Natural History and Antiquarian Society, founded in 1839, giving the introductory address at its AGM on September 12, 1845. From that date a journal was published each year, with contributions from Jonathan, Richard and Thomas Couch. William Yarrell, John Ralfs, Misses Louisa and Matilda Millett and others. The journal concerned itself with the facts of observation and how these should be properly organised, not with hypothesis and theory.

Why Richard moved from Polperro to Penzance in 1844-5 is not presently known, but Dr John Rowe's Cornwall in the Age of the Industrial Revolution (1993) provides some insights. In Cornwall, the 1840s were the 'hungry forties'. Rowe informs us of a ten per cent decline in the population of the fishing and farming parish of Stratton and a five per cent drop in the Meneage parishes between 1841 and 1851. In the Looe area agricultural wages declined. From 1839 farmers felt increasingly threatened by anti-corn law agitation. May of that year saw Thomas Acland speaking against the Corn Laws in Liskeard. T.J. Agar Robartes MP was also against protection. John Bright addressed another meeting at Liskeard in April 1843. (Q was to have close political relationships with the families of Acland and Robartes during the premiership of A.J. Balfour, 1903–6, when Joseph Chamberlain again promoted protection, under the flag of 'Imperial Preference' in the Conservative Party.)

The problems in agriculture included potato blight, of which Jonathan Couch made a study. In 1845 he published Observations on the Disease which has injured the Potato in the present year'  and in 1847 Further Inquiries into the Nature and Effects of the prevailing Disease in Potatoes. These studies deal with fact and observation, avoiding theory and speculation. A poor fishing and agricultural parish like Polperro was probably unable to support two doctors, persuading Richard to go west to the rising town of Penzance, especially as an extension of the London railway to Penzance was being planned (completed August 1852). See Rowe (1993, pp. 149 and 248–252).

In his writings, Richard Couch positioned himself beside his father as a believer in facts. Theoreticians he saw as 'speculative philosophers'. The position is captured by Q in the character of Dr Carfax from  Castle Dor (1961) who 'stuck to observed facts without any theorizing'. It was the position Q inherited. This emphasis on fact led Richard to believe species to be adaptable to differing conditions but essentially fixed in nature. He was unaware of any species changing over time into another, as was later propounded by Darwinists. Many who read books of popular science will see this as a dated position overturned by subsequent observations. However, the reader is invited to consult Dinosaur in a Haystack (1996, p.10) or any other book, by the distinguished Harvard evolutionist Stephen Jay Gould. 

The reader is also invited to note the position of women in the local natural history society. In the report of 1852, for instance, there is a study of 'Flowers and Ferns of the Isles of Scilly' by Misses Louisa and Matilda Millett, and Richard Couch's published letter to Miss Warren appears in the Report of 1849.

Contributions to the Journal

On September 12, 1845, with John Paynter in the chair, Richard Quiller Couch rose to give his first introductory address to the Penzance Natural History and Antiquarian Society at their AGM in the museum in Penzance. He defined natural history as a 'description of the outward forms and habits of all organized beings.' All such beings are 'regulated by the same laws' producing 'an unity of result'. Until recently Natural History had existed 'as a mass of facts without order or design, regulated by no laws but those which systematists have chosen to impose.' Aristotle, Linnaeus and Cuvier had produced only 'artificial systems'.

'The various departments of the animal-creation, however diversified, possess an intimate dependence on one another; so that the destruction of one would, in some degree, affect the well-being of the rest...Nature...provides for the harmony of the whole.'

In relation to scientific method Richard says:

'In the study of natural history, however, we cannot follow so closely, the methods of induction, experiment and mathematical reasoning, as in other departments of science.'

Looking back in part to his study of zoophytes along the shoreline from Looe to Fowey,  published in 1841 as A Natural History of Cornish Zoophytes, and Observations on the Sponges of Cornwall, published in 1842, and to an investigation of fossil material generally, Richard continued:

'It is difficult to divide animal from plant life, with sponges occupying ground between'.

There is:

'no distinction between the two kingdoms; but that one flows imperceptibly into the other.'

In relation to man's place in the natural order: 'In the higher grades, the creatures differ much among themselves, but are endowed with sensations and locomotion; and thus they rise, by gradations, to the perfection of all in man.'

Richard then discusses the 'laws of MacLey': the 'circle of relationship'; the 'law of analogy'; and the 'law of development', where a creature passes through earlier forms, as with a frog from fish to reptile.

Richard concludes with the image of a cone, with nature revealing gradations, 'having, for its base, inorganic matter, and for its apex, man.' All are 'governed, not by accident, but by law.'

The notion of a universe as the product of chance, randomness and conflict is as alien to Richard Couch as it was to Humphry Davy and would be to Albert Einstein.

The journal of 1845 contained four papers by Dr Richard Q Couch:

• 'On the Morphology of the different Organs of Zoophytes' investigates how far the theory of Professor Forbes can be supported from observation. It is clearly written by someone with surgical skills
• 'On the Reproduction of Amputated Parts in the Lower Animals' contains the results of a series of experiments on the mode in which injured and amputated parts in the Reptilia and Crustacea are restored
• 'Notice of the Capture of the common Dolphin (Delphinus delphis) on the Cornish Coast' records the capture of a dolphin at Hayle
• 'Remarks on a new Zoophyte belonging to the genus Crisia'

Jonathan Couch records in his Private Memoirs (R.I.C., Truro) for November 1845 that he was elected an honorary member of the Natural History and Antiquarian Society of Penzance in that month. At the time he was investigating the problem of disease in potatoes which was seriously affecting the populations of Britain and Ireland. Cornwall knew the decade as the 'hungry forties'. At the time, 1841-1865, he was contributing papers to the British Association.

The Report of 1846

An Address, on the Geographical distribution of the Animal and Vegetable Kingdom, given by Dr R.Q. Couch

Richard Couch argues that natural history is an 'inductive science' showing nature to be 'governed by definite laws'...'united ' in 'an harmonious whole'. An apparent 'wild irregularity' is because 'several links in the chain had been destroyed', but the 'labours of geologists' will provide a complete picture 'demonstrative of design'. Hence, 'the great diversity of Nature' and the 'irregularity' of her 'products' from the poles to the equator has a 'diversity' which 'resolves itself into perfect order'.

Humboldt has already clearly illustrated how 'similar climes' are frequently 'clothed with the same genera' and 'the same species of plants'. 'Climate and soil' are more important than geographical location – a point explained at considerable length. There is a 'law of distribution' which is at present obscure.

As an exponent of observed fact, Richard continues: 'In opposition to the speculations of some visionary philosophers … the character of every creature is permanent … there is not a single instance in which it can be proved, that one creature ever grew into the form and character of another.' See Stephen Jay Gould, Dinosaur in a Haystack (1996): 'The positions, which are capable of proof, must be the foundations of our success.'

Geology gives evidence of climate change with some species adapting and others not. 'Geological and climate changes will account for a good deal.' Some species survive while others become extinct.

The paper reflects upon the work of Humboldt, Darwin, others not named, and Richard's own researches.

Contributions to the journal of 1846 by Jonathan and Richard Q. Couch

• 'Note on a new species of Crustacea allied to Gonoplax rhumbuicles by Jonathan Couch'
• 'Notice of the Capture of two rare British Fishes in Mounts Bay by Richard Q. Couch'
• 'On a new muscle discovered in the eye of Fishes' by Richard Q. Couch
• 'Account of the capture, in Cornwall, of the Six-branchial or Gray Shark; but lately recognized in the British Fauna (caught Feb. 19, 1846)' by Jonathan Couch

The Report of 1847

Annual address: Observations on the Botany and Zoology of Cornwall by R.Q. Couch

'It is always much easier to dilate into vague generalities than to descend to the close investigation of particulars; hence many of our philosophers possess such expanded views of creation, and comprehensive ideas on the grand lines of Nature, that they think it beneath their station to examine the component parts of which all great masses are formed.'

'I may be asked whether all creatures, sui generis, spring from a single pair? Without a visage of any intermediate communication?...Are they products of “the historical”? Or survivors of “a previous state”? ...Mr (John) Gray (of the British Museum) observes, that the fossil shells now found in the different strata show that a different geographical distribution of these animals existed in a former state of our globe.'

While the surface of earth may change and the fauna and flora with it,

'the laws of Nature are immutable and universal, extending from the most minute to the most gigantic objects.'

Contributions to the journal by Jonathan and Richard Q. Couch

• 'On the Migration of Pilchards (Clupea pilchardus)' by Richard Q. Couch
• 'The recent capture in Cornwall of Hemiramphus europaeus' by Jonathan Couch
• 'On the Egg-purse and Embryo of a species of Myliobatis' by Jonathan Couch
• 'Complexity in the conditions of Animals' by Jonathan Couch

 Illustrations of  Instinct, deduced from the Habits of British Animals by Jonathan Couch was published in 1847. Thomas Quiller Couch later commented on this work:

'This book, I may venture to say, is not merely a collection of striking instances of intelligence in the actions of animals, but a philosophical attempt to connect growing complexity of organisation, from the simplest to the most elaborate structure, with a concurrent evolution of mind; in fact, to make comparative anatomy and comparative psychology illustrate each other'.(Couch, B., 1891, pp. 63-4).

Animal intelligence is now generally accepted. Couch was way in advance of his time. It is worth noting the phrase 'evolution of mind' used in 1847. The reader is invited to refer back to the quotation from Davy on the evolution of matter and mind. Davy saw these as inseparable.

The Report of 1848

Annual address: Study of Natural History by Richard Q. Couch

All creatures have 'harmony of form' and a 'harmony of habit and instinct.'

'General laws are but the expression of a repetition of a number of facts, with the order of succession... All reasonings must be on facts carefully ascertained'.

'Instances of remarkable intelligence are to be found occurring in most creatures.'

Contributions to the Journal by Jonathan and Richard Q. Couch:

• 'On a supposed unrecognized Fish of  the genus Brama' by Jonathan Couch and with illustrations by Thomas Q. Couch. There are references to 'my friend Mr Yarrell' and to his History of British Fish and to Cuvier's Animal Kingdom
• 'On the Mackerel' by Richard Q. Couch'
• 'On the Vitality of the Axis of Asteroid Zoophytes' by Richard Q. Couch.'

The Report for 1849

Annual Address: Remarks on the luminosity of the Sea by R.Q. Couch

(Q refers to this in his stories under the dialect word 'brimming'.)

Contributions to the journal by Jonathan and Richard Q. Couch

• 'Addition of  a new Fish to the Cornish Fauna' by Jonathan Couch
• 'On the Physiological development of Cells among the Crustaceous Zoophytes' by Richard Q Couch
• 'Notice of a new species of Crisidia' by Richard Q. Couch
• Horae Zoologicae; in a letter to Miss Warren by Richard Q. Couch. (See below)
• 'Description of Scomber punctatus, a species of Mackerel not hitherto recognised by Naturalists' by Jonathan Couch

 (Note: Miss Elizabeth A.Warren, born Truro, April 25, 1786, resided at Flushing and died at Kea May 5, 1864. An original subscriber to the Royal Cornwall Polytechnic Society in 1833. Published in its Reports: 'On the recent botanical discoveries in Cornwall' in 1842; 'Marine Algae found on the Falmouth shores' in 1849. Contributed to: Johnstone & Croall, Nature-printed British seaweeds, 1859-60; J. Ralfs, British desmideae.)

The Report of 1850

Address: On the causes of the great vital powers of the Hydra or Fresh-water Polypus by Richard Q. Couch

'By its (microscopic) assistance, we see that the strange powers of the Hydra reside in no superadded quality, but are the natural results of a law common to all organized structures - a law which was as perfectly developed in the older organism of our globe as at the present time.'

 Contribution by Jonathan Couch

'Remarks on a specimen of the Pike-headed Whale (Balaenoptera rostrata) taken near Polperro' (May 8,1850) by Jonathan Couch

The Report of 1851

No address.

On the council of the society in 1851 were: R. Branwell, presumably a near relation of Maria Bronte née Branwell and Elizabeth Branwell, mother and aunt of the Bronte novelists. Richard Pearce, Richard's father-in-law. R.V. Davy, presumably a relation of Sir Humphry Davy. A Humphry Davy was also associated with the society.

Contributions to the journal by Jonathan and Richard Q. Couch

• 'Notice of a Crustacean, new to Cornwall' by Richard Q. Couch. (Professor T. Bell of King's College, London, assigned it the name Xantho couchii)
• 'Notice of the capture of a Sturgeon, differing from those recognised as British' by Richard Q. Couch
• 'Remarks on the discovery of a special Onchidiom [a rare sort of sea-slug] on the coast of Cornwall' by Jonathan Couch
• 'Notice of the Capture, in Mounts Bay, of Pennant's Globe-fish (Tetrodon pennanti)'  by Richard Q. Couch
• 'Additions to the Cornish list of Zoophytes' by Richard Q. Couch

The Report of 1852

No address.

Papers by Jonathan and Richard Q. Couch

• 'Observations on the progress of Development of the Young in some species of  Crustacean Animals' by Jonathan Couch
• 'On the Nest of the Fifteen-spined Stickleback' by Jonathan Couch.
• 'On some of  the rarer forms of Cornish Crustacea' by Richard Q. Couch
• 'Translations from Domesday' by Jonathan Couch

The Report of 1853

No address.

Papers by Jonathan, Richard and Thomas Couch, and William Yarrell

• 'The Popular Antiquities of Polperro and its neighbourhood' by Thomas Q. Couch
• 'Description of a specimen of a Pocket Dial used in ancient times and referred to by Shakespeare in As You Like It, Act 2, Scene 7' by Jonathan Couch
• 'On a new species of Axius' by Jonathan Couch
• 'Translations from Domesday' by Jonathan Couch
• 'On the Habits and Structure of the Great Bustard (Otis tarda of Linnaeus)'  by William Yarrell
• 'Notes on the Metamorphoses of the Common Crab (C. Pagurus)' by Richard Q. Couch

The Report of 1854

 No annual address by Richard Q. Couch.

Contributions to the journal by Jonathan, Richard and Thomas Q. Couch

• 'Remarks on the capture of the Fox or Thresher Shark in Mounts Bay' by Richard Q. Couch
• 'The Popular Antiquities of Polperro and its neighbourhood II' by Thomas Q. Couch
• 'On two species of Sharks, believed to have been confounded together under the name of 'Basking Shark' by Jonathan Couch.
• 'Popular Antiquities of Polperro and its neighbourhood III'  by Thomas Q. Couch
• 'Translations from Domesday' by Jonathan Couch

The Report of 1855

No address by Richard Q. Couch.

Contributions to the journal by Jonathan and Richard Q. Couch

• 'Notice of a capture of a new species of Palaemon'  by Richard Q. Couch
• 'Notice of a capture in Mounts Bay of Planea' by Richard Q. Couch
• 'Linnaeane' by Richard Q. Couch
• 'Notice of the occurrence in Cornwall of that rare Zoophyte, Retepora reticulate' by Richard Q. Couch
• 'Particulars of some of the Habits of the Dipper' by Jonathan Couch
• 'Remarks on Henslow's Swimming Crab (Polybius henslowii)' by Richard Q. Couch

Subsequent Reports were either insubstantial or absent from the bound collection in the Morrab Library, Penzance.

The report for 1862-3 mentions the death of Richard Q. Couch (1863).

The Royal Geological Society of Cornwall

The Society was founded in 1814 at what appeared to be the end of the Napoleonic War, with Napoleon safely secured on the island of Elba. Q set the novel Poison Island at this time, with POWs returning from France and Dr Beauregard visiting the deposed emperor on Elba. Two years later, Richard was to be born to Jonathan and Jane Couch in Polperro.

At the time of Richard's removal from Polperro to Penzance, in 1844-5, Sir Charles Lemon, Bart, MP, FRS, FGS, was president of the society, with Joseph Carne, FRS, MPIA, as treasurer. Contributions to the transactions of the society came locally from Charles Peach, William Pengelly and Elizabeth Carne, and from abroad from Captain G.B. Tremenheere, FGS, Bengal Engineer, and Wm Jory Henwood, CE, FRS, FGS, Chief Commissioner of the Gongo Soco and Catta Preta Gold Mines.

Few areas of the globe are of greater geological interest than Cornwall, as it contains igneous, metamorphic and sedimentary rocks of varying ages, plus extensive coasts and drowned landscapes. The central metalliferous backbone, from Dartmoor to West Penwith, has been extensively mined, revealing material from a considerable depth, while quarries expose material from closer to the surface. Fossils occur in sedimentary areas, particularly south-east Cornwall, where Jonathan was based, and where Richard Couch and William Pengelly were able to subsequently investigate. Work done in Cornwall fed into a national and international picture.

The writings of Jonathan and Richard Couch are a snapshot of geology at a particular time and we need to capture the excitement of continuous discoveries and fascinating problems. These workers helped free geological science from the shibboleths of the eighteenth century, establishing the subject on the basis of observation and experiment. The Couches drew a strict line between fact and theory, seeing fact as the job of the scientist and theory as the job of the philosopher. They also championed clear, concise English, a concern later taken up by Q. In fact, the methodology of Jonathan and Richard had a profound influence upon Q. It is the methodology of Dr Carfax in Q's last and unfinished novel Castle Dor.

The Couches were dedicated to geological research, but they saw this as part of a wider culture including politics, religion and literature. Each had its own province and methodology, but each fed into the other. They refused to see science as doing the business, free from the grubbiness of politics, the fantasy of religion and the escapism of literature, as some proclaim today. In fact, Q probably sought a career in the arts rather than the sciences because he realised the limitations of science.

The Membership of the Royal Geological Society of Cornwall in 1860

In 1860, Jonathan Couch was an Honorary Member, while Richard Quiller Couch was the secretary and curator. Richard had three years left to live and Jonathan ten. Richard's father-in-law, Richard Pearce, was on the council.

The membership of the society was drawn from throughout the British Isles and from beyond. It was connected to the Geological Society of France through M. Dufrenoy. Some of the most distinguished geologists of the age were members.

President: Augustus Smith, Proprietor of the Scilly Isles and MP for Truro. He resided at Tresco Abbey. When Q published the novel Major Vigoureux in 1907, many suspected that Sir Caesar Hutchins, Lord Proprietor of the Isles and owner of Iniscaw Priory was based on Augustus Smith. In the preface to the Duchy Edition of 1928, Q claims a similarity in one respect only.

Of the vice-presidents, two were Members of Parliament, J. St  Aubyn and R. Davy. The connection between the society and the Houses of Parliament is clear.

From the list of Honorary Members the following are of particular interest:

• Henry S. Boase, MD, FRS, FGS, of Dundee but formerly of Penzance. The writer of: Human Nature in 1865, and A Few Words on Evolution and Creation in 1882. He was a distinguished banker and an expert on finance
• Cordier, Member of the Institute of France, Paris
•  John Davy, MD, FRS, etc, of Ambleside, the brother of Sir Humphry Davy. He arranged his collected works. His daughter married a Dr Babington, probably a near relation of Sir Humphry's closest friend, Dr Babington
• Dufrenoy, Member of the Geological Society of France
• Sir Charles Lyell, MA, FRS, LS, GS, London, a close friend of Charles Darwin
• Richard Owen, FRS, LS, GS, Professor of Anatomy in the Royal College of Surgeons. A friend and correspondent of Jonathan Couch
• Rev A. Sedgwick, FRS, LS, GS, Professor of Geology at Cambridge
• Rev William Whewell, DD, FRS, GS, Cambridge. Writer of the History of the Inductive Sciences in three volumes
• Robert Hunt, FRS, Keeper of Mining Records at the Museum of Practical Geology in London. A collector of folklore who published Popular Romances of the West of England in 1865, to which Thomas Quiller Couch of Bodmin made a distinguished contribution.
• Charles W. Peach, a friend of Jonathan Couch.
• William Pengelly, FRS, of Torquay, but formerly of West Looe. An acolyte of Jonathan Couch. In Memories and Opinions, Q related how an elderly Pengelly befriended him, taking him from Newton Abbot College to Bradley Wood on fossil hunting expeditions. This was the one time when Q considered a career in science. The friendship continued until Pengelly's death.

Ordinary Members (selection)

The ordinary members of the Royal Geological Society of Cornwall included: 

• John St Aubyn MP, still a prominent family in West Cornwall. He was a county MP
• Sir Thomas D. Acland, Bart, MP, FRS, of Killerton in Devon. The Aclands were and continued to be leading members of the Liberal Party and Q would have had dealings with them
• Miss Elizabeth Carne, the daughter of Joseph Carne, smelter, banker and merchant, and granddaughter of Joseph Carne, a friend of John Wesley. The Carnes were Wesleyan Anglicans. She was a banker, a geologist, a travel writer and an amateur theologian. Living in West Cornwall she was able to develop in a way impossible in England at the time. Related to the Bronte novelists
• Rd Davey, FGS, MP, a County Member for West Cornwall, 1857-1868, of Polsew. A mine adventurer and farmer
• Sir Charles Lemon, Baronet, FRS, of Cardew, a Whig and a County Member, along with E.W. Pendarves, for West Cornwall from 1833 to 1853
• Richard Pearce of Penzance, Richard Couch's father-in-law
• Dr George Smith of Camborne, probably the writer of the History of Wesleyan Methodism, 1859-65 ( 3 Vols).
• Sir Richard R. Vyvyan, Bart, FRS, of Trelowarren, Ultra Tory, West Cornwall County MP, and MP for Helston and Truro. An opponent of the 1832 Reform Act.
•  

Contributions to the Transactions of the Royal Geographical Society of Cornwall

 These contributions were made between 1846 and 1859 by Richard and Jonathan Couch and other relevant individuals. The contributions are numbered and, where possible, dated. Summaries, quotations and (in brackets) comments are added as appropriate.

XXIV: 'On the cause of the  red colour in the fossiliferous rocks in the neighbourhood of Looe' by Jonathan Couch

The first discovery of fossils in the Looe area was probably by 'my late friend Thomas Bond' who wrote a History of Looe. (For a short biography of Thomas Bond and his relationship with Davies Gilbert, one time President of the Royal Society, see Mayor of Troy.)

The red colour is not the result of iron in the sedimentary deposits but encrinitic fossils, probably Comatula rosacea.

'In illustration of the above remarks, which are here applied to different families of echinodermata, in explanation of these fossil appearances, it may be necessary to observe, as a fact known to zoologists, that the family of encrinites (the greater portion of  which have become extinct as living animals), comatulae, ophiurae, and starfishes, not only belong to one natural order, but that there is good proof that the comatulae and ophiurae, at least in the early stages of their existence, partake of the encrinitic form: the difference between them being only such as is seen in many others of the lower class of animals, where a section of the family in the course of development stops short, and continues to bear as a permanent form, what in some other classes or genera, is no more than one of the stages which is passed in the way to a higher degree of development.'

(The identification of the fossils in the fossiliferous rocks began a controversy referred to repeatedly in the following studies because it affected the dating of geological periods.)

1846, XXVI: 'On the Silurian remains in the strata of the south-east coast of Cornwall' by Richard Q. Couch.

This is the coast from the River Fowey eastwards to the River Tamar, taking in Polperro, Looe and Rame Head.