Robert Townson (natural historian)

Dr Robert Townson MD FRSE LLD (1762–1827) was an English natural historian and traveller, known also a mineralogist and medical man.

[1] He was born at Richmond, Surrey, the youngest (and illegitimate) child of John Townson (1721–1773) and Sarah Aldcroft née Shewell (1731–1805).

His father was a London merchant, his mother was from the Shewell business family, and she was married at the time of his birth to Charles Aldcroft, a haberdasher.

[1] He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh in 1791, proposed by James Hutton, Alexander Monro (secundus) and William Wright.

[4] Townson was living in Shropshire, at Lydley Hayes near Cardington, when in 1800 Arthur Aikin was seeking him out for assistance on mineralogy.

The General View of Agriculture survey for the county edited by Joseph Plymley (also Corbett, surname changed in 1804) in 1803 contained material published by Townson.

[1][8] Townson published:[4] He contributed a paper "Perceptivity of Plants" to the Transactions of the Linnean Society (ii.