Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 41.djvu/282

{{RunningHeader|Nutt|276}Nuttall}  of the navy which met with the commendation of Pitt; but an act was passed in 1777 for dividing the chase, and it was disafforested. On returning from Bath he was attacked on Hounslow Heath by a single highwayman, who fired into the carriage, but no one was injured. Nuthall returned the fire, and the man hastily decamped. At the inn at Hounslow he wrote a description of the fellow to Sir John Fielding, and ‘had scarce closed his letter when he suddenly expired,’ 7 March 1775. He had married in 1757 the relict of Hambleton Costance of Ringland, in Norfolk. A passage in Horace Walpole's ‘Letters,’ 27 Oct. 1775, shows that his widow received a pension from the state.

Nuthall's portrait, by Gainsborough, was exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1771, and his signature is reproduced in plate xiv. of facsimiles of autographs in the ‘Chatham Correspondence,’ vol. ii. Numerous letters and references to him are in the ‘Home Office Papers,’ 1760–72. 

NUTT, JOSEPH (1700–1775), surveyor of highways, son of Robert and Sarah Nutt of Hinckley, Leicestershire, was baptised there on 2 Oct. 1700 (parish reg.). He was educated at the free grammar school, Hinckley, and afterwards apprenticed to John Parr, an apothecary in the same town. After studying in the London hospitals he settled in his native town, where he became successful and popular, frequently doctoring the poor for nothing. Having been chosen one of the surveyors of highways for Hinckley parish, he turned his attention to the roads, and introduced a system of periodically flooding them. The track thus became firm and substantial for saddle and pack horses, the latter then much used for transporting pit-coal from the mines, and the land on either side was also enriched.

Nutt's procedure was resisted, and he himself subjected to ridicule; but his opinion as a land valuer was sought by others, especially by Sir Dudley Ryder, attorney-general (1737–1754). [q. v.], the poet, was on familiar terms with Nutt, and celebrated in his poem of ‘The Fleece’ the utilitarian talents of the ‘Sweet Hincklean swain whom rude obscurity severely clasps’ (edition of 1762, p. 27).

Nutt died at Hinckley on 16 Oct. 1775, and was buried in the churchyard.

By his will he left six oak-trees to build within forty years of his death, a new market-place for Hinckley, with a school and town-hall above it. 

NUTTALL, JOSIAH (1771–1849), naturalist, son of a handloom weaver, was born at Heywood, Lancashire, in 1771. Early in life he became a collector of birds, a close observer of nature, and in time an expert taxidermist. For some years he was engaged in the museum of Mr. Bullock of Liverpool, and subsequently at the Royal Institution in the same town. He realised sufficient means to purchase property in his native village, where he retired with a good collection of British and foreign birds. Here he turned his attention to literary pursuits, and in 1845 published an epic poem in ten cantos, entitled ‘Belshazzar, a Wild Rhapsody and Incoherent Remonstrance, abruptly written on seeing Haydon's celebrated Picture of Belshazzar's Feast,’ a work as curious in itself as in its title. He died unmarried at Heywood on 6 Sept. 1849, aged 78. 

NUTTALL, THOMAS (1786–1859), naturalist, son of Jonas Nuttall, printer, Blackburn, Lancashire, was born at Long Preston, Settle, Yorkshire, on 5 Jan. 1786, while his mother was on a visit. He was educated at Blackburn, and brought up there as a printer. He early took up the study of botany, particularly the flora of his native hills. In March 1807 he went to the United States, and afterwards devoted his life to scientific pursuits. Asa Gray, writing in 1844, says that ‘from that time [1808] to the present no botanist has visited so large a portion of the United States, or made such an amount of observations in field and forest. Probably few naturalists have ever excelled him in aptitude for such observations, in quickness of eye, tact in discrimination, and tenacity of memory.’ He visited nearly all the states of the union, and made more discoveries than any other explorer of the botany of North America. In 1811, along with Bradbury, he ascended the Missouri sixteen hundred miles above its mouth. In 1819 he made the then dangerous ascent of the Arkansas to the Great Salt River. In 1834 he succeeded in crossing the Rocky Mountains by the road along the sources of the Platte, and explored the territory of the Oregon and of Upper California. He also visited the Sandwich Islands. From