The Wonderful Mr Willughby

by Tim Birkhead

  Derham, William, FRS (1657–1735), clergyman, natural philosopher, author of Physico-Theology (1713); edited JR’s correspondence.

  Descartes, René (1596–1650), French philosopher, mathematician and scientist.

  Dixie, Sir Beaumont (1629–92), husband of Mary Willoughby, sister of Sir William Willoughby of Selston.

  Duport, James (1606–79), classical scholar, Trinity tutor of FW and others.

  Ent, George, FRS (1604–89), anatomist, scientist and defender and promoter of William Harvey’s works.

  Fabricius ab Aquapendente, Hieronymus (1537–1619), naturalist, embryologist in Padua.

  Faithorne, William (1616–91), artist and engraver; created the crayon portrait of JR and engraved some of the birds for the Ornithology.

  Fallopio, Gabriele (1523–62), Italian anatomist; studied the head and reproductive system.

  Gessner, Conrad (1516–65), Swiss naturalist and scholar; author of Historia Animalium (1551–8).

  Hartlib, Samuel (1600–62), German-British polymath.

  Harvey, William (1578–1657), physician to James I and later Charles I; discovered circulation of the blood; author of Exercitationes de generatione animalium (1651).

  Hewitt (Hewett), Dr Anthony (1603–84), FW’s physician in the weeks before his death.

  Hill, William (1618–67), classics scholar, FW’s teacher at the free school at Sutton Coldfield.

  Hooke, Robert, FRS (1635–1703), curator of experiments at the RS; author of Micrographia (1665).

  Howell, James (1594–1666), travel writer and historian.

  Hulse, Edward (1631–1711), famous physician; friend of JR.

  Huygens, Christiaan, FRS (1629–95), Dutch mathematician, interested in probability.

  Jardine, William (1800–74), ornithologist.

  Jessop, Francis (1638–91), naturalist, mathematician, based in Sheffield.

  Jonston, Jan (1603–75), Polish scholar and physician, author of De Avibus (1657).

  Kirby, William, FRS (1759–1850), entomologist and parson-naturalist.

  Kircher, Athanasius (1602–80), self-promoting Jesuit polymath and prolific writer; dissected nightingales.

  Leeuwenhoek, Antoni van (1632–1723), draper, tradesman, microscopist.

  Lessius, Leonard (1554–1623), Flemish Jesuit author of The Providence of God (1631 in English).

  Linnaeus, Carl (1707–78), Swedish botanist, zoologist and physician, responsible for the binomial system of naming, author of Systema Naturae.

  Lipsius, Justin (1547–1606), Flemish, philologist and travel writer.

  Lister, Martin, FRS (1639–1712), physician, natural historian and prolific author.

  Man, Thomas (d.1690), educated at Jesus College, Cambridge, trained as physician at Utrecht; worked with Sir Thomas Willoughby on his father Francis Willughby’s insect project.

  Marcgraf, Georg (1610–44), German astronomer and naturalist, author of Historia Naturalis Brasiliae.

  Marchetti, Pietro (1589–1673), surgeon in Padua.

  Martyn, John (d.1680), London publisher; sole publisher for the RS.

  Muffet, Thomas (1553–1604), merchant, natural historian, author of Health’s Improvement.

  Montalbanus, Ovidius (1601–71), curator of Aldrovandi’s museum in Bologna.

  Newton, Alfred, FRS (1829–1907), professor of comparative anatomy at Cambridge University; zoologist and ornithologist, author of Dictionary of Birds (1896).

  Newton, Isaac, FRS (1642–1726/7), physicist, mathematician; among the most influential of all scientists.

  Nidd, John (d.1659), colleague of FW and JR at Trinity College, Cambridge.

  Oakley, Margaret (n.d.), married JR in 1673.

  Okely, Mr (n.d.), possible relative of Margaret Oakley (above).

  Oldenburg, Henry, FRS (c.1619–77), German natural philosopher, theologian, secretary of the RS and founding editor of Philsophical Transactions.

  Olina, Giovanni Pietro (1585–1645), author of Uccelliera (1622).

  Pepys, Samuel, FRS (1633–1703), Member of Parliament, naval administrator, diarist. President of the Royal Society (December 1684 to November 1686).

  Petiver, James, FRS (c.1665–1718), apothecary, botanist, entomologist.

  Pigafetta, Antonio (1491–1534), one of the 18 of 260 that set off around the world with Magellan in 1519 and survived the journey.

  Piso, Willem (1611–78), Dutch physician and natural historian, co-author of Historia Naturalis Brasiliae.

  Plot, Robert, FRS (1640–96), professor of chemistry at Oxford University, naturalist author of natural histories of Staffordshire (1686) and Oxfordshire (1705).

  Raven, Charles (1885–1964), theologian, Master of Christ’s College Cambridge, JR’s biographer.

  Ray, John, FRS (1627–1705), naturalist; mentor and friend of FW, and co-author.

  Redi, Francesco (1626–97), Italian naturalist; father of parasitology and experimental biology.

  Robinson, Sir Tancred, FRS (c.1657–1748), physician and naturalist; physician to George I.

  Rondelet, Guillaume (1507–66), professor of medicine at Montpellier.

  Scaliger, Joseph Justus (1540–1609), French philologist and historian; settled in Leiden in 1593 and worked at the university there until his death.

  Skippon, Philip, FRS (1641–91), accompanied FW on continental tour; naturalist, Member of Parliament.

  Smith, Sir James Edward, FRS (1759–1828), botanist, founder of Linnean Society of London.

  Soest, Gerard (c.1600–81), portrait painter; painted both FW and his mother.

  Swainson, William, FRS (1789–1855), ornithologist, entomologist and artist.

  Swammerdam, Jan (1637–80), Dutch entomologist, microscopist; studied parasitoids of white butterfly caterpillars in the 1670s.

  Sydenham, Thomas (1624–89), physician and pioneer of bedside medicine; later (1680) fell out with FW and JR’s friend, the physician Martin Lister.

  Theophrastus (c.371–c.287 bc), Greek, successor to Aristotle; prolific author, including on plants.

  Todi, Valle da Antonio (n.d.), author of Canto de gl’Augelli.

  Tonge, Israel (Ezerel) (1621–80), clergyman, correspondent of FW.

  Turner, William (c.1509–68), physician and natural historian, author of Avium praecipuarum (1544).

  Venette, Nicola (1633–98), French physician, author of Traité du rossignol (1697).

  Walther, Johann Jakob (1604–79), superb bird artist, father of two sons (below).

  Walther, Johann Georg (1634–97), illustrator of Leonard Baldner’s book.

  Walther, Johann Friedrich (n.d.), brother of Johann Georg Walther.

  Wendy, Lettice (1627–96), FW’s sister.

  Wendy, Sir Thomas (1614–73), politician, husband of Lettice.

  Wilkins, John, FRS (1614–72), clergyman, naturalist, Founder Fellow of the RS; Bishop of Chester.

  Willoughby, Cassandra (1670–1735), FW’s daughter; Duchess of Chandos: Cassandra Brydges.

  Willoughby, Cassandra (née Ridgway) (1600–75), FW’s mother.

  Willoughby, Francis (junior) (1668–88), FW’s first son.

  Willoughby, Francis ‘the builder’ [(1546–96), FW’s great-grandfather.

  Willoughby, Katherine (1630–94), FW’s sister.

  Willoughby, Sir Francis (1588–1665), Francis the naturalist’s father.

  Willoughby, Sir Thomas, FRS (1672–1729), FW’s second son.

  Willoughby, Francis, FRS (1635–72), our Francis.

  Zwinger (1533–88), Swiss physician and humanist, author of Methodus Apodemica.

  Appendix 3

  The Story of Willughby’s Charr

  Charr are salmon-like fish with a circumpolar distribution that live in cold-water lakes. Isolated from other populations since the end of the Ice Age, the charr in different lakes have evolved into almost separate species. One would like to say ‘distinct’ species, but therein lies the problem: they are not always distinct.

  Willughby discovered the cha
rr in the summer of 1660. In truth ‘discovery’ is too strong a word. It was more of an encounter, for the distinctive nature of the Lake Windemere charr was already well known to locals. John Leland, writing in the 1530s to 1540s had commented on ‘a straung fish cawlled a chare’ in ‘Wynermerewath’.1

  On hearing of the fish, Willughby and Ray quizzed local fishermen for information and obtained specimens to describe and dissect for themselves. What they gleaned was that Lake Windermere held two types of charr: ‘The greate having a red belly they call the red Charre, and the lesser having a white belly which they call the Gilt or Gelt Charre.’2 The fisherman knew that the red charr spawns in early winter, and the white charr in early spring, but still regarded them as two forms of the same fish; yet Willughby and Ray considered them separate species. At the right times of year Willughby and Ray could have cut some open, examined their gonads and verified that, of the red charr, those with a red belly were male and those with a mauve belly were female. As it was, Willughby’s diligent search for distinctive features was rewarded with the discovery that the red charr lacked teeth on its palate, an observation whose full significance became apparent only later.

  Given that the red charr of Lake Windermere is now regarded as the most variable and diverse of all vertebrate species – that is, of all fish, amphibians, reptiles, birds and mammals – it is remarkable just how much accurate information Willughby and Ray were able to assemble.

  When, two years after their Lake District trip, Willughby and Ray travelled to North Wales and encountered the torgoch, also a charr, they considered it identical to the red charr of Windermere. Later still, when they came across the ‘carpioni’ in Lake Garda, they felt that this fish was probably also the same as the white charr of Lake Windermere.

  It was probably at Lake Garda that Willughby realised he had hit upon a feature that unambiguously distinguished the two types. Lake Garda’s carpioni lacked the palatal teeth, just as Willughby had found for the red charr. It later turned out that not only do these little teeth on the roof of the fish’s mouth distinguish different types of charr, they are also what separate salmon from trout. The white charr, or gilt as it is known, of Lake Windermere is effectively a trout, as is the carpioni of Lake Garda. Confused? Don’t be (although professional taxonomists continue to be): long ago both salmon and trout became trapped in cold-water lakes, and during aeons of icy isolation evolved into charr. Or at least the salmon did; the white ‘charr’ is now considered a type of trout.

  Long after Willughby and Ray were dead, the naturalist Thomas Pennant – best known as one of Gilbert White’s correspondents – claimed the red and white charr of Lake Windermere to be separate species based on their distinct breeding seasons:

  This remarkable circumstance of the different seasons of spawning fish [charr], apparently the same … puzzles us greatly, and makes us wish that the curious, who border that lake, would pay farther attention to the natural history of these fishes, and favor us with some further lights on the subject.3

  The 1950s champion of charr research, Winifred Frost, applauded Pennant’s novel use of the breeding seasons to separate the two Windermere charr, for at that time and for centuries thereafter most taxonomic distinctions were anatomical. But it was Willughby who pioneered the use of life-history traits, such as the metamorphosis in insects, or timing of breeding, as ways of distinguishing different taxonomic groups. There’s little doubt in my mind that had Willughby lived to write his own account of the charr of Windermere (and elsewhere), he would have used both his anatomical observations (the presence or absence of palatal teeth) and the difference in breeding season to create a case for the red and white charr being distinct.

  As it was, I imagine Willughby and Ray making notes during the Lake District trip, and filing them away – along with much else – for later inclusion in their planned History of Animals. After Willughby died and Ray had published Historia Piscium, under Willughby’s name, Albert Günther, president of the Royal Society in 1875–6, composed a comprehensive overview of charr taxonomy and decided to honour Willughby with the ‘discovery’ of the red charr, naming it Salvelinus willoughbii:

  Willoughby [sic] is the first who with the practiced eye of an ichythiologist examined the charrs of England and Wales, devoting a separate article to their description.4

  Appendix 4

  Identification of Birds Listed on Page 61 and Named in the Ornithology

  This includes the name listed by Willughby and Ray, the common name, scientific name and page number in the Ornithology (current names from F. Gill and D. Donsker (eds), 2016. IOC World Bird List (vol. 6.3), doi: 10.14344/IOC.ML.6.3.)

  Local name

  Common name, Scientific name (page number in the Ornithology)

  Ars-foot

  Great-crested Grebe Podiceps cristatus (339)

  Bald buzzard

  Osprey Pandion haliaetus (69)

  Bastard Plover

  Lapwing (Green Plover) Vanellus vanellus (307)

  Black-cap

  Black-headed Gull Chroicocephalus ridibundus (347)

  Bohemian Chatterer

  Waxwing Bombycilla garrulus (133)

  Cock of the Mountain

  Capercaillie Tetrao urogallus (172)

  Common Grosbeak

  Hawfinch Coccothraustes coccothraustes (244)

  Coulterneb

  Atlantic Puffin Fratercula arctica (325)

  Daker-hen

  Corncrake Crex crex (170)

  Didapper

  Dabchick Tachybaptus ruficollis (340)

  Dun-diver

  Red-breasted Merganser Mergus serrator (335)

  Fern-owl

  European Nightjar Caprimulgus europaeus (107)

  Flusher

  Red-backed Shrike Lanius curio (88)

  Gid

  Jacksnipe Lymnocryptes minimus (291)

  Glead

  Red Kite Milvus milvus (74)

  Gorcock

  Red Grouse Lagopus lagopus scotica (177)

  Green Plover

  Golden Plover Pluvialis apricaria (308)

  Greenland Dove

  Black Guillemot Cepphus grylle (326)

  More-buzzard

  Marsh Harrier Circus aeruginosus (75)

  Ox-eye

  Great Tit Parus major (240)

  Pool Snipe

  Redshank Tringa totanus (299)

  Puffin of the Isle of Man

  Manx Shearwater Puffinus puffinus (333)

  Puttock

  Common Buzzard Buteo buteo (70)

  Pyrarg

  White-tailed Eagle Haliaeetus albicilla (61)

  Rock Ouzel

  Rock Thrush Monticola saxatilis (195)

  Skout

  Common Guillemot Uria aalge (324)

  Small water-hen

  Baillon’s Crake Porzana pusilla (315)

  Solitary sparrow

  Blue Rock Thrush Monticola solitarius (191)

  Water Ouzel

  European Dipper Cinclus cinclus (149)

  Witwall

  Eurasian Golden Oriole Oriolus oriolus (198)

  Woodspite

  Green Woodpecker Picus viridis (135)

  Notes

  NB: Mi LM refers to the Middleton Collection, which contains the Francis Willughby archive, held in Manuscripts and Special Collections, the University Library at the University of Nottingham.

  CHAPTER 1: BITTEN BY THE SNAKE OF LEARNING

  1These details, including those of the birth of his two sisters, Lettice (17 March 1627) and Katherine (4 November 1630, also referred to as Catherine), were on a page found in a copy of Joseph Hall’s Complete Works (London, 1628). D. Johnston, pers. comm.

  2https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wollaton_Hall.

  3Cram et al. (2003).

  4Cassandra Ridgeway’s date of birth is unknown, but was probably around 1600. She was ‘married’ (betrothed) to Sir Francis at the age of eleven; he then went travelling and the couple probably did not live together u
ntil they moved into Middleton in 1615. (D. Johnston, pers. comm. (2016)). Such early betrothals were not unusual, but marriage at fifteen was (A. Brabcová, ‘Marriage in Seventeenth-Century England: The Woman’s Story’, in Theory and Practice in English Studies, eds P. Drábek and J. Chovanec, vol. 2, 21–4, Proceedings from the Seventh Conference of English, American and Canadian Studies, Brno, 2004): https://www.phil.muni.cz/angl/thepes/thepes_02_02.pdf.

  5Boran (2004).

  6Wood (1958).

  7Seth Ward (1654) cited by Serjeantson (2016).

  8Serjeantson (2016).

  9Ibid.

  10Thomas (2002).

  11Ibid.; Serjeantson (2016).

  12Feingold (1990: 31).

  13Ibid. (33), from Charleton’s book The Immortality of the Human Soul, Demonstrated by the Light of Nature in Two Dialogues. London: William Wilson, 1657.

  14http://www.biography.com/people/francis-bacon-9194632#philosopher-of-science.

  15Wootton (2015: 73).

  16Ibid. (136).

  17‘Memoir of Dr James Duport’, eds James Henry Monk and Charles James Blomfield. Cambridge: John Murray, 1846, 672–97.

  18Feingold (1990).

  19Ibid.

  20Ibid.

  21Oswald and Preston (2011).

  22Wood (1958).

  23Yeo (2014).

  24Serjeantson (2016).

  25Oswald and Preston (2011).

  26Muffett – see Chapter 7.

  27From Duport on Willughby, Musae subseciave, translated by Philip Oswald.

  28Serjeantson (2016).

  29Ibid.

  30Broad (1944).

  31Williams (1966).

  32Parker (2006); Birkhead and Monaghan (2010).

  33From a Latin poem by James Duport addressed to Willughby (Duport 1676: 316), translated by Philip Oswald, pers. comm.