It might be thought that after the production of such a work there would be nothing more to be said. But David Reid believes that the truth about winkles is emerging only now that studies of molecular sequences have been added to the equation. In the last ten years he has been working with S. T. Williams on tropical winkles. The phylogenetic trees produced from the sequence data revealed that species from Australia and Africa were evolutionarily quite separate—so much so that they might be separated into different genera, called Austrolittorina and Afrolittorina, respectively, for obvious reasons. The most startling fact I learned about these two genera is that the nine species now recognized as belonging to them were formerly thought of as but a single, highly variable species. Furthermore, there are species of Austrolittorina and Afrolittorina that are completely indistinguishable on the shape and ornament of their shells. Yet their molecules tell us that they had separate evolutionary origins. The shells alone could not reveal this story. There could scarcely be a more powerful example of cryptic species—their recognition would have been impossible before the “molecular age.” The similar demands of shore habitats in their widely separated localities determined that the winkle shells evolved into an identically similar shape. The arrangement of the continents and islands that allowed the species to evolve in separation was itself a consequence of geological processes, as the tectonic plates carry on their unseen business, in this case, the separation of Australia from Africa as their respective plates bore them away. So geology, and evolution, and habitat combine to specify what a winkle should look like. The world is a lot richer than one might imagine. The apparently esoteric activity of studying marine snails tells us much about how this richness came to be. Consider the snail and be wise.
Sea shells can look very similar but have separate evolutionary origins: the “winkles” Afrolittorina and Austrolittorina.
A little farther along the basement corridor, John Taylor still works in the same office he walked into in 1965; it retains the richly patinated hardwood cupboards with the names of molluscan families on the doors, so like those in my own first office. His office is a cramped space at the western end of the old building, with low ceilings revealing the iron skeleton of the Museum, beams and bolts and all. Visitors have to sidle alongside cabinets to get to the inner sanctum where the computer and the scientist reside. John retired some years ago, but continues to come into work almost every day. This might surprise some people for whom work has been an obligation and a chore, and for whom working for nothing might seem a strange concept, but then after forty years John Taylor is still as fascinated as ever by his clams—his work is simply who he is. Besides, there is always something new and exciting to discover. Just at the moment, he is researching into clams that harbour colourless sulphur bacteria in their tissues. These clams are specialists in the molluscan world: they actually cultivate the bacteria in their gills, and many species are adapted to absorb nutrients directly from the “plants” in their anatomical garden. John and his colleagues have shown that this adaptation is widespread in many different habitats: in mangrove swamps, or on seafloors low in oxygen, or around those strange, deep-sea sulphurous vents that exhale hot water along the mid-ocean ridges. The clams get food, and the bacteria grow in a protected environment—indeed, some clams have developed behaviours that help to “feed” the bacteria with the sulphur they require. Both parties benefit. It is a classic case of symbiosis. Some of these special clams can live in marine habitats that are very low in oxygen, which actually helps some bacteria thrive. It is a marvellous demonstration of the vigour of life to colonize even the most unpromising environments. And it is possible that such apparently obscure species will be important in coping with the polluted seas to which we humans are contributing. Taylor has proved that this specialist life habit has evolved no fewer than five times independently in the clams, but especially in a group called lucinoids. Once again, new evidence from DNA helps to prove this. It seems like any trick good enough to earn a livelihood in nature is good enough to be copied. And again we run into the taxonomic underpinning of the Museum, because John and Emily, his partner, have discovered a host of new species of symbiotic clams, even in places that have been sampled several times before. Some of them are tiny, and you could imagine how they would be overlooked. One or two are quite large, and one, from the California coast, is a really substantial fistful of an animal, which John first recognized from a museum collection. They need names, of course, and once described and christened will add another small turret to the edifice of biodiversity. That’s how enduring knowledge of the natural world grows: little by little with the help of enthusiasts.
It is not surprising that the rich attractions of the mollusc collection have made it the target of unscrupulous collectors. There is a kind of disease that afflicts certain naturalists that gives them an irresistible compulsion to own their objects of study as well as understand them. Sometimes this results in collections of lasting value to science—I have already mentioned a number of these coming as bequests to the Museum. In other cases the collecting compulsion takes a pathological turn—they have to own an example of a desired species, whatever it takes. The shell collector Tom Paine was one of these. As a trusted amateur expert he was allowed access to the collections for many years. Eventually, staff became worried by a series of disappearances from the drawers that seemed to follow upon his visits. These absences even included some of the precious type specimens—not the holotype maybe, but some of the other specimens that were part of the type collection. He could never be caught red-handed, but he was eventually excluded from access to the London collections. In the meantime he had apparently made similar light-fingered visits to other museums all around the world. After his death in the 1990s he bequeathed a magnificent and enormous collection to the National Museum of Wales, but the origin of many of the specimens will probably never be sorted out. An even more blatant example was another visitor who raided the birds’ eggs. This is one of the more familiar obsessions, and one that I can understand, because as a young boy, before it became illegal, I briefly collected eggs myself, as had my countryman father before me. I am ashamed of it now, but I can recall the excitement of coming across an uncommon species; and birds’ eggs are fragile and beautiful objects. They are just the kind of thing to attract an oddball kleptomaniac. This particular thief appeared in a wheelchair; he secreted the desired birds’ eggs inside women’s tights that he then tucked into his trousers before making good his exit. He was discovered and prosecuted. It later transpired that the reason he was in a wheelchair in the first place was that he had had an accident stealing copper from electrical installations. Shells, eggs, fossils—it matters not—all intrusions into the collections are taken very seriously, and have to be reported to the Trustees by the Keeper of the department concerned.
One of John Taylor’s discoveries in Western Australia, which was named by him and Glover in 1997; a lucinid clam Rasta thiophila (thiophila means “sulphur lover”)
Another beautiful new clam from Western Australia, Plicolucina flabellata
Perhaps I should explain about the Trustees. The Director answers only to the Trustees, and the Trustees answer only to God—or at least to the government of the day. They are the ultimate governing body of the Museum. They have been there from the inception of the British Museum at Bloomsbury. Sir Hans Sloane, whose collection formed the basis of the British Museum, made it clear in his will that his collections were to be entrusted to Trustees, and that they, in turn, should offer them to the King for the nation. The original list of Trustees numbered no fewer than fifty-one, most of them friends or relations of Sloane himself, and most of them beyond reproach, for Sloane was doubtless aware of the corruption pervading society in the first half of the eighteenth century. He realized that a philanthropist needed people to look out for his interests, lest things “go astray.” Even so, it was a good idea to have plenty of them, just in case one of them got any irregular ideas. Thanks to a se
t of influential Trustees, the “Act for the purchase of the Museum…of Sir Hans Sloane…&c” received the Royal Assent on 7 June 1753. The result (eventually) was a building to house the collections, and a set of Keepers to look after them. The burgeoning British Museum has been a drain on the resources of government ever since, and no doubt there have been civil servants who have scrutinized the accounts and wondered whether a little judicious pruning might actually save a few pounds.
The monument to Sir Hans Sloane in the Chelsea Physic Garden c. 1910
When the Natural History Museum split off from its parent body, another set of twelve Trustees were appointed. These worthies still meet a few times a year, at which time the Director has to present his policies and resolutions for approval. The word of the Trustees is still passed down to the shop floor with all the gravity of holy writ being handed down on tablets of stone.
For most of the scientists working on beetles, beans or Brachiosaurus, the Trustees might as well have been living on a distant planet for all that was seen of them. The regular changes in Trustees didn’t seem to make much difference to our daily lives. They tended to be distinguished clerics, academics or aristocrats with a natural history bent. What they did was all happening “upstairs” somewhere; downstairs, life went on. Very rarely, a visit from one of the Trustees was scheduled, and this entailed desperately sorting through the heaps that littered the office, returning books to the library, putting specimens away and generally scrubbing up. The office was always spotless by the time the Trustee arrived, or the Keeper would want to know the reason why.
As with so many aspects of British life, Mrs. Thatcher transformed the way the Museum worked. In the 1980s the composition of Trustees changed. Now it was deemed appropriate to have successful businesspersons as a sizeable proportion of the Trustees; out went bishops and the retired Sibthorpian Professor from Oxford University, and in came the Chief Executive Officers. This was part and parcel of instilling a new spirit of realism into our ivory towers, of shaking up the old Civil Service by making it conform to the business paradigm that was considered the model for the successful running of any organization. Black Rolls-Royces pulled up on Trustees’ days as the Head of Whatever plc made a slot in his busy life to oversee the policies of a great museum full of butterflies, trilobites and exhibitions. A museum is evidently just the thing for a captain of industry to knock into shape. In fact, many of the new Trustees did not do a bad job, but it soon became difficult to regard them as exemplars of the Great and Good in the tried and tested sense. Among the appointees was Gerald Ronson, a very successful businessman and head of the Heron Group. I am not sure that Mr. Ronson necessarily had any interest in natural history before becoming a Trustee of the Museum. I met him on one occasion when he did the rounds of our department, and I remember a very fine, pinstriped double-breasted suit that seemed to fill the room, while I attempted to explain why trilobites were important. I was regarded with the sceptical air that might otherwise be reserved for a salesman attempting to flog a second-hand Jag. Clearly, we approached one another from different worlds, the distinction between us being principally that, while I had absolutely no influence on his world, potentially he might have much influence on mine.
However, he did help considerably in part-financing the new dinosaur galleries in the west end of the Natural History Museum, our most popular attraction, and he was instrumental in securing favourable terms for the Museum’s acquisition of a former bus depot in Wandsworth, South London. This building has been essential as an overflow store, and without it the reorganization of the collections during the opening of the new Darwin Centre would have been impossible. As this is written, its financial potential is being realized to help fund the second phase of the Darwin Centre. It would be difficult to argue against the proposition that Mr. Ronson’s contributions to the Natural History Museum have exceeded those of the average archbishop or aristocrat. Presumably, had all gone smoothly his good works would have registered in the nebulous and mysterious honours system for which Britain is justly renowned. However, in 1986, Ronson was embroiled in allegations of irregularities over the takeover of the Distillers Group by the mighty brewing company Guinness. He and his associates had attempted to manipulate the stock market to inflate the price of Guinness shares. The case came to be known as the Guinness Scandal, and revealed the unacceptable face of Thatcherism whereby the rich and powerful were capable of controlling outcomes for profit. In 1990, Gerald Ronson was “sent down,” along with his collaborator Ernest Saunders; the latter was released from prison because of his Alzheimer’s disease—from which, judging by the vigorous defence of his actions he made subsequently, he was the first person ever to recover. The whole affair left an unpleasant aftertaste.
It also introduced ambiguity into the role of the Trustee. Trustees were by definition trustworthy: they were supposedly incapable of acts that fell below the probity expected of this role in public life. The idea that any Trustee could be a jailbird would have set Sir Richard Owen or Sir Gavin de Beer spinning in their respective graves. Trustees become important at certain times: for example, they oversee the appointment of new Directors, and they must approve any major policy shifts. It can be a thankless task working pro bono publicum. By and large, the Trustees I know are high-minded people who are genuinely interested in contributing their wisdom to a national institution. However, they may not always understand the human cost of their decisions. In 1990, when Neil Chalmers as Director restructured the Museum, the staff discovered that they were actually employees of the Trustees, rather than of the Civil Service. This meant that the Trustees could declare “areas of redundancy” in other words, they could give people the sack. This came as something of a shock to those who had joined the organization when it was just a remote limb of the Civil Service, and believed that the only grounds for dismissal were “persistent and gross moral turpitude.” Idleness and inappropriate behaviour were thought of as only venial, rather than mortal, sins. As we have seen with Leslie Bairstow, a life of non-productivity had never been an obstacle to tenure in the past. Now, the rules were all changed, and the Trustees could give the nod to survival or departure. Each department on the science side had to identify “areas of redundancy” as part of the restructuring. It was a ghastly time.
To give one example, Dr. Alan Gentry, the mammal specialist, was forced to retire early. Alan’s field of expertise may seem obscure: he is an authority on fossil bovids. He is one of the few people in the world who can identify antelopes from their limb bones. Alan himself could win a Nobel Prize for Diffidence if there were one and one might understand why he should seem so vulnerable. But as so often in the Museum, appearances are deceptive. Remember that the reason why our distant ancestors came down from the trees in Africa may have been because the climate became more arid. And one of the best ways to recognize what was happening in the distant past is to study the fossil bones of bovids, which are a hundred times commoner than fossils of early humans. In fact, Alan Gentry’s research has proved pivotal in obtaining the full picture of the changing African ecology. He has received collections from all over the continent; his expertise is in demand. It is a measure of Alan’s devotion to his field that he has continued to work for nothing ever since, even after having been shown the door in unpleasant circumstances.
The Chairman of the Trustees at this time was Sir Walter Bodmer, renowned for his work for what was then known as the Imperial Cancer Research Fund, now part of Cancer Research UK. In conjunction with Neil Chalmers, he was determined to modernize the science departments. He was something of a tough guy, insisting throughout the traumas that the management had a right to manage, which is rather like saying a dictator has a right to dictate. At almost the same time, the science departments were being dethroned from their traditionally central role. Rather than their being represented in Museum management by the Keeper from every department, a Science Director was appointed to represent all of the science in hominem. The central managemen
t of the Museum was now, as it still is, a small group, representing the main customer areas of the organization, with science as just one of them. The effect is that the science has been marginalized. The head of science appointed by Neil Chalmers was a man called John Peake, whom most of the scientists in the Natural History Museum regarded as a loose cannon, at least on one of his good days. He had charm, and a kind of undisciplined enthusiasm for new things, rather like Mr. Toad in The Wind in the Willows. He also had an extraordinary effect on suits, which would become hopelessly rumpled even if they had been bought from Austin Reed just an hour beforehand. With wild hair and a lopsided grin produced by many years of smoking a disgusting old pipe, he often looked like the kind of geezer who approaches you on stations to request a small loan. I found it rather hard to dislike him.
Nonetheless, to have John Peake in charge of the taxonomic mission was analogous to having Count Dracula in charge of a blood bank. To be fair to him, he did some good things, such as directing the Museum towards molecular work, and equipping us with electronic mail long before most other institutions. He was doubtless forward looking. But the loss of whole areas of research was in my view a mistake from which it will be impossible to recover. Birds are the most popular of all animal groups among the lay public, but research in them was downgraded. It is a measure of the importance of this group of animals to the amateur naturalist that the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds spent £26 million in 2005–6, and it is at the forefront of habitat conservation, a cause with which any great museum should surely be identified. The bird collections—huge numbers of mounted specimens, skins and eggs—have since 1974 been held at the museum at Tring, Hertfordshire, which was bequeathed to the larger institution at South Kensington by Lord Rothschild in 1938. Mammals were historically one of the most important areas of study, but that has been reduced to “care and maintenance” of the collections. The argument was used that virtually all mammals and birds have been discovered, even though, of course, that leaves everything else about them still to study. My friend the spider man Fred Wanless was taken away from the animals he loved and told to work on nematodes, although there are plenty of spiders still to discover. The same story was repeated many times around the Museum, and it is unnecessary to produce a litany. The Trustees had to approve all this. No doubt they had in mind the business model whereby science would eventually become self-funding from external grants, and less dependent on a dwindling Grant-in-aid from government coffers. The subject areas must be shifted towards those that would most likely secure their own funding. I doubt whether David Reid’s great Littorina monograph would have been possible under this regime.
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