Dry Storeroom No. 1
Page 34
Museum office. Photo © Natural History Museum, London.
Herbarium. Photo © Natural History Museum, London.
Traveller’s joy from Leonhard Fuchs, De Historia Stirpium, Basel, 1542.
Larkspur. By permission of the Linnean Society of London.
Diatoms from Christian Ehrenberg, Mikrogeologie, 1854.
Lake Baikal. Photo © David Williams.
Screw worm (Cochliomyia hominivorax). Photo courtesy Martin Hall.
Head of the larval screw worm (Cochliomyia). Photo courtesy Martin Hall.
Screw worm plaque. Photo courtesy Martin Hall.
Bruce Frederic Cummings. Photo courtesy Eric Bond Hutton.
Walter Rothschild. Photo © Natural History Museum, London.
Butterfly collector by Ian Jackson, Punch, 22 May 1985. Reproduced with permission of Punch Ltd.
Dick Vane-Wright. Photo courtesy Dick Vane-Wright.
(Top) Decomposing piglet. (Bottom) Bluebottle (Calliphora vicina). Photos courtesy Amoret Whitaker.
Springtail. Photo © Holt Studios International/Alamy.
Head of midge Heterotrissocladius grimshawi. Photo courtesy Steve Brooks.
(Top) Beetle display. Photo © Natural History Museum, London. (Bottom) Rhinoceros beetle. Photo courtesy Rob Knell.
Field laboratory in Africa. Photo © Dick Vane-Wright.
Beetle Agathidium vaderi. Drawing courtesy Quentin Wheeler.
(Top) Martian meteorite ALH 84001. Photo courtesy NASA/JSC. (Bottom) Micrograph of ALH 84001. Photo courtesy NASA.
Jadarite. Photo courtesy Chris Stanley.
(Top) SEM image of Cenozoic bryozoan (Exochella jellyae Brown, 1952). (Bottom) Drawing by Brown of the holotoype. Photos courtesy Paul Taylor.
Mineral Gallery, Natural History Museum. Photo © Natural History Museum, London.
Portrait of Edward Heron-Allen. Photo courtesy Clive Jones.
Big Hole diamond mine, Kimberley, South Africa. Photo © Chris Howes/Wild Places Photography/Alamy.
Diamond-cutting machine. Photo © Corbis.
Native silver. Photo © Natural History Museum, London.
Arthur Russell. Photo from Nature Stored, Nature Studied, British Museum (Natural History), 1981.
Cartoon of Edwin Ray Lankester riding an okapi. Punch, 12 November 1902.
Sir Gavin de Beer. Photo © Natural History Museum, London.
Museum logo. Author’s own collection.
Extinct mammal Myotragus. Photo © Natural History Museum, London.
Lucy Evelyn Cheesman. Photo © Natural History Museum, London.
Model of the dodo. Photo © Natural History Museum, London.
Meinertzhagen collection. Photo © Natural History Museum, London.
Museum storage in Surrey caves, 1943. Photo by Fox Photos/Hulton Archive © Getty Images.
War damage to the Botany Department. Photo © Natural History Museum, London.
House journal Tin Hat. Author’s own collection.
HMS Challenger. Author’s own collection.
Richard Owen carving a dodo. Photo © Science Museum/Science & Society Picture Library.
W. D. Lang. Photo courtesy The Royal Society.
Cretaceous bryozoan Pelmatopora. Photo courtesy Paul Taylor.
Carpoid Cothurnocystis elizae Bather. Photo © Natural History Museum, London.
Drawing of a kangaroo by Sydney Parkinson. Photo © Natural History Museum, London.
PLATES
I
1 Front façade of the Natural History Museum. Photo © Natural History Museum, London.
2 Main hall, Natural History Museum. Photo © David Pearson/Alamy.
3 Sir Richard Owen by William Holman Hunt, 1881. Photo © Natural History Museum, London.
4 Ceiling panel, detail of Pinus sylvestris. Photo © Natural History Museum, London.
5 Giant sequoia. Photo © Natural History Museum, London.
6 Moonfish in jar. Photo © Natural History Museum, London/Alamy.
7 Osteology storeroom. Photo © Natural History Museum, London.
8 Nathan Muchhala, Bellavista Cloud Forest Reserve, Ecuador. Photo © Jackie Fortey.
9 Nectar bat (Anoura fistulata). Photo © Nathan Muchhala.
10 Collecting insects. Photo © Natural History Museum, London.
11 The Peacock Fountain, Christchurch Botanic Gardens, New Zealand. Photo © Jackie Fortey.
12 Portrait of Linnaeus by Martin Hoffman. By permission of the Linnean Society of London.
13 “Old Man Banksia.” Photo © Natural History Museum, London.
14 Natural History Museum library. Photo © Natural History Museum, London.
15 The DNA laboratory. Photo © Natural History Museum, London.
16 Living bryozoan (Adeona). Photo courtesy Piotr Kuklinski.
17 Ostracod. Photo courtesy David Siveter.
18 Moroccan trilobites for sale. Photo © Brian Chatterton.
19 Reconstruction of Archaeopteryx. Photo © Natural History Museum, London.
20 Archaeopteryx. Photo courtesy Angela Milner © Natural History Museum, London.
21 Boxgrove excavation. Photo courtesy The Boxgrove Project.
22 Suffolk cliffs. Photo © Rob Francis.
23 Cichlid fish. Photo © 2007 Johnny Jensen/Image Quest Marine.
24 Nummulites. Photo © Dr. Basil Booth/GeoScience Features Picture Library.
25 Sea spiders. Photo courtesy Derek Siveter.
II
1 Portrait of Sir Joseph Banks by Thomas Phillips. By permission of the Linnean Society of London.
2 Herbarium specimen of the cocoa plant. Photo © Natural History Museum, London.
3 Lichens on gravestone. Photo © Jackie Fortey.
4 Herbarium specimen of sweet pea. By permission of the Linnean Society of London.
5 Tomato relative Solanum huaylasense Peralta. Photo © Blanca Léon.
6 Diatoms. Photo Dr. Neil Sullivan, University of California © NOAA.
7 Hypericum species. Photo © Jackie Fortey.
8 Dr. Miriam Rothschild. Photo © Tony Evans/naturepl.com.
9 Insect pest Aleurocanthus woglumi. Photo © Gillian Watson.
10 Parasitic wasp Encarsia perplexa. Photo © Andrew Polaszek.
11 Field laboratory. Photo © Dick Vane-Wright.
12 Termite mound, Kakadu National Park, Australia. Photo © Rob Francis.
13 Termite Bifidtermes. Photo courtesy Paul Eggleton.
14 Moth and butterfly collection of Sir Alfred Russel Wallace. Photo © Natural History Museum, London.
15 Thin section of olivine basalt. Photo M. Hobbs/GeoScience Features Picture Library.
16 Deep-sea tubeworms. Photo © NOAA.
17 Deep-sea sulphide chimney. Photo © NOAA.
18 Oldoinyo Lengai volcano. Photo © Rob Francis.
19 Nuratau Mountains, Uzbekistan. Photo © Jan Sevcik.
20 Kovdorskite. Photo courtesy Frances Wall.
21 Koh-i-noor diamond mould. Photo courtesy Alan Hart.
22 Bournonite. Photo © Natural History Museum, London.
23 Koh-i-noor diamond. Photo © The Royal Collection © 2007 Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II.
24 Latrobe gold nugget. Photo © Natural History Museum, London.
25 The “accursed amethyst.” Photo courtesy Alan Hart.
26 Illustration of owls, Plate 432 from John James Audubon’s Birds of America (1835–38). Photo © Natural History Museum, London/Alamy.
27 Gymea lily from Illustrationes Florae Novae Hollandiae, 1816, by Ferdinand Bauer. Photo © Natural History Museum, London.
28 Seaside ragwort from Newfoundland, Volumes, sketches by Georg Dionysius Ehret. Photo © Natural History Museum, London.
While every effort has been made to trace the owners of copyright material reproduced herein, the publishers would like to apologize for any omissions and would be pleased to incorporate missing acknowledgements in any future editions.
A NOTE ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Richard Fort
ey was a senior palaeontologist at the Natural History Museum in London. His previous books include the critically acclaimed Life: A Natural History of the First Four Billion Years of Life on Earth, short-listed for the Rhône Poulenc Prize in 1998; Trilobite! Eyewitness to Evolution, short-listed for the Samuel Johnson Prize in 2001; and The Hidden Landscape, which won the Natural World Book of the Year in 1993. He was Collier Professor in the Public Understanding of Science and Technology at the Institute for Advanced Studies at the University of Bristol in 2002 and is a Fellow of the Royal Society.
FOOTNOTES
*1I will give the scientific names of all the plants and animals mentioned in this book, because such taxonomy is central to the work of the Natural History Museum.
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*2475 million years ago.
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*3The full list of zoological ranks from smaller to more inclusive reads as follows (not all of them have to be used): race, subspecies, species, subgenus, genus, tribe, subfamily, family, superfamily, suborder, order, subclass, class, phylum and kingdom (the most inclusive, such as fungi). The botanical system differs in details. Some of the ranks within a kingdom are recognized by similar endings—for example, animal families usually end in -idae (the trilobites Calymenidae) and subfamilies in -inae (Calymeninae). It is not the same for plants, where most families end in -aceae (such as the daisies Asteraceae). The family is probably the most commonly used unit in everyday use: most people, for instance, can tell the cactus family (Cactaceae) from the daisy family.
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*4After the Convention on Biodiversity following the World Summit in Rio de Janeiro in 1992, the signatories agreed to move towards conserving their biodiversity at a national level. This means knowing what animals and plants you have got, and recognizing how to name them properly. Standardization of nomenclature is part of the process, right at the start. The problem is one of investing nomenclature with glamour, and I have to say that it does have a whiff of accountancy about it. The Journal of Zoological Nomenclature could never be described as a riveting read, even by its devotees.
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*5This species is named for Robert Plot (1640–96), who was a pioneer palaeontologist and the first Keeper of the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford. His Natural History of Oxfordshire figured a number of fossils of Jurassic age for the first time, including the bone of a dinosaur, later to be named as Megalosaurus (“huge lizard”). Clypeus is a Roman round shield.
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*6These are calibrated against the so-called Marine Isotope Stages, which now provide a unified timescale for the ice ages. Tapping into this standardized clock is not a simple matter, however, and much argument still takes place over the exact age of particular sites. The succession of mammal species is important independent evidence.
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*7John Ray (1628–1705) was a pioneer botanist who has been somewhat, and unjustly, overshadowed by Linnaeus. His name is commemorated in a series of learned and beautifully produced monographs of the Ray Society, of which David Reid’s is the 164th.
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*8Cryptozoologists are devotees of the theory that large unknown animals still lurk in remote corners of the world. Large lakes are favoured habitats; the Himalaya and Amazon and Congo rainforests are also popular.
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*9As this is written (2007), beyond this point at the west end of the building there is nothing—an open space where the old Spirit Building once stood. This is where the second stage of the Darwin Centre will appear.
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*10Whales are part of the mammal group Cetacea, which also includes porpoises and dolphins; all of these organisms are equally the subject of scientific research and conservation efforts.
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*11As with Linnaeus, many of the authors or artists of the time took Latin soubriquets. Fuchs was known as Fuchsius, for example. Tabernaemontanus was Jacob Theodore von Bergzabern (in Alsatia), to which the curious name is a latinized reference.
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*12The quality of colour reproduction has improved markedly since Ramsbottom’s time, and the photographs in the original edition look rather unnatural to modern eyes. So after half a century it was time to have a replacement, and this has been published by two of the current Kew mycologists, Brian Spooner and Peter Roberts. The science is more up to date, of course, but one misses the footnotes.
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*13Strictly speaking, the “vegetable” partner is termed a dinoflagellate in many examples.
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*14William Sherard founded (I should properly say endowed) the chair of Botany at the University of Oxford in 1734, and Dillenius was the first Professor. The holder is still known as the Sherardian Professor. Readers in the United States might also like to know that Bob Hope was born in Eltham.
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*15The Linnean Society spells its name without the extra “a” of Linnaean, which confuses me, as no doubt it does others. I was told that this is because the Society is named after Linné (his Swedish name) rather than the latinized version in common use.
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*16The credit for putting the therapeutic uses of maggots on the medical map is often attributed to a Confederate officer, J. F. Zacharias, during the American Civil War. “During my service in the hospital at Danville Virginia, I first used maggots to remove the decayed tissue in hospital gangrene and with eminent satisfaction.”
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*17Body lice do in fact carry several diseases, such as trench fever, which was a problem in the First World War. The Cambridge zoologist A. E. Shipley published a small book in 1915 entitled The Minor Horrors of War, dealing with the louse, bed-bug, flea and so on.
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*18I am aware that using the word “science” here might go against the cautions of modern historians to avoid anachronisms. It would have been even more anachronistic to have used the word “geology” as that scientific concept did not appear until the end of the eighteenth century, as Martin Rudwick has explained in detail in Bursting the Limits of Time (2006).
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*19To give another example, in 2002 Alan Criddle named a mineral Frankhawthorneite, you may guess after whom.
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*20For those with a technical turn of mind, here is a selection of the devices that lurk in their separate rooms: energy dispersive X-ray analysis (EDXRA) identifies elements from their X-ray spectra; the field emission SEM is able to discriminate two points only two nanometres apart, and can be used to look at dust or the finest of mineral fabrics; the confocal microscope uses laser light to produce images with unprecedented depth of field; the Fourier transform infrared microscope (FTIM) produces infrared spectra characteristic of different materials—so, for example, fake amber can be quickly distinguished from the real thing, because the latter has a very distinctive spectral profile. Across the corridor the chemical analysis division boasts yet more machines in rooms separated from those equipped with the more familiar battalion of reagents and glassware that recall the archetypal “chem lab” of my schooldays. Quite a lot of these laboratories’ efforts are directed towards getting minerals into solution so that they can be analysed by the machines in the adjacent rooms. These include “kit” such as the inductively coupled plasma mass spectrometers (ICPMS), which are used to measure trace elements and isotopes with an accuracy that boggles almost any part of the anatomy that is bogglable—if the blurb accompanying the machine is to be believed, this means a few parts per quadrillion, or 10-15. Measuring such minute quantities of rare elements is important in identifying the sources of rocks; for example, igneous rocks derived from melting of the mantle will have a distinctive elemental signature different from that of rocks derived from melting of the crust—even though they might look very similar in hand specimen. We have seen previously how signatur
es can be recognized for Martian rocks. It is paradoxical that to understand some of the biggest questions about the origin of planets or the interior of the Earth samples have to be studied at the smallest scale that technology allows. Although one of the ICPMS machines requires the material to be in solution, the laser ablation machine uses a precisely focussed laser beam to sample a small area of a solid sample. Some important elements are not satisfactorily assayed by these machines—especially carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen and sulphur—so for these there is another special apparatus (not surprisingly called the CHNS analyser)—which essentially works by burning the sample and measuring the product of combustion. Any element that needs to be analysed and measured can be, down to the atomic level. The black boxes produce a kind of chemical black magic. It is odd to reflect that this humming world of plasma screens and analysers is the logical successor to the old assayer with his blowpipes and porcelain plate to look at the “streak” of a mineral. It is sometimes hard to remember that these machines are our servants and not our masters.
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*21As if nature were not generous enough with colours, some of the specimens waved by the boys have been dyed rather lurid and unnatural scarlets and purples, colours unmatched by natural quartz. Caveat emptor!
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*22To be accurate, I should say that Owen never had the formal title of Director—he was officially entitled Superintendent.
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*23One could also make a case for Tate Regan (Director, 1927–38), whose distinguished scientific career preceded his elevation, and who saved the British nation from the musk rat, and appointed women to the permanent staff for the first time.
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*24Like many people who constructed much of their own legend, he wrote prolifically to support the tale. Perhaps the most prescient title was Diary of a Black Sheep (1964), but one should notice The Life of a Boy (1947), Kenya Diary 1902–6 (1957), Middle East Diary 1917–56 (1960) and Army Diary 1899–1926 (1964). There have been several adulatory biographies that take him on his own assessment, but it has become clear that fabrication played an important part in the “diaries,” too.
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