Dry Storeroom No. 1

by Richard Fortey

  One wants to be as positive as one can be about the obvious and accumulating changes in the culture of natural history in national museums. If the difficulties with finding permanent employment for alpha taxonomists are combined with the revolution in library and information access made possible by the web, one comes up with an oddly satisfactory solution. The day of the botanizing vicar will return. The amateur will enjoy a renaissance. In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries many of the most distinguished names were amateurs, only in the sense that they did not earn a living from working on fungi or fossils. Parsons and moneyed bourgeoisie—Gilbert White or Charles Darwin, say—were typical of this caste. At that time it was possible to hold the relevant literature on a particular group of organisms within a typical middle-class study. Much later, my inspiration, Mr. Morley Jones, still had books on diatoms in his own collection sufficient for him to make a worthwhile contribution to the subject. Today, armed with the unlimited resources of the internet, anyone talented and determined enough may carve out a place for himself as an expert on a favoured group of organisms. All the literature and photographs, keys and microscopic details can be made freely available. If the early phase of systematic learning was mostly powered by privilege, the middle phase by support from government for professionals, maybe the third phase will be immensely democratic, and driven by the freedom of information exchange thrown up by the web.

  “Kangaru.” Probably the first European drawing of a kangaroo, by Sydney Parkinson, made during Captain Cook’s first voyage (1768–71)

  It is already happening: I have met dedicated people in the mycological world who have devoted years to “their” genus of mushroom. I have met devoted and unsalaried bee men and beetle women. The role of the museum will continue to be to house material, and particularly types, but this material will be derived from a different and more inclusive demographic. While the paid professionals move further into molecular work, where the amateur cannot follow, the “hairs on legs” of little-known species will increasingly be studied by a new breed of websavvy naturalists in contact with all their fellow enthusiasts around the world. Authority will be devolved to a thousand computer terminals. The reign of the solitary and mighty figure below stairs in the Museum may well be coming to an end in the age of The Encylopedia of Life. But it will be more important than ever that the professional expert should still retain his or her place as guardian of the collections and as “quality control” on the taxonomy produced by the wider community. There is a division in taxonomy that is nearly as old as the subject itself between “lumpers” and “splitters.” The former take a wide view of a species, while the latter tend to recognize more and finely differentiated entities, which are then given separate names.*27 With regard to birds this may not seem too much of a problem—though there are fierce controversies even here—but with organisms like fungi and molluscs there are unending debates about what makes a species. In actively evolving plants that can also hybridize, the problems are compounded; people have gone prematurely grey trying to wrestle with the complexities of the brambles (Rubus). Since evolution is still happening all around us, it would actually be rather surprising if there were not such difficulties of definition in nature.

  To some, it might seem rather tempting to propose a new species in order to achieve a certain kind of immortality—but it could well be a species that will not stand up to subsequent scrutiny. Many pretty colour forms of mushrooms and shells have been shown to be variants rather than real species. There has to be a sound system of refereeing lest “new” species pop up indiscriminately and lead eventually to a riot of unnecessary names. The continued existence of the expert will be absolutely essential to make sure that Linnaeus’ original intention of making a system of nature does not founder in a welter of nomenclatural chaos, a return to the Dark Ages of disorder. The professional systematist will be there to adjudicate between new methods of identification carried out by his fellow scientists and data gathered by a growing army of unpaid experts. It is profoundly to be hoped that scientists in Third World countries will participate in this taxonomic democracy. There need to be more of them to come to care as much about their own fauna and flora as has become commonplace in western countries; if so, there may yet be hope for the future of global biodiversity. The end of all this is to open humankind’s eyes and hearts to the joy of our world’s biological richness, from microbe to mastodon, from Selaginella to Sequoia. The means is continued discovery, unravelling the Tree of Life, and describing the fascinating biographies of a million organisms. Every species on Earth has its story to tell. But the first stage will always be the naming of names.

  It should be clear from what I have written that I have affection for those people who have worked away unseen behind the public galleries: the secret museum. Without being too fanciful, I might say I have lined them up in my own gallery, curated them by displaying their peculiarities and made of them my own idiosyncratic museum. I could write another book as long as this with a completely different cast that is every bit as extraordinary. A number of my colleagues winked at me when they heard what I was about and hinted that this might be a time to settle old scores. I soon discovered that the real business was to explain what museum science is about, and to try to understand how the taxonomic sciences have evolved since the early days. So I have described a selection of the research that is going on right now. It does not pretend to be a comprehensive account—it’s not even representative. It is just my own collection—projects that caught my eye, or seemed to show where science might go, or were chosen just because I admire the people doing them. It is my own Dry Storeroom No. 1.

  There is a purposefulness about the scientific benches in the early twenty-first century that is probably more focussed than at any time in the past. After all, we live in competitive times. Formerly, there was more leisure for people behind the scenes to cultivate their eccentricities like prize vegetable marrows, mulching them regularly with their prejudices and fertilizing them with long draughts of solitude. This had something to do with the security of tenure of the established civil servant. I doubt whether a Kirkpatrick, creator of the nummulosphere, or a W. N. P. Barbellion could survive in the present climate.

  What I have written about the Natural History Museum in London applies just as much to the American Museum of Natural History in New York, and to the National Museum of Natural History in the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, and to any one of forty similar institutions around the world. All these museums face similar challenges to those I have described to keep systematic research advancing in a changing funding culture. Their research has never been more important at a time when human impact on the environment is causing whole ecosystems to degrade. The great museums may harbour the conscience for the natural world, not merely provide its catalogue. They may be the only places where future generations may be able to find the answer to the question: What have we done? The collections may yet shame us all: let us hope history proves otherwise.

  For now, what unites the public galleries and the secret hinterland I have explored with you is the celebration of life’s richness. We—visitors and researchers alike—are all united with the animals and plants on display, or in their hidden drawers, in the brotherhood of DNA. The fossils are part of our story, be they ever so strange. The least microbe or the greatest mammal deserves our attention. The geological history of our planet is as intimately entwined with the history of the life on its surface as the symbiosis between tree and truffle. Evolution is not a late ingredient to be added as a kind of seasoning to sharpen our taste for the natural world, it is the main course itself. When we wander with the crowds through gallery after gallery of specimens, or pause to examine moving models and videos explaining the working of the eye or the cell division of a bacterium, we are seeing what evolutionary change has accomplished on our planet through nearly four billion years. Our privilege—our uniquely human privilege—is that we alone among the multitude of species can underst
and the processes that got us where we are today. Those who work in the secret museum on understanding animals and plants remind us, paradoxically, what it is to be human.

  I will finish by quoting the diarist W. N. P. Barbellion, even if his evolutionary scenario is no longer quite the ticket. On 22 July 1910 he wrote:

  I take a jealous pride in my Simian ancestry. I like to think I was once a magnificent hairy fellow living in the trees and my frame has come down through geological time via a sea jelly & worms & Amphioxus, Fish, Dinosaurs & Apes. Who would exchange these for the pallid couple in the Garden of Eden?

  Acknowledgements

  I am indebted to many friends and colleagues in the Natural History Museum for sharing their oral histories with me, often in return for no more than a good lunch. Any errors that appear in this book are entirely the fault of the author, who may have not been the best of scribes, and nothing to do with those at lunch. I apologize to those who gave me stories that I failed to use: there was no shortage of material. I apologize even more sincerely to those who still have not received their lunch. I should particularly mention the following (in no particular order): Edmund Launert, Sandra Knapp, Peter Hammond, Dick Vane-Wright, Victor Eastop, Martin Hall, Steve Brooks, Andrew Polaszek, Paul Eggleton, David Reid, John Taylor, David Johnson, Vaughan Southgate, Amoret Whitaker, Jenny Bryant, Linda Irvine, Bob Press, Robert Symes, Richard Herrington, Alan Hart, Paul Taylor, Hugh Owen, Ellis Owen, Angela Milner, Cyril Walker, Ollie Crimmen, Ron Croucher, Chris Stringer, Andrew Currant, Alex Ball, Sara Russell, Frances Wall, Chris Stanley, Bob Hutchison, Rowland Whitehead, Klaus Sattler, Kathy Way and Lorraine Cornish. Polly Tucker helped greatly with making Museum archives available to me. Thanks also to Katie Anderson in the Natural History Museum Picture Library. Heather Godwin gave her usual eagled-eyed attention to the first draft, and removed several bad jokes. Robin Cocks read through the manuscript. Jackie Fortey gave indispensable help with picture research.

  Further Reading

  Arnold, E. N. 2003. Reptiles and Amphibians of Europe. Princeton University Press.

  Barbellion, W. N. P. 1919. The Journal of a Disappointed Man. Sutton Publishing.

  Bowler, P.J. 1983. The Eclipse of Darwinism. Johns Hopkins University Press.

  Cheesman, E. 1949. Six-Legged Snakes in New Guinea: A Collecting Expedition to Two Unexplored Islands. Harrap.

  Clutton-Brock, J. 1999. Natural History of Domesticated Animals. 2nd ed. Cambridge University Press.

  Corfield, R. 2003. The Silent Landscape: In the Wake of HMS Challenger, 1872–1876. John Murray.

  Erzincliogglu, Z. 2000. Maggots, Murder and Men. Harley Books.

  Ferguson, N. 2001. The House of Rothschild: Money’s Prophets, 1798–1848. Penguin.

  Gee, Henry. 1996. Before the Backbone. Chapman & Hall.

  Gilbert, O. L. 2000. Lichens. Collins New Naturalist Series.

  Godfray, H. C. J., and S. Knapp. 2004. Taxonomy for the 21st Century. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B, 359.

  Grady, M. 2000. Catalogue of Meteorites. Cambridge University Press.

  Kenrick, P., and P. R. Crane. 1997. “The Origin and Early Evolution of Plants on Land.” Nature 389:33–39.

  Lawrence, P.N. 1989. Impressive Depressives: 75 Historical Cases of Manic Depression from Seven Countries. P. N. Lawrence.

  Mayor, A. 2000. The First Fossil Hunters: Paleontology in Greek and Roman Times. Princeton University Press.

  Molleson, T., and M. Cox. 1993. The Spitalfields Project. Volume 2: The Anthropology—The Middling Sort. Council for British Archaeology Research Report No. 86.

  Morton, V. 1987. Oxford Rebels: The Life and Friends of Nevil Story Maskelyne. Sutton Press.

  Ramsbottom, J. 1953. Mushrooms and Toadstools. Collins New Naturalist Series.

  Rasmussen, Pamela C., and Robert P. Prys-Jones. 2003. History vs Mystery: The Reliability of Museum Specimen Data. British Ornithologists’ Club.

  Reid, D. G. 1996. Systematics and Evolution of Littorina. The Ray Society.

  Rudwick, M. 2006. Bursting the Limits of Time. University of Chicago Press.

  Russell, Miles. 2003. Piltdown Man: The Secret Life of Charles Dawson. Tempus.

  Schindler, K. 2005. Discovering Dorothea. HarperCollins.

  Smith, K. G. V. 1986. A Manual of Forensic Entomology. British Museum (Natural History).

  Smith, V. S. 2005. DNA Barcoding: Perspective from a “Partnerships for Enhancing Systematic Expertise (PEET)” Debate. Systematic Biology.

  Spooner, B., and P. J. Roberts. 2003. Fungi. Collins New Naturalist Series.

  Stearn, William T. 1981. The Natural History Museum at South Kensington. Heinemann.

  Weil, S. E. 1995. A Cabinet of Curiosities: Inquiries into Museums and Their Prospects. Smithsonian Institution.

  Whitehead, P. J. P. 1985. FAO Species Catalogue. Volume 7. Clupeid Fishes of the World (Suborder Clupeoidei). An Annotated and Illustrated Catalogue of the Herrings, Sardines, Pilchards, Sprats, Shads, Anchovies and Wolf-herrings. Part 1—Chirocentridae, Clupeidae and Pristigasteridae. Food and Agriculture Organization, Rome, Fisheries Synopsis, 125, volume 7, part 1:x + 1–304.

  Wyse Jackson, P. N., and M. E. Spencer Jones. 2002. Annals of Bryozoology: Aspects of the History of Research on Bryozoans. International Bryozoology Association, Dublin.

  Illustration Credits

  The author and publishers gratefully acknowledge the following sources for permission to reproduce illustrations:

  INTEGRATED ILLUSTRATIONS

  Diplodocus carnegii. Photo © Natural History Museum, London.

  Plesiosaur drawn by Mary Anning, 1824. Photo © Natural History Museum, London.

  Museum cabinets. Photo © Natural History Museum, London.

  Stuffed giraffe specimens. Photo © Natural History Museum, London.

  Tray of molluscs from the Sloane collection. Photo © Natural History Museum, London.

  Fungus gnat Mycetophila. Photo © Andrew Darrington/Alamy.

  Richard Owen with moa skeleton. From Richard Owen, Memoirs on the Extinct Wingless Birds of New Zealand, Vol. 2 (London: John Van Voorst, 1879), plate XCVII.

  Seated statue of Charles Darwin. Photo © Natural History Museum, London.

  Title page of Stray Feathers, A Journal of Ornithology for India and Its Dependencies, Allan Octavian Hume, Vol. 2 (1874).

  Fossil ostracode Colymbosathon ecplecticos. Photo © David Siveter. Article © The Sun.

  Orobatid mite larva Archegozetes. Photos © Richard Thomas.

  Duck-billed platypus. Photo © Natural History Museum, London.

  Nematode worm Coenorhabditis elegans. Photo © Phototake Inc./Alamy.

  Edible black truffle. Photo © Jackie Fortey.

  Trilobite “mines” in Morocco. Photo © Brian Chatterton.

  Devonian trilobite Erbenochile. Author’s own collection.

  Spiny trilobite, odontopleurid. Photo © Brian Chatterton.

  Ammonite. Photo courtesy M. K. Howarth.

  Colin Patterson. Photo courtesy Peter Forey.

  Kenneth Oakley, 1953. Photo by Daniel Farson/Picture Post © Getty Images.

  The Examination of the Piltdown Skull, by John Cooke. Photo © Geological Society, The/NHMPL.

  Piltdown artefacts. Drawings from the Quarterly Journal of the Geological Society of London, 1914.

  Palaeontology laboratory. Photo © Natural History Museum, London.

  Lycopsids from South Island, New Zealand. Author’s own collection.

  Winkles Afrolittorina, Austrolittorina. Photo courtesy David Reid.

  Lucinid clam Rasta thiophilia. Photo courtesy John Taylor.

  Clam Plicolucina flabellata. Photo courtesy John Taylor.

  View of the Chelsea Physic Garden c. 1910. Photo © RBKC, Libraries.

  John Peake. Drawing courtesy John Taylor.

  Nineteenth-century print of Loch Ness. Author’s own collection.

  Peter Whitehead. Photo courtesy Oliver Crimmen.

  Peter Whitehead. Art
icle © The Sunday Times.

  Nummulosphere. Illustration from R. Kirkpatrick, The Nummulosphere, London, 1913.

  Peter Purves and whale carcass. Photo © Natural History Museum, London.