The Red Notebook

I have just posted a review of Melanie Challenger’s excellent new book (due out next week), On Extinction: How We Became Estranged from Nature in the books section.

[I wasn't really sure where this post belonged, so I am cross-posting it from my natural history blog.]

[W]hile on the one hand the study of Nature today aims to describe a system governed by immutable laws, on the other it delights in drawing our attention to creatures noteworthy for their bizarre physical form or behaviour. Even in Brehm’s Thierleben, a popular nineteenth-century zoological compendium, pride of place is given to the crocodile and the kangaroo, the ant-eater and the armadillo, the seahorse and the pelican; and nowadays we are shown on the television screen a colony of penguins, say, standing motionless through the long dark winter of the Antarctic, with its icy storms, on their feet the eggs laid at a milder time of year. In programmes of this kind, which are called Nature Watch or Survival and are considered particularly educational, one is more likely to see some monster coupling at the bottom of Lake Baikal than an ordinary blackbird.

—W.G. Sebald, The Rings of Saturn (trans. Michael Hulse)

 
I’m with Sebald: I would much rather watch a documentary about blackbirds than one about monster couplings at the bottom of Lake Baikal. Darwin’s remarkable theory describing how life’s grandeur came about works for all species. A blackbird is every bit as remarkable as a seahorse or a pelican—and a lot more relevant to me personally.

As young boys, my dad and uncle were evacuated to Harlech in North Wales during the Second World War. They can still sing a particular song in Welsh together, although they have no idea what the words mean. Surprisingly, the woman who looked after them in Harlech was German noblewoman, Amalie (Amy) Elizabeth Sophie Graves, née von Ranke (1857–1951). She also happened to be the mother of the poet and author Robert Graves (1895–1985).

Dad was telling me recently that, although he doesn’t remember an awful lot about his life as an evacuee, one of his clearest memories from that time is being allowed to look at a German book full of wonderful engravings of animals. I wonder if it was Brehms Thierleben, as described by Sebald:

Frontispiece from a reprint volume of the second edition of Brehms Thierleben (Image: Wikipedia).

North Wales, the Second World War, evacuees, German noblewomen, famous poets, zoological compendiums, unreliable memories…

All very Sebaldian!

Way back before you were born, in 1985, my university archaeology tutor handed our study group a cardboard box full of Roman pottery sherds and asked us to sort them into groups. When we asked how he would like them sorting, he explained that working that out was the whole point of the exercise.

There are at least as many ways of categorising things as there are people to categorise them. But some ways of categorising seem more sensible and useful than others. When it came to Roman pottery, colour, we soon decided, was not a particularly useful way of categorising sherds (an observation which won nodding approval from our colour-blind tutor), but the impurities and inclusions (or lack of them) within the sherds quickly helped us to sort them into what seemed—to our untrained eyes at least—to be sensible groups: flawless samian ware, versus groggy iron age stoneware, for example.

Like Roman pottery, living species can be categorised in many different ways—some of them more useful than others. Debates about such taxonomies can get rather heated, and I don’t intend to get embroiled in them here. But, this week, I came across an intriguing and rather barmy plant taxonomy suggested by the Nineteenth Century art critic and social thinker John Ruskin. It is described in Richard Mabey’s new book Weeds: How Vagabond Plants Gatecrashed Civilisation and Changed the Way We Think About Nature:

John Ruskin would have been appalled by this mechanical exploitation of a wild plant, and by the assumption that the burriness of burdock had evolved to help the plant distribute its seeds. In the first volume of his Proserpina – Studies of Wayside Flowers (1874) – he describes how the construction of a burdock’s leaf (which he perfectly describes) contributes to its beauty:

When a leaf be spread wide, like the Burdock, it is supported by a framework of extending ribs like a Gothic roof. The supporting functions of these is geometrical; every one is constructed like girders of a bridge, or beams of a floor with all manner of science in the distribution of their substance in the section … But when the extending space of a leaf is to be enriched with the fullness of folds, and become beautiful in wrinkles, this may be done either by pure undulation as of a liquid current along the leaf edge, or by sharp `drawing’—or ‘gathering’ I believe ladies would call it—and stitching of the edges together. And this stitching together, if to be done very strongly, is done round a bit of stick, as a sail is reefed round a mast; and this bit of stick needs be compactly, not geometrically strong; its function is essentially that of starch,—not to hold the leaf up off the ground against gravity; but to stick the edges out, stiffly, in a crimped frill. And in a beautiful work of this kind, which we are meant to study, the stays of the leaf—or stay-bones—are finished off very sharply and exquisitely at the points; and indeed so much so, that they prick our fingers when we touch them; for they are not at all meant to be touched, but admired.

A few pages later, more bluntly, he urges readers to study its structure: ‘Take a leaf of burdock—the principal business of that plant being clearly to grow leaves wherewith to adorn foregrounds.’

These are extraordinary and baffling passages, full of intimate glimpses of the engineering of leaves, but seeming to suggest that these exist more for the beatification of the observer than the livelihood of the plant. Proserpina is like this throughout. It is a confused and at times deranged attempt to devise a new, anti-Linnaean plant taxonomy, based on aesthetic principles rather than scientific understanding. It passes moral judgements on whole orders of plants, yet sometimes has moments of startlingly original observation and insight, as in this evocation of a poppy flower: ‘We usually think of the poppy as a coarse flower; but it is the most transparent and delicate of all the blossoms of the field … the poppy is painted glass; it never glows so brightly as when the sun shines through it. Wherever it is seen—against the light or with the light—always, it is a flame, and warms the wind like a blown ruby.’ This may be the best descriptive passage on the poppy in the English language, and it comes close to offering a poetic intimation of the role of the sun in plant growth, and of the seductive power of the hot scarlet petals to other creatures.

But such plant- or nature-centred views were an abomination to Ruskin. In one of his deeper depressions he remarked with disgust that the theory of photosynthesis made us look on leaves as no more than ‘gasometers’. Beauty of form or function in a plant he saw as an abstract quality, planted there by God for the elevation of humans. That it might in some way be ‘recognised’ by a non-human organism was repugnant to him. That the ruby flame of a poppy, or the intricate anatomy of an orchid bloom, might be attractive—be beautiful, as it were—to an insect was a blasphemy. This led Ruskin to believe in a hierarchy of organisms based on his own aesthetic ideas. ‘The perception of beauty,’ he wrote, land the power of defining physical character, are based on moral instinct, and on the power of defining animal or human character. Nor is it possible to say that one flower is more highly developed, or one animal of a higher order, than another, without the assumption of a divine law of perfection to which the one conforms more than the other.’

Ruskin had in effect devised an aesthetic version of the Doctrine of Signatures. God had ‘signed’ certain plants with imprimaturs—symmetry of petals, for instance, or the angles between stalk and leaf—which might have some base biological function, but which were principally indices of the divine quality of beauty. It was the responsibility of the cognoscenti to recognise and interpret these signs…

Ruskin didn’t deny that the forms of plants could be functional. But he passionately denied that they had any significance or value (beyond the purely mechanical) inside the universe of their own lives. A quality like beauty has no connection with the grace and elegance with which a plant lived out its existence on its own terms and amongst its own kind. It could only be granted to them, or withheld, by human beings with the divinely endowed gift of making moral judgements on nature. Which is why he argued that the flower itself was the be-all and end-all of plant existence, not because it was an inspiration to insects and the forerunner of the seed, but because of the pleasure that it gave to human eyes.

I’m all for people deriving aesthetic pleasure from plants, but, it seems to me, you can take such pleasures too far.

It’s like confessing a murder. I have been a self-confessed Darwin groupie for almost a quarter of a century, yet, until this year, I had never read what is supposed to be his most accessible book, The Voyage of the Beagle.

No, really, I had never read it.

In my defence, I had dipped into it many times, usually to look up some obscure snippet of Darwiniana or other. And I had read Darwin’s Beagle Diary, upon which large chunks of The Voyage of the Beagle were based. But I had never set off to read The Voyage of the Beagle from cover to cover before—despite owning several copies.

My favourite copy of The Voyage of the Beagle, complete with index card bookmarks.

I picked up my favourite copy of The Voyage of the Beagle in a now-defunct second-hand bookshop in my home town of Hebden Bridge. It cost me £2. I like this particular copy for a number of reasons: I like it for the Charles Darwin signature embossed in (presumably fake) gold on the cover; I like it for the purple, rubber-stamped advertisement on the flyleaf saying “F. Pearson & Son / BOOKSELLERS & Stationers EST^D. 1875 / SOUTHGATE, ELLAND. LEATHER GOODS A SPECIALITY.”; I like it for its proud boast “Illustrated By Eight Photographs”; but I like it most for its size—the book was clearly designed to slip conveniently into one’s pocket. It’s a wonderful format, and one which I wish more publishers would rediscover.

Indeed, so conveniently sized is my favourite copy of The Voyage of the Beagle that it has been an obvious book to take on holiday with me—many, many times. It has travelled the world with me. It has been to Australia with me, where I consulted it about Darwin’s trip to Govett’s Leap the day I also visited Govett’s Leap. It has been to Tobago with me, and the Canary Islands, and Barcelona, and Sicily, and Rome, and Florence (twice). But it has always remained unread.

Until my latest holiday in Italy, that is. In March this year, I sat on my hotel room balcony overlooking the Bay of Naples, with Mount Vesuvius looming menacingly in the background, and finally began to read The Voyage of the Beagle from cover to cover.

And, I am glad to report, it was utterly fantastic. You should read it. You really should. Just like I did. Eventually.

Whenever I read a book, I use an index card as a convenient bookmark upon which I can jot down brief notes about anything that interests or amuses me in the book. In the cases of certain interesting books, I have even managed to fill both sides of my index card. But, in the case of The Voyage of the Beagle, I managed to fill four entire cards! There’s a lot of interesting stuff in there for the Darwin groupie. But there’s also plenty of other interesting, fascinating, and, dare I say it, amusing stuff in there for the general reader. Which probably explains why The Voyage of the Beagle became an instantly popular book in Darwin’s own day.

So, to atone for my sin of having taken so long to read Darwin’s The Voyage of the Beagle, I have decided, over the next few days and weeks, to put up a few posts based on the index card notes I took while reading the book. Please don’t expect anything too profound or insightful, though: I just want to share with you some of the snippets of Darwiniana which interested, fascinated and amused me as I finally got round to reading Darwin’s first masterpiece.

Date: Tuesday 13th April, 2010
Venues: Orpington Library (10:30 – 11:30). Bromley Central Library (14:30 – 15:30)

Mick and Brita will talk about their latest book, What Mr Darwin Saw and tell us about how they got the idea for this fantastic book which explores Mr Darwin’s exciting life, explorations and discoveries.

This is a free event for children age 7-11. Children must be accompanied by an adult but you’ll need to collect your ticket from the appropriate library, either Orpington or Central, Bromley

For further information contact: Orpington Library: 01689 831551 or Central Library Bromley: 020 8460 9955.

Part of the Discover Darwin Project.

Eleanor & Charlie Armitage

New to our childrens’ book reviews section, a review of What Mr Darwin Saw, a beautifully illustrated book about Charles Darwin. The review was written by a person highly qualified for the role: Eleanor Armitage, aged 7.

Very good work again, Eleanor!

On the all-too-rare occasions that my frankly gorgeous friend Stense and I meet in person, we like nothing better than to go looking round second-hand bookshops. Unfortunately, I didn’t get to meet Stense this year, but she did phone me from a second-hand bookshop in Scotland a couple of weeks back:

“Have you got the book Goldsmith’s Animated Nature, volume two?” she asked.
“No, what’s it about?”
“It’s an old book about animals and stuff. It’s right up your street. Would you like it for a Christmas present?”
Stupid question.

And here it is:

Goldsmith’s Animated Nature, Vol. II

Good grief, I owe Stense big-style for this one. It’s a wonderful book, packed with semi-archaic descriptions of animals, which will provide me with many hours of amusement. The book’s full title is, rather magnificently:

A History of the Earth and Animated Nature

by Oliver Goldsmith

With an Introductory View of the Animal Kingdom by

Baron Cuvier;

Copious Notes of Discoveries in Natural History;

And a Life of the Author;

by Washington Irving

Vol. II

The author is the same Oliver Goldsmith who wrote The Vicar of Wakefield, She Stoops to Conquer and The History of Little Goody Two-Shoes. The book first appeared in eight volumes in 1774, and there were over 20 subsequent editions, some of which were magnificently illustrated (the illustrations appear to have been cut out of my copy by some print-selling vandal). The book became a popular source of information about the natural world.

Two items which immediately caught my eye: Goldsmith’s section on The Whale, and its Varieties appears in Part Fourth of the book—being the part about Fishes! And the section on the Dodo talks about the creature in the present tense—although a post script notes that the truly grotesque bird has now become extinct, and its former existence has been called into question by some writers.

Expect some snippets/extracts from Goldsmith’s Animated Nature in the next few months. In the meantime, thank you once again, Stense, for the wonderful present!

Stense in her natural environment

Those frankly wonderful people at the Darwin Correspondence Project have announced the publication of volume 17 of their stupendously researched series of books. The latest volume contains the full texts of more than 500 letters Darwin wrote and received during the year 1869. The project has also announced that volume 15 of the correspondence is now online.

Forget all the biographies, and Darwin’s own Autobiography; if you want to get to know the real Charles Darwin, you should be reading his correspondence.

I don’t have many ambitions in life, but one of them is to live long enough to read the complete set of Darwin’s correspondence. To be frank, it’s touch-and-go whether I’ll make it: they aren’t exactly knocking these books out once a fortnight. It has taken 23 years to publish the first 17 volumes, and there will be approximately 30 volumes in the complete series. The final volume is due to be published around 2025.

My suddenly (and alarmingly) incomplete set of volumes of Darwin’s Correspondence

I’ll be off to my local bookshop to order my copy of volume 17 this morning.

New in the Books section, reviews of The Age of Wonder by Richard Holmes, and The Rough Guide to Evolution by Mark Pallen, FCD.

Just a quick reminder that Friends of Charles Darwin members have only three weeks left to take advantage of Anova Books’s offer of a £5 discount on their beautifully illustrated new hardcover book, The Voyage of the Beagle: Darwin’s extraordinary adventure aboard FitzRoy’s famous survey ship by James Taylor.

More information »

Eleanor Armitage

New to our book reviews section, a review of The Curious Mind of Young Darwin, a Darwin-themed activity book for children. The review was written by a person highly qualified for the role: Eleanor Armitage, aged 6½.

Very good work, Eleanor!

Anova Books are offering Friends of Charles Darwin members a £5 discount on their beautifully illustrated new hardcover book, The Voyage of the Beagle: Darwin’s extraordinary adventure aboard FitzRoy’s famous survey ship by James Taylor.

It really is a gorgeously produced book, which no Darwin groupie’s library should be without. In an earlier review, the Beagle Project’s Peter McGrath, FCD, described the book as essential and suggested that some philanthropist should endow every state school biology lab in the country with a copy. I concur wholeheartedly.

To order a copy of The Voyage of the Beagle for only £15.00 (recommended retail price £20), UK members can call 0870 787 1613 and quote reference CH1126. Non-UK members can either call +44 870 787 1613, quoting reference CH1126, or email their details to orders(at)anovabooks.com

UK postage & packing is free; non-UK postage & packing will incur an additional £4.50 charge.

This offer ends 31st May 2009.

[Disclosure: I received a free copy of this book from Anova Books, but I had already bought myself a copy, so gave the spare away.]

New in the Friends of Charles Darwin Reviews section: a review of Darwin’s Island: the Galapagos in the Garden of England by Steve Jones.

I have just finished reading a pre-publication copy of Adrian Desmond and James Moore’s book, Darwin’s Sacred Cause: Race, Slavery and the Quest for Human Origins, which was kindly sent to me by Peter from the Beagle Project. Nice to see Peter’s name mentioned in the acknowledgements.

I have posted a review of this important new addition to Darwin studies in the books section, and cross-posted it on the Beagle Project blog. Order the book from Amazon by following the links at the end of the review, and any Amazon referral earnings will be donated to the Beagle Project.

I have just published a short review of Eric Simons’s forthcoming book, Darwin Slept Here.

I’ve finally got round to posting a mini-review of Keith S Thomson’s HMS Beagle: the ship that changed the course of history.

Good book. You’d enjoy it.

The Beagle Project‘s new colleagues over at the National Aeronautics and Space Administration have spent many billions of dollars over the years trying to discover signs of life on Mars. Their latest magnificent endeavour is the Phoenix Mars Lander, which earlier this year identified water in a sample of soil it had collected from the planet’s surface. As I type, the plucky, little lander continues to carry out excellent scientific work before the harsh Martian winter finally takes grip.

But Nasa could have saved themselves an awful lot of time, money and effort trying to establish the presence of water—and, indeed, life—on Mars, had they simply consulted the only scientific publication of record. Popular Scientific Recreations, Profusely Illustrated (pp. 524–526) has this to say on the subject of Mars:

It is quite ascertained that Mars is very like our earth in miniature. We annex a diagram of the planet, and when it is examined With a good telescope the seas and continents can be quite distinctly perceived. At the poles there appears to be a white or snowy region at varying periods, which would lead us to the conclusion that the atmospheric changes and the seasons are similar to our own; and as the inclination of the planet is nearly the same as the earth, this supposition may be accepted as a fact.

Thus we see that Mars is the most like earth of all the planets, and its inhabitants—if, indeed, it is now inhabited—must have a beautiful view of us when the weather is fine, for we are so much larger…

There have been numerous theories concerning Mars being inhabited, and of course these suggestions made respecting life on one planet may, with varying circumstances, be applied to another. Each planet may have had, or may yet have, to pass througn what has been termed a “life-bearing stage”. We on earth are at present in the enjoyment of that stage. So far as we can tell, therefore, Mars may be inhabited now, as he bears much the same appearance as our planet. Certain changes are going on in Mars, and all planets, just as they go on here in our earth, and as they did long, long ages before the earth was populated, and which will continue to go on after life on the earth has ceased to exist…

That there are clouds and aqueous atmosphere surrounding Mars we learn from spectroscopic observation and analysis, and in fine we may look upon Mars as similar to our earth. Respecting the question of its habitation we take the liberty to quote Mr. Richard Proctor:—

“I fear my own conclusion about Mars is that his present condition is very desolate. I look on the ruddiness of tint to which I have referred as one of the signs that the planet of war has long since passed its prime. There are lands and seas in Mars, the vapour of water is present in his air, clouds form, rains and snows fall upon his surface, and doubtless brooks and rivers irrigate his soil, and carry down the moisture collected on his wide continents to the seas whence the clouds had originally been formed. But I do not think there is much vegetation on Mars, or that many living creatures of the higher types of Martian life as it once existed still remain.

All that is known about the planet tends to show that the time when it attained that stage of planetary existence through which our earth is now passing must be set millions of years, perhaps hundreds of millions of years ago. He has not yet, indeed reached that airless and waterless condition, that extremity of internal cold, or in fact that utter unfitness to suport any kind of life, which would seem to prevail in the moon. The planet of war in some respects resembles a desolate battle-field, and I fancy that there is not a single region of the earth now inhabited by man which is not infinitely more comfortable as an abode of life than the most favoured regions of Mars at the present time would be for creatures like ourselves.”

Last week saw two attempts to fly across the English Channel using heroically impractical modes of transport: Swissman Yves Rossy successfully sped from Calais to Dover with a jet-propelled wing strapped to his back, whereas Frenchman Stephane Rousson’s pedal-powered airship had to ditch into the briney when travelling in the opposite direction.

Popular Scientific Recreations, Profusely Illustrated has this to say on the feasibility of powered flight:

Fig. 295.— Blanchard’s balloon

Although many attempts have been made to guide balloons through the air, no successful apparatus has ever been completed for use. Paddles, sails, fans, and screws have all been tried, but have failed to achieve the desired end. Whether man will ever be able to fly we cannot of course say. In the present advancing state of science it may not be impossible ere long to supply human beings with an apparatus worked by electricity, perhaps, which will enable them to mount into the air and sustain themselves. But even the bird cannot always fly without previous momentum. A rook will run before it rises, and many other birds have to “get up steam,” as it were, before they can soar in the atmosphere. Eagles and such heavy birds find it very difficult to rise from the ground. We know that vultures when gorged cannot move at all, or certainly cannot fly away; and eagles take up their positions on high rocks, so that they may launch down on their prey, and avoid the difficulty of rising from the ground. They swoop down with tremendous momentum and carry off their booty, but often lose their lives from the initial difficulty of soaring immediately. We fear man’s weight will militate against his ever becoming a flying animal. When we obtain a knowledge of the atmospheric currents we shall no doubt be able to navigate our balloons; but until then—and the information is as yet very limited, and the currents themselves very variable—we must be content to rise and fall in the air, and travel at the will of the wind in the upper regions of the atmosphere.

Postscript: Gilbert White on Mr Blanchard’s balloon

Popular Scientific Recreations, Profusely Illustrated has this to say on the subject of animal motors:

SEWING MACHINE WORKED BY A DOG.

Animals have been employed for all time to draw carriages and the plough etc. But these animal “motors” are usually employed under defective conditions, and therefore without full profit. The inert mass of the animals remains quite unutilized, his force only is employed, and there are many objections on the score of humanity, as well as from a mechanical standpoint, and great muscular tension with suffering may be inflicted upon an animal which is continually mounting a wheel or such contrivance for raising water. There was in the Paris Exhibition a threshing machine put in motion by a horse walking upon a pair of rollers which constituted an “endless” way, and we will now briefly describe a machine which utilizes animal force and weight. It is the invention of M. Richard of Paris, who has made many mechanical apparatus for industrial purposes.

The principle of the invention (fig. 886) consists in the animal utilizing all the force resulting from his dead-weight. A small box contains the dog very easily. In the illustration we see the dog at rest, and in that case he maintains his centre of gravity and exercises no force upon the wheel. But when the box is inclined, the mere weight of the animal is sufficient merely to turn the wheel in the direction of the arrows. The dog, finding himself sliding away, naturally endeavours to move forward, and the rotation of the wheel is continued; the best results are obtained when the body is placed entirely upon the descending line, and this result is owing only to the weight of the animal.

There is a resting-place, just above and outside the “endless” way traversed by the dog. A basin with water is also provided for the animal.

M. Robert was let to this discovery in the following way:— He employs a large number of sewing-machine hands, and finding that the working of the machines had an injurious effect upon the health of the workers, he determined to substitute, in part, other labour for that of female hands. He then thought out his “quadrupedal motors” which are worked by intelligent dogs. There is very little trouble or expense connected with the working, so a great saving is effected, as the dogs cost little, and are cheaply fed. The result is that M. Robert has four heavy machines occasionally at work, which are kept in motion by dogs at a very small expense.

Try as I might, I have not been able to locate the arrows in the diagram referred to in the text, but the description of this marvellous contraption is very clear.

It is good to see that M. Richard (no relation) took full account of the animals’ welfare needs by equipping them with a drinking bowl. Those French were very ahead of their time.