Frank Buckland's Nondescript – a fabulous flying (?) creature

Frank Buckland, the famous Natural Historian, described a merman that had been exhibited in London [1] as having been made by fusing the torso of a monkey to the body of a fish, most likely a hake, with some additions to add effect. Exhibits of mermen and mermaids were popular in the Nineteenth Century, but they were always advertised more enthusiastically than their reality was worth. They were, of necessity, shrivelled and dry and quite different to the many exotic living creatures that could be viewed in Zoological Gardens and Aquaria and which were brought back from expeditions to many parts of the World, such a feature of the time.

After describing the merman and a mermaid, Buckland introduces us to another preserved creature, the Nondescript (shown above and not to be confused with the object of the same name created by Charles Waterton [2]). Buckland describes "his" Nondescript in Curiosities of Natural History (the creature was part of the zoological collection he kept in his home) [3]:

The Nondescript is about as big as a baby three months old, and as a crusty bachelor friend said, "really very much like one."

He has wings on the top of his shoulder like the old army aigulettes, and there are claws on the tips and on the extreme ends of each wing: these wings are so artfully contrived that one would believe they could be opened out and unfurled like a bat's wing at any moment the creature that carried it wished to take a fly a either for business or amusement.

The arms are amazingly human-like, and look as though the dried skin had shrunk fast on to the bone; the legs also represent a similar appearance. The hands and feet are demon-like, and of a long, scraggy, merciless appearance, and each finger and toe is armed with a formidable-looking claw. The ribs project frightfully, as though the nondescript had lately been living for some time à la malcontent. The head is about as big as a very large apple. The ears project outwards and downwards, like those of an African elephant. The face is wrinkled and deformed; the nose like a pig’s snout; the eyes like those of a codfish; the teeth exactly the same as those in the mermaid.. – double rows in each jaw, with protruding fangs in front; and surmounting this hideous countenance, a rough shock of fine-wool-like hair..

From this description, and from the illustration, it is difficult to imagine that anyone could believe that this had been a living creature. The appearance of the Nondescript mirrored that of illustrations of devils, compounded by the addition of wings that were very similar to those of bats, animals that have an unfortunate, and undeserved, reputation [4]. Anyone with biological knowledge would be immediately suspicious on seeing that wings and arms were both present, as we know that the latter developed from, and replaced, the ancestral fore-limbs in both bats and birds. Those dedicated to the many images of angels (that have both wings and arms) would maybe have been less worried by this detail and the Nondescript was clearly designed to represent an "evil angel".

After Frank Buckland had acquired the Nondescript to add to his collection, he was able to examine it in more detail and this is what he found [3]:

Everybody said that there must be bones in the arms and the legs and ribs. I soon tested this with a surgical exploring needle [Buckland was trained as a surgeon], but found no bone, or anything like a bone, but simply soft wood, probably cedar. I made several incisions in the Nondescript’s body, and found that the main portion of his composition was (like the legs) a light wood. The skin, as well as the wings, are made of a species of papier-mâché, most artfully put on in wrinkles, and admirably coloured and shaded to give the appearance of the dried body of some creature that had once existed either on land or sea – had been slain – and then preserved as a curiosity.

As Buckland's Nondescript was one of many, most probably produced in Japan, the wings could be those of an oriental fruit bat and he must have considered, and dismissed, that possibility. As an army officer, Buckland must also have been intrigued by the insertion of the wings “like old army aigulettes” (see an image of these accessories below) and how this presents challenges to understanding how they might have been used in flight. It’s the same problem for anyone trying to understand how angels flap their wings, of course [5].

Belief in the Nondescript, comes from our ability to suspend a rational approach. In a fairground, with poor lighting and with a barker to stress the importance of the creature, one can easily see how people could be taken in and believe the Nondescript to have been a real creature. A cynic might suggest that religion has its equivalent of barkers in getting us to believe in images of angels, although there are no remains of angels for us to examine. That is not to say that these heavenly beings cannot exist; rather that they are supernatural and yet have been shown as physical beings in paintings and sculpture. Is it fair to make that comparison?

[1] http://www.rwotton.blogspot.com/2014/06/mermen-and-mermaids

[2] http://www.rwotton.blogspot.com/2013/12/charles-waterton-taxidermy-and.html

[3] Francis T Buckland (1866) Curiosities of Natural History. A New Series Volume II. London, Richard Bentley.

[4] http://www.rwotton.blogspot.com/2014/04/whats-not-to-like-about-bats.html

[5] Roger S. Wotton (2009) Angels, putti, dragons and fairies: believing the impossible. Opticon1826 7:1-7.

Eccentricity and Natural History

On 16th January, The Independent carried an article by Jeremy Parrott about the various people who contributed to All The Year Round, a weekly magazine owned, and edited, by Charles Dickens [1]. Much was made in the article of Frank Buckland, whom Parrott describes as "an epitome of British eccentricity" for keeping a wide variety of animals in his home and for the habit, infused by his eminent father (William Buckland, Dean of Westminster from 1845 to 1856), of eating many kinds of animals, both for pleasure and as a means of investigating whether they should be farmed [2].

Buckland is often mentioned alongside Charles Waterton, another eccentric Natural Historian; Waterton as much for his ascetic way of life, climbing habits, and attitudes to medicine, as for his love of animals. There was an exception to his affection – the brown rat. As a Roman Catholic Squire, he was strongly anti-Hanoverian and believed that brown rats were brought to Britain on ships conveying the future George I, making them proxy hate obects. It didn't help that his home, Walton Hall, was infested with the rodents. Waterton also gained notoriety for riding on the back of a cayman during one of his visits to South America, despite this being the best way to subdue the animal for the neat kill required for the preservation of an undamaged skin. Waterton was an accomplished taxidermist and also composed groups of animal skins in cabinets to convey satirical messages [3].

Waterton is given a whole chapter to himself in Edith Sitwell's The English Eccentrics [4] and he is included, together with Frank Buckland, in William Donaldson's more eclectic Brewer's Rogues, Villains and Eccentrics [5], subtitled An A-Z of Roguish Britons Through the Ages. It is difficult to avoid the conclusion that eccentricity is a characteristic of English, or British, society, but I'm sure that is not the case and eccentrics are found everywhere. However, it seems that English cultural norms are especially suited to eccentricity and Edith Sitwell celebrated this in The English Eccentrics [4]. In it she writes:

The man of genius and the aristocrat are frequently regarded as eccentric by the ordinary because both genius and aristocrat are entirely uninfluenced by the opinions and vagaries of the crowd.

I doubt whether either Frank Buckland or Charles Waterton would have regarded themselves as being eccentric and they were protected from constraints that most face because of their privileged upbringing and way of life. However, the ordinary (to use Sitwell's term) often think of eccentrics in a negative light and that is reflected in Donaldson's book, where they are quite undeservedely grouped with rogues and villains. That seems harsh.

It is tempting to ask whether eccentrics provide a valuable function in addition to being figures of fun (as they are commonly regarded in private). I think they do and I'll draw an analogy. In science, we commonly investigate the relationship of two variables; for example, weight against length in a group of insects. Mostly, points fall close to a line but occasional ones do not and we call these outliers; one individual may be noticeably heavier than others of the same length, for example. The initial reaction of students to outliers is that they represent an error in measurement and this may indeed be the explanation. However, some outliers are real and, after careful checking, remain outside the trend. Students find this annoying as it can affect the significance of the relationship they are trying to establish. In our example this would be that weight increases in a linear fashion with increase in length and an outlier individual may be unusually heavy because it has a thicker body covering for some reason.

Just as outliers in science are interesting, so eccentrics are similarly interesting as they show ways and attitudes that are different from the accepted norm of the time. There may be one eccentricity or, in individuals like Frank Buckland and Charles Waterton, a suite of them.

Most of us prefer to conform to conventions because they allow us to feel comfortable and have a sense of belonging. Indeed, the need to conform can bring pressures to "keep up with the Joneses" as it has been termed, even though we may feel that doing so is rather silly. There is always the pressure to conform, but the eccentric has no worries on that score as they need only their own personal view and the freedom to pursue whatever they wish. We sometimes look on eccentrics with suspicion, as they challenge our view of what is "normal", but this is a narrow way of thinking. Just as I was always interested in outliers when working in science, so I am fascinated by eccentrics and what they have to say. I always enjoy reading about Buckland and Waterton and wonder who their contemporary equivalents may be.

Having general agreement about ways to proceed do not necessarily mean that those ways are the best, so we should embrace eccentrics and challenge conventions. The conventions that are valuable will persist, but others will be seen only as trends. That applies to the study of animals that so consumed Buckland and Waterton, but it applies generally too.

[1] http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/charles-dickens-all-the-year-round-discovering-the-fascinating-insight-into-the-world-of-victorian-a6815301.html

[2] http://rwotton.blogspot.com/2014/01/being-inspired-by-frank-buckland-with.html

[3] http://rwotton.blogspot.com/2013/12/chales-waterton-taxidermy-and.htm

[4] Edith Sitwell (1933) English Eccentrics. London, Faber and Faber.

[5] William Donaldson (2002) Brewer's Rogues, Villains and Eccentrics: An A-Z of Roguish Britons Through the Ages. London, Cassell.

“Natural History is the handmaid to the study of medicine and surgery”

Frank Buckland had a passion for Natural History. It developed from his earliest years and he was encouraged in his interest by both his mother and his father, the famous Dean of Westminster, Dr William Buckland. Frank was always inquisitive and enthusiastic and he was a gifted communicator on many topics in Natural History, both in articles and lectures. He is probably best known for being a member of the Acclimation Society, a group formed with the aim of importing, and farming, wild animals to provide food for humans. He had a highly developed taste for zoophagy, ¹ having eaten portions of several different animals at his father’s dinner parties. ²

After leaving Winchester College, Frank became a student at Christ Church, Oxford and, after studying Classics and Sciences, graduated with a BA in 1848, at the second attempt. Frank was not suited to formal study and examinations and, while at Christ Church, was more famed for his menagerie than for his diligence. The most famous of his pets was a bear named Tiglath Pileser (“Tig”) that was dressed in a cap and gown ² and eventually ended up in London Zoo ³ (without academic costume). On leaving Oxford, Frank decided to study medicine and entered St George’s Hospital in London, writing in July 1848: “My object in studying medicine (and may God prosper it!) is not to gain a name, money, and high practice, but to do good to my fellow-creatures and assist them in the hour of need”. ² After training, he became a surgeon in the Life Guards, but, after failing to gain a promotion, resigned to become a full-time writer and lecturer (he had kept up both activities while in the army), and then Fisheries Inspector.

Frank Buckland wrote these interesting paragraphs in The Preface of the First Series of his Curiosities of Natural History:

Without the knowledge of the structure and physiology of the lower members of the animal kingdom, it would be difficult rightly to understand many functions of the human economy; and much light has been thrown upon the art of healing by the study of the lower links in the chain of animal life.

I would wish it, therefore, to be understood, that the following pages have not been written to the neglect of purely professional subjects of investigation. It has been acknowledged by many of our greatest medical men, that Natural History is the handmaid to the study of medicine and surgery.. ⁴

It should be stressed that Frank Buckland was a Creationist and his ideas on training in medicine and surgery were not influenced by thoughts that structure and function had evolved (and, although there was discussion of evolution at the time, the lines were written two years before Darwin published his hugely influential ..The Origin of Species..).

Many medical discoveries have been made, and continue to be made, after investigations in Natural History. The development of drugs from chemicals extracted from microorganisms (e.g. penicillin, discovered in 1928) and plants (e.g. aspirin, first prepared in the 1850s, but with the effects of willow bark known for millennia) are well known, and ethnobotany has been a rich source of information. In addition, many types of animals provide analogues for the study of systems in humans (e.g. research during the mid-Twentieth Century on the optic nerves of the squid has provided information on the functioning of nerve-muscle systems). Animals are also used widely as test beds for assessing treatments and in studies of the expression of genes that are also found in humans. However, this is moving rather far forward from the time when Frank Buckland wrote the second paragraph quoted above and he was also referring to research in Zoology, Anatomy and Physiology. Frank tended not to be precise in the use of language.

Natural History covers organisms of all kinds and, in the mid-Nineteenth Century, involved observations using microscopes and the human eye - in situ, in cages, in aquarium tanks, and in other forms of enclosure. This is quite different to contemporary medical research, which seems to focus on internal mechanisms during an era when anthropocentricity and determinism dominate our thinking. Yet the wider environment also has an essential role to play in health and welfare.

Social and physical surroundings are important in the incidence of diseases of many kinds. This applies not only to developing countries, but also to the developed World, with cities like London having some districts with large adverse effects of environment on health. ⁵ On an individual scale, there are many examples of surroundings affecting health. It is accepted that being able to pet animals has a beneficial effect on the recovery of patients and the same is true of peaceful and beautiful natural locations. Pharmaceutical, surgical and other investigative approaches are essential in modern medicine, but a love of Nature may also aid healing, as it leads us away from introspection. Appreciating the huge diversity of plants and animals, and their inter-relationships with each other and with the environment, can also be an aid in meditative therapies, such as mindfulness. ⁶

If Natural History (in its widest context) really is the handmaid to the study of medicine and surgery, how much time is given to these aspects of the care of patients when training today’s doctors and surgeons?

¹ Lynn Barber (1980) The Heyday of Natural History 1820-1870. London, Jonathan Cape.

² George C. Bompas (1885) Life of Frank Buckland. London, Smith, Elder & Co.

³ G. H. O. Burgess (1967) The Curious World of Frank Buckland. London, John Baker.

⁴ Francis T. Buckland (1857) Curiosities of Natural History. London, Richard Bentley.

⁵ Michael Marmot and Mai Stafford (2005) Places, People and Socio-Economc Differences in Health. In:  London’s Environment: Prospects for a Sustainable World City (ed. Julian Hunt). London, Imperial College Press.

⁶ Shamish Alidina (2010) Mindfulness for Dummies. Chichester, John Wiley.

Mermen and mermaids

Creatures with a human torso and a fish tail have appeared in the folklore and mythology of many cultures. ¹ We know them as mermen and mermaids and examples became a popular feature of travelling shows and museums, Henry Gosse describing his great disappointment, as a boy, to discover the advertised mermaid was “a shrivelled and blackened little thing which might have been moulded in mud for aught I could see”. ¹ It must have looked a little like the specimen shown below.

Frank Buckland, like Gosse an eminent writer and lecturer on Natural History, describes the body of merman he saw exhibited in London: ²

In the back parlour of the White Hart, Vine-court, Spitalfields, high and dry upon a deal board, lay this wonderful object - hideous enough to excite the wonder of the credulous, and curious enough to afford a treat to the naturalist. Such a thing as a merman or mermaid of course never really existed; I was therefore most anxious to examine its composition, which, by the kindness of the landlady (a remarkably civil woman), who removed the glass that covered her treasure, I was enabled to do. The creature (a gentleman, not a lady specimen of the tribe) was from three to four feet long. The upper part of its body was composed of the head, arms and trunk of a monkey, and the lower part of a fish, which appeared to me to be a common hake; and the head was really a wonderful composition: the parchment-like hideous ears stood well forward, the skin of the nose when soft had been moulded into a decided specimen of “the snub,” the forehead was wrinkled into a frown, and the mouth “grinned a ghastly grin;” the curled lips partly concealed a row of teeth, which in the upper jaw were of conical form and sharp-pointed, taken probably from the head of a hake, whose body formed the lower part of our specimen. the lower jaw contained these fish’s teeth, but conspicuously in front was inserted a human incisor or front tooth, and a vacant cavity showed that there once had been a pair of them. These were probably placed there to show the “real human nature” of the monster. The head had once been covered with hair; but visitors, anxious to obtain a lock of a merman’s hair, had so plucked his unfortunate wig that only a few scattered hairs remained: the relic-seekers are now, therefore, ignorantly treasuring in their cabinets [of curiosities] hairs from the pate of an old red monkey.

Buckland also examined a mermaid, about “half the size of her partner”. It, too, was formed from a monkey and a fish, but this time with glass doll’s eyes rather than the leather ones of the merman, that had pupils marked in black ink.

The popularity of such exhibits waned in the mid-Nineteenth Century and Buckland comments “The good folks of England are getting every year more and more educated, and mermaids do not take so well now as formerly..”. ² The legendary P. T. Barnum advertised the mermaid in his museum with a highly imaginative painting to attract in customers. Of course, he knew the exhibit was not a mermaid and “Mr Barnum confessed that he did not pursue his studies in Natural History too far, or he might learn too much.” ² Barnum justified the confidence trick by making no extra charge and there were many other things for visitors to see. He was a showman after all.

Any Natural Historian would see immediately that these exhibited mermen and mermaids were manufactured, yet reports of these creatures in their natural environment have been made by generations of sailors. These may have been sightings of sea mammals, especially manatees (left, below) and dugongs (right, below). One can only conclude that they were distant sightings to merit the belief that they were mermen or mermaids, or perhaps the sailors had been too long at sea and their imaginations had become overdeveloped?

Although no-one can believe in their existence in the real world, mermaids have had a lasting appeal in fiction, film and other media. After all, they come from another world and thus fit into the niche also occupied by angels, fairies and dragons. The best known story is The Little Mermaid by H C Andersen ³ and this formed the basis for the Disney film of the same name. Andersen describes how mermaids lived at the bottom of the ocean and had a class system, with at least one Royal Family that had six Princesses:

The whole day long they used to play in the palace, down in the great halls where live flowers grew on the walls. Whenever the high amber windows were thrown open the fish would swim in, just as swallows dart into our rooms when we open the windows. But these fish, now, would swim right up to the little princesses to eat out of their hands and let themselves be petted.. .. Each little princess had her own small garden plot, where she could dig and plant whatever she liked..

The story continues by describing how the princesses were allowed to swim to the surface of the ocean for the first time on their fifteenth birthday, reporting back on what each had seen. The youngest princess heard all the amazing descriptions, but had to wait and wait for her turn. When the day came and she arrived at the surface, she saw a handsome prince and rescued him from drowning after he became unconscious. The mermaid princess wanted to marry the prince, not only for love, but also to acquire immortality of the soul, as this was a feature of humans that mermaids lacked, but which could be acquired through marriage. The transformation from fish tail into “props” (legs) required a special potion prepared by an underwater witch - who improbably boiled the ingredients in “a caldron over the flames”. ³ The famous statue of the Little Mermaid in Copenhagen celebrates the transition to props from the fish tail and that explains why it appears like a nude of the period, with the outline of the tail barely visible. In the Disney film, which uses only superficial features of the complex story told by Andersen, the youngest princess appears as a mermaid Barbie Doll, with what appears to be a pull-on lower fish section and discretion maintained by having a bikini top.

One’s rational side finds all this a bit much, but the mermaids and mermen in museums, side shows and literature are very obviously fantasy creatures and we can all enjoy that. In a wider context, there must be other imaginary things that we take to be real, but it is not always easy to see that this is so. Hopefully, Natural Historians are better able to differentiate the two, just as Barnum intimated.

¹ Philip Henry Gosse (1861) The Romance of Natural History, Second Series. London, James Nisbet and Co..

² Francis T Buckland (1860) Curiosities of Natural History Second Series. New York, Rudd & Carlton.

³ Hans Christian Andersen (1837) Eventyr, fortalte for Børn. http://www.andersen.sdu.dk/forskning/bib/bfn/vis.html?p=303&show=1