My blog post for History Day 2021

 

This year, History Day is being held on 4th November, with the theme “Environmental History”. This was my contribution, published on their website:

https://historycollections.blogs.sas.ac.uk/2021/10/11/history-day-2021-explores-environmental-history-and-more/

 

I always enjoyed walking on my own in the countryside and along the coast of South Devon, where I lived. My love of natural history and, especially, of life in water stems from those walks, although there was always time for playing with friends or for making family outings. We never ventured far from home and our family visits were occasions for picnics rather than to visit interesting sites. We never went to museums or galleries and my shyness meant that I didn’t have the courage to visit them on my own. However, things were to change in my teenage years when I joined what was then the Torquay Natural History Society (TNHS).

Members of the TNHS had free access to Torquay Museum and its library. While the museum exhibits were of interest, it was the library that I enjoyed most. It was dark and dusty and had the characteristic smell of old books and old leather. Browsing through the collection took up many an afternoon and I was intrigued to discover that my interest in natural history followed from the passion of many earlier collectors and writers.

Having achieved A-level passes, it was then off to university. My first practical class at the University of Reading was held in the Cole Museum of Zoology and, while the class did not use the specimens in the collection, the choice of the Museum served to introduce us to this excellent resource and I enjoyed visiting it during my time at Reading. It was during my undergraduate years that I also developed my interest in paintings, and in the history of art, and I spent many Saturdays at the National and Tate Galleries in London. Just like my time in the Torquay Museum, the galleries encouraged me to connect with history and, with the help of reading and talks, I was able to understand more and begin to form my own opinions of what I saw.

After postgraduate studies at Durham and a demonstratorship at the University of Newcastle-upon-Tyne, I returned to London as a Lecturer at Goldsmiths’ College and then transferred to UCL, where I was fortunate to be made Professor of Biology. While continuing with visits to galleries, I now became acquainted with the Grant Museum of Zoology, originally located in cramped quarters in the Medawar Building, but later moved to a splendid large building on Gower Street, that allows much better access for members of the public. The museum is used by school classes, and by several Departments at UCL, and I was very pleased that Jack Ashby (the curator at the time) allowed me to use some of the specimens in the course that I taught in Animal Form and Function. This used an approach that Victorian natural historians would have found familiar and I deliberately wanted to make that connection at a time when Biology was becoming more mechanistic.

During my time at UCL, I learned more about Robert Grant and his successor Ray Lankester and, through them, about the great observers of nature from the nineteenth century that I had first discovered in Torquay Museum, one of whom was Philip Henry Gosse.

Gosse fascinated me as he spent many years exploring the coasts of Torbay, the very areas that I had collected over as a boy. He was not only a diligent researcher, but was able to write enthusiastically about his findings and he was also an accomplished artist, who was able to convey what he saw in numerous drawings and watercolours. I have been lucky enough to see some of his original work in the Royal Albert Memorial Museum in Exeter and in the Horniman Museum in London. The latter also provided the opportunity to look at the cyanotypes of marine algae made by Anna Atkins and the illustrations of a number of other natural historians.

So, museums and galleries have been important in providing material that has affected my own approach to natural history and the wonders of the natural world. Some of this appears in my blog posts, so please click on the links to see what I wrote and enjoy some of the excellent illustrations I discovered.

Two wonderful museums – and mention of another: http://www.rwotton.blogspot.com/2015/07/two-wonderful-museums-and-mention-of.html 

Brilliant illustrations of organisms: http://www.rwotton.blogspot.com/2015/01/brilliant-illustrations-of-organisms.html

A moving discovery at the Royal Albert Memorial Museum: http://www.rwotton.blogspot.com/2015/01/a-moving-discovery-in-royal-albert.html

Stunning biological illustrations: the connection between Gosse, Haddon and the Horniman Museum: https://rwotton.blogspot.com/2017/04/stunning-biological-illustrations.html

A mystery at the Horniman Museum: https://rwotton.blogspot.com/2017/04/a-mystery-at-horniman-museum.html

Wonderful first-hand observations of shore life: https://rwotton.blogspot.com/2017/04/a-mystery-at-horniman-museum.html

The awesome cyanotypes of Anna Atkins: https://rwotton.blogspot.com/2021/05/the-awesome-cyanotypes-of-anna-atkins.html

An artist who loved virgin nature: https://rwotton.blogspot.com/2017/01/an-artist-who-loved-virgin-nature.html

The zoology of Bruegel’s The Fall of the Rebel Angels: https://rwotton.blogspot.com/2020/03/the-zoology-of-bruegels-fall-of-rebel.html

How a great auk “flew” from Durham to Glasgow: https://rwotton.blogspot.com/2020/03/how-great-auk-flew-from-durham-to.html

 

 

 

 

The awesome cyanotypes of Anna Atkins

 

The digital age has made it easy for us to identify plants and animals using selections from the millions of illustrations that are available on the Web. Accessing images of specimens was a much greater challenge in the Nineteenth Century, just when more and more people were becoming interested in Natural History and wanting to identify plants and animals they collected from the countryside or the shore.

One solution to the need for illustration was the used of line drawings, or watercolours, that could be made into plates and thus appear in books. A good example comes in the work of Philip Henry Gosse who was both a scientist and an able artist, so knew exactly which features to portray. Other approaches used real specimens preserved in spirit or by the use of taxidermy, but these were only readily available in Museums and similar collections. Freshly collected plants could be compared with those in herbaria, labelled collections of pressed and dried specimens, but these were not widely available, although many amateurs made their own. However, they were dependent on the herbaria, and illustrations, of experts to ensure accurate identification. Mary Wyatt used herbarium specimens of seaweeds to allow the publication of a necessarily limited number of books to aid identification, while Bradbury and others extended this approach by pressing plants on to lead plates to make an impression. Each of the plates was then coated with copper and could be used to print many copies, some in monochrome and some using colour for even garter realism [1]. Like illustrations made from engravings of other art work, these become available widely [2,3].

Of the many examples of Nature Printing, among the best known are the cyanotypes of Anna Atkins, the daughter of John George Children FRS, for whom she had earlier prepared 250 woodcuts of shells for his translation of a work by Lamarck, the original not being illustrated [4]. Through her father, she had contacts with Herschel and thus the early development of cyanotypes in which chemicals are transformed by light to give a wonderful blue image, with the subject blocking the effect of light and appearing white. With her keen interest in illustration, Anna Atkins made cyanotypes of seaweeds that were then bound into a small number of volumes.

Complete collections of Anna Atkins cyanotypes have become justly famous – and very valuable. I was privileged to look through the large collection that was owned by Frederick John Horniman and now held by the Horniman Museum in London. Each is printed on watermarked Whatman paper, mostly of 1846 and 1849 in the volumes that I saw, and all have a wonderful quality. As aids to identification, they give dimension and the arrangement of fronds of the seaweeds but no natural colour. One would be hard pressed to identify fresh specimens from some illustrations, especially of small algae, or those that are toughened with natural strengthening (see the images below for examples). Mounting specimens that were translucent meant that some surface and internal detail became visible and these cyanotypes are especially impressive. 

Anna Atkins labelled each sheet with their Latin binomial and this would have been written in ink on strips of paper that were then cleared, most probably using highly refined oil. The labels could then be mounted with each alga and their outline is seen clearly in the prints at the Horniman Museum. Whatever their practical use, these images are beautiful works of art from Nature and it was a privilege to see them. Soon to be superseded by photography, they mark an exciting step in the Art – and Science - of Biological Illustration [3].

 

[1] Roderick Cave (2010) Impressions of Nature: A History of Nature Printing. London, The British Library.

 

[2] http://www.rwotton.blogspot.com/2013/08/nature-printing.html

 

[3] http://www.rwotton.blogspot.com/2014/1/where-science-meets-art-usefulness-and.html

 

[4] A. E. Gunther (1978) John George Children, F.R.S. (1777-1852) of the British Museum. Mineralogist and reluctant Keeper of Zoology. Bulletin of the British Museum (Natural History) 6: 75-108

 

 

I am grateful to Helen Williamson and the Horniman Museum for letting me see these valuable works and for allowing me to reproduce pictures of them in this blog post.

 

For those wanting to make cyanotypes of their own, a video explaining the technique can be found at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gvvVUfdqDaM and I recommend Roderick Cave's brilliant book (reference [1] above) as an introduction to all aspects of Nature Printing.

 

Wonderful first-hand observations of shore life

We can all learn from the observational skills and industry of Nineteenth Century Natural Historians. Equipped with hand lenses, microscopes, pens, pencils, paper and paints, they recorded what they saw and this formed the basis of the classification of organisms and the ecology and behaviour that was to follow. I hold them in very high regard, especially when it is now so easy to record an image, or access information. Yet I wonder whether we have lost some of the skills shown during the heyday of Natural History? Much of our information now comes from television and video programmes that have excitement engendered by Hollywood-style production values, "appropriate" music, and a charismatic presenter to front the whole package. We are just passengers, often receiving what we are told uncritically.

The enthusiasm, powers of observation, and skill in illustration of Nineteenth Century Natural Historians are exemplified by William Pennington Cocks (1791-1878), whose work is included in the Haddon Collection in the Horniman Museum [1]. Although Cocks was interested in a wide range of animals, the Collection contains the notes he made on sea anemones that were used by Philip Henry Gosse in the preparation of Actinologia Britannica, his book on the British sea anemones and corals. Here are some examples of the notes that he sent to Gosse:

 

In the first (above, upper), we have a water colour sketch of sea anemones attached to the under-surface of a rock. This gives little detail of the animals, although Cocks provides the name of the species in the heading, but we certainly have a feel for their location. Next (above, lower), there are several species of sea anemones, all painted in colour and with detail of their structure and their positioning. Several locations are given, including Gwyllyn Vase, a favourite site of Cocks on the shore near Falmouth and now known as Gyllyngvase. He also placed sea anemones into jars, or tumblers, of sea water to facilitate observation (below, excuse my thumb in the first picture) and the drawings show details of structure that would be very helpful to others working on the biology and classification of these animals. 

 

Cocks recognised the value of the microscope and this is emphasised in a note (below): "If you have not examined the tentacula microscopically I would recommend a campaign in that quarter – we know little or nothing of the anatomy of the actinias".

His study of the biology of sea anemones included their feeding and three examples are given below, complete with the examination of two fish that had been partially digested. The lowest illustration shows a sea anemone with stinging acontia discharged [2] – "the appearance of one of these irritable fellows a few moments after removal from natural quarters".

 

Cocks' interest in anatomy and diet is not surprising as he was trained as a surgeon and became well known in London for his medical illustrations. He had a gift for drawing and for painting in water colours, although he appears to have received no formal training (unlike Gosse, whose father was a miniaturist). This is what Tom Barnicoat writes in an article entitled "The Gilbert White of Falmouth" [3]:

Born in 1791, the son of a Devon surgeon, Cocks took up his father's profession in London before retiring to Falmouth in 1842 at the age of 50. This was apparently due to recurring bouts of unspecified ill-health which continued for the rest of his life. Cocks' constitution must have had an underlying strength, given his active life and longevity: for the next 36 years, he was not only a prolific naturalist, but also keenly engaged in local politics, for the Liberal cause. His main contribution was a stream of lively cartoons and caricatures. Cocks was also an acute social observer, in his writing and drawings of contemporary mores..

..That he was a man of his time is clear, a certain type of Victorian professional with sufficient leisure (and thus means) to pursue a wide range of interests in that age of curiosity and discovery. From all the published sources, it would seem he was also an inveterate bachelor, there is no mention of family life anywhere.

F. Hamilton Davey in his appreciation of Cocks in 1909 adds [4]:

While Cocks will always be spoken of as a distinguished local naturalist, no reference to his life's work can be deemed complete which omits mention of his achievements in departments other than those connected with natural science..

..Everyone who knew Cocks speaks of him as a most genial companion and a man who never, even in his old years, lost touch with young men. To spend an evening with him, or to accompany him on one of his natural history rambles, was an event long to be remembered. He had a fine sense of humour, was a brilliant conversationalist, and his memory was as reliable as a written diary.

Clearly, Cocks was of a quite different personality to Gosse, who was shy and dedicated to his literalist Biblical beliefs. We know of the importance of Gosse to the increasing popularity of marine science, parlour aquaria and microscopy in the Nineteenth Century, as Edmund Gosse wrote two biographies of his father, including the well-known Father and Son. Few are familiar with Cocks, yet we know that he corresponded with Gosse and others about sea anemones and his correspondence was valued, which is why the notes by Cocks were retained and then gathered into the Haddon Collection. Stella M. Turk wrote in 1971 [5]:

If like Proust we think of our personal pasts as stilts on which we must balance, then we must also believe that science itself rests on its past – often precariously. The ability to manoeuvre such stilts is related to an understanding of their origins. Our present highly specialised, statistically-based professional attitudes in biology could not have come about had it not been for the few highly articulate, industrious and many-sided amateurs who helped to lay the foundations of modern natural history studies in the last century. Dr. W. P. Cocks, still alive less than a century ago, and in his working life a valued correspondent of such outstanding authorities as Milne Edwards, Yarrell, Gosse, Couch, Johnston and Ralfs.. ..was just such a naturalist.

Food for thought for those of us who continue to believe in the importance of the study of Natural History. Viewing the Haddon Collection was an exciting adventure for me, as I greatly admire the Natural Historians of the Nineteenth Century, their powers of observation and their means of communicating what they saw. Would Cocks have been surprised to know that someone was admiring his field notes in a Museum, more than 150 years after they were written?

[1] http://rwotton.blogspot.co.uk/2017/04/stunning-biological-illustrations.html

[2] http://rwotton.blogspot.co.uk/2016/11/the-human-side-of-science.html

[3] Tom Barnicoat (2008/2009) The Gilbert White of Falmouth. Thepolymagazine  pages 11-13.

[4] F. Hamilton Davey (1909) William Pennington Cocks, M.R.C.S. Reports of the Royal Cornwall Polytechnic Society 76: 82-91.

[5] Stella M. Turk (1971) Wiliam Pennington Cocks (1791-1878), a West Country naturalist. Journal of Conchology 27: 253-255.

I would like to thank the Horniman Museum for allowing me to view the Haddon Collection and to reproduce the illustrations in this post. Michael Carver, Judith Hann and the Royal Cornwall Polytechnic Society provided valuable insights into the work of W. P. Cocks and it is a pleasure to acknowledge their help, together with that of Anna Holmes and Graham Oliver of the Conchological Society of Great Britain and Ireland.

A mystery at the Horniman Museum

Everyone likes a mystery and this is one that I discovered recently. While looking through the Haddon Collection at the Horniman Museum [1], I came across a card with a drawing of a sea anemone (see below left). Earlier in the Collection, I had been looking at the original paintings by Philip Henry Gosse for Plate V of his book Actinologia Britannica, a comprehensive guide to sea anemones and corals found around the British coast. Close examination of the sea anemone illustrated on the card, especially its shape, colour and arrangement of the tentacles, made me think that this must be the basis for the watercolour that was used for the Plate (below right).

Let's get some more information on the card (shown below in more detail). The drawing has been overwritten by the address and also the term "Picture", both written in ink and apparently in the same handwriting. There is also writing in pencil: "Aiptasia amacha" at the top; "See Pl. V" at bottom right; "44" at top right; and at bottom left "tentacles light umber with pellucid dark centres. Column pale ochre". The card has three postmarks: one for North Queensferry (May 2nd); one indecipherable (May 3rd?); and one for Torquay (May 4th).

L. J. P. Gaskin (the Librarian of the Horniman Museum in the 1930s) identifies the descriptive pencil writing at the bottom left as that of Gosse and states that the drawing provides "A further link with the Actinologia" and was "probably the original of the figure [of Aiptasia couchii] in Plate 5 of that work" [2]. The pencil marking to this effect on the card (presumably added by Haddon, together with the catalogue number 44) also supports this idea, yet the drawing is labelled "Aiptasia amacha". 

This is what Gosse wrote about the material he used to illustrate A. couchii in Actinologia Britannica [3]:

..In the latter part of March of the present year (1858), Dr Hilton of Guernsey found on the shores of that island, and kindly sent to me, several specimens of an Anemone new  to him, and equally so to me.. ..I.. ..ventured to describe it under the name Aiptasia amacha..

..Subsequently, however, I have found that the species has been well described and figured by Mr. W. P. Cocks, in his valuable list of the Actiniæ of Falmouth, published in the Report of the Cornwall Society for 1851, under the title of Anthea Couchii, which specific name takes precedence of mine. It is true, in his description, mention is made of three white lines extending longitudinally up the column, of which no trace exists in my specimens; but by a coloured drawing with which Mr. Cocks has favoured me, I perceive that these lines were not equidistant and symmetrical, but all close together on one side; a circumstance which at once shows their presence to have been accidental, and of no value as a character, while in every other respect, even in the most minute points, his drawing and description agree with my specimens.

As the drawing on the card is labelled "Aiptasia amacha", and does not show evidence of any longitudinal lines on the column, it seems that this is indeed by Gosse and that explains its near identical appearance with the specimen shown in Plate V in Actinologia Britannica.  So, why is the drawing overwritten with the address and the word "Picture"and who wrote the card? I cannot answer the first part of that question, nor the second. My first thought was that Cocks had sent the card, but the handwriting is rather different to many other examples of his (Michael Carver in pers. comm.) and this was probably not Cocks' drawing anyway. If we follow the sequence of postmarks, the card was sent from North Queensferry (the only place of this name being on the Firth of Forth, way outside the known range of A. couchii [3]) via a second destination and then sent on from Torquay to Gosse at Sandhurst, the villa where he lived in St Marychurch, a village within that town. 

A mystery indeed.

[1] http://rwotton.blogspot.co.uk/2017/04/stunning-biological-illustrations.html

[2] L. J. P. Gaskin (1937) On a collection of original sketches and drawings of British sea-anemones and corals by Philip Henry Gosse, and his correspondents, 1839-1861, in the Library of the Horniman Museum. Journal of the Society for the Bibliography of Natural History 1: 65-67

[3] Philip Henry Gosse (1860). Actinologia Britannica. A history of the British sea-anemones and corals. London, John Van Voorst.

I would like to thank the Horniman Museum for allowing me to view the Haddon Collection and to reproduce the illustrations in this post. Michael Carver, Judith Hann and the Royal Cornwall Polytechnic Society provided valuable insights into the work of W. P. Cocks and it is a pleasure to acknowledge their help.

Stunning biological illustrations: the connection between Gosse, Haddon and the Horniman Museum

Alfred Cort Haddon, the famous anthropologist, was the son of a printer [1]. As a child, he was fascinated by Natural History and his interest was encouraged by his mother, who wrote and illustrated children's books. To draw a wide range of animals, young Alfred made visits to London Zoo, but C. G. Seligman writes [2] that he..

..was destined for his father's business, which he entered on leaving Mill Hill School.

According to Haddon's own account, it took his father scarcely two years to discover that it might be less costly to send his son to Cambridge than to retain him in the firm. So to Cambridge he went...

..to study Zoology. After graduating in 1879, Haddon was appointed to a Demonstratorship by Cambridge University and was made Professor of Zoology at the Royal College of Science in Dublin the following year [2]. He..

..was active in marine biology, being secretary of the Dredging Committee, which did much work off the south-west coast of Ireland, and this led to a series of papers, mostly on the Actinozoa [sea anemones and corals].. ..For some years he divided his time between Dublin and Cambridge, lecturing in Dublin during the winter and spending the summers at Cambridge.

Dredging was a means of exploring marine habitats that were otherwise difficult to reach and Haddon was following in the tradition established by Edward Forbes [3] and continued by others, including Philip Henry Gosse. Gosse lived in Torquay from 1857 until his death in 1888 and that town was visited by, or had as residents, many who were interested in Marine Biology, including Amelia Griffiths, Mary Wyatt, and Charles Kingsley [4-5]. It is thus not surprising that Haddon chose Torquay as the site for teaching a field course in Marine Biology in 1879, when he was 24 years old. He used books and identification works supplied by the superintendent of the Museum in Cambridge and among these must have been Gosse's Actinologia Britannica, an authoritative, descriptive guide that is of value today (although some taxonomic names have changed). Henry Gosse was a meticulous scientist and a gifted illustrator and the plates in his books are wonderful [6].

Eight years after the field course, Haddon wrote to Gosse about the publication of Actinologia Britannica, as it had appeared in sections before the production of the final book [7]. At some point, a collection of watercolours by Gosse passed into Haddon's hands and included were many observations, notes, drawings and watercolours by William Pennington Cocks, the Cornish natural historian and retired surgeon that had been sent to Gosse by this "generous contributor of his own material in the cause of science, and an authority on the actinians and other marine fauna of Falmouth Bay" [8]. The collection (see above) was donated to the Horniman Museum in 1906, long after Haddon had shifted his interest to Anthropology (that began in a visit to the Torres Straits in 1888) and a year before Edmund Gosse published, anonymously, his less than flattering memoir Father and Son [9]. Earlier, Edmund had written a biography of his father at the request of E. Ray Lankester and The Naturalist of the Sea-Shore: the life of Philip Henry Gosse [10] has descriptions of Henry Gosse's techniques as an illustrator.

If I was stunned by the plates in Actinologia Britannica, can you imagine how I felt when viewing the originals held by the Horniman Museum (three of which are shown above)? This is what Edmund wrote about Henry's methods [10]:

His books were always well illustrated, and often very copiously and brilliantly illustrated, by his own pencil. It was his custom from his earliest childhood to make drawings and paintings of objects which came under his notice.. ..In July, 1855, he stated.. ..that he had up to that date accumulated in his portfolios more than three thousand figures of animals or parts of animals, of which about two thousand five hundred were of the invertebrate classes, and about half of these latter done under the microscope. During the remainder of his life he added perhaps two thousand more drawings to his collections. The remarkable feature about these careful works of art was that, in the majority of cases, they were drawn from the living animal..

..[Henry] Gosse as a draughtsman was trained in the school of the miniature painters. When a child he had been accustomed to see his father [a professional miniaturist and illustrator] inscribe the outline of a portrait on the tiny area of the ivory, and then fill it in with stipplings of pure body-colour. He possessed to the last the limitations of the miniaturist. He had no distance, no breadth of tone, no perspective; but a miraculous exactitude in rendering shades of colour and minute peculiarities of form and marking. In late years he was accustomed to make a kind of patchwork quilt of each full-page illustration, collecting as many individual forms as he wished to present, each separately coloured and cut out, and then gummed into its place on the general plate, upon which a background of rocks, sand and seaweeds was then washed in..

We can see examples of Henry's "patchwork" approach in the Plates shown above. Close examination of Plate I shows the top right section to be stuck on as are the sea anemones numbered 2, 7 and 8 in Plate III and sea anemones 7, 8, 9 and 11 in Plate VI. As Edmund points out, they are intended as accurate aids to identification, not as works of art, although I think they are beautiful, as are some of Henry's very small watercolours (see below).

They are truly the work of a miniaturist, as there is no shortage of paper on which to paint and it could be that Henry Gosse intended to convey real-life scale as well as accuracy of form and colour.

These are only a very small number of the illustrations held by the Horniman Museum and I would like to thank the Museum for letting me see the Haddon Collection and for allowing me to take the photographs that accompany this post.

[1] H. J. Fleure, rev. Sandra Rouse (2004-2016) Alfred Cort Haddon. Oxford Dictionary of National Biography http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/3326

[2] C. G. Seligman (1940) Obituary of Dr A. C. Haddon F.R.S.. Nature 145: 848-850.

[3] Daniel Merriman (1963) Edward Forbes – Manxman. Progress in Oceanography 3: 191- 206.

[4] http://www.rwotton.blogspot.co.uk/2013/12/wome-on-shore.html

[5] http://rwotton.blogspot.co.uk/2016/05/charles-kingsley-creation-and-evolution.html

[6] http://rwotton.blogspot.co.uk/2017/03/two-wonderful-books.html

[7] R. B. Freeman and Douglas Wertheimer (1980) Philip Henry Gosse: A Bibliography. Folkestone, Wm. Dawson & Sons.

[8] L. J. P. Gaskin (1937) On a collection of original sketches and drawings of British sea-anemones and corals by Philip Henry Gosse, and his correspondents, 1839-1861, in the Library of the Horniman Museum. Journal of the Society for the Bibliography of Natural History 1: 65-67

[9] Edmund Gosse (1907) Father and Son. London, William Heinemann.

[10] Edmund Gosse (1890) The Naturalist of the Sea-Shore: the life of Philip Henry Gosse. London, William Heinemann.