Torquay Boys’ Grammar School, South Devon Tech. - and pranks

Many of us look back on school days as being some of the best of our life. For me, there were a few good times, but mostly it was not a happy experience, and I don’t feel disappointed that my old school has now been demolished. In the image above, the east entrance to the school, with its rather grand portico, remains, as does the eastern internal staircase (just visible in the background of this image by Tom Jolliffe – with the handrail still in place) that led to the first floor. 

Passing though the entrance shown in the image, one entered a corridor that had the Head’s Study on the left, the Secretary’s office on the right and a succession of classrooms also on the right, with the Biology Laboratory at the end of the corridor (to the left of the corridor were windows looking out on to one of the “playgrounds”). The Biology Lab. plays an important part in the following narrative.

Having passed O-levels in 1962, I took A-levels in Chemistry, Botany and Zoology (I dropped Physics after one year). Chemistry was then taught at the school in a relatively new two-storey block that had replaced an old hut, where Mr Roberts had earlier taught us (1A of the 1958 intake) to recite the mantra “Acid + Base = Salt + Water”. The hut was so old that the knots in the floorboards were raised and shiny, the rest of the boards being worn away by the scuffing shoes of generations of students. As I recall, A-level Chemistry was taught on the first floor of the new building and I had the misfortune of having Mr Crabtree as my teacher. He was clearly an able chemist, but he bullied me on occasions, one of which I recall clearly when he tapped me repeatedly on the head while saying, with raised voice, “valency, Wotton, valency!”. I’m not sure what I had done to deserve this response, but I admit that I didn’t have much interest in chemistry, as was apparent to Mr Crabtree. My fascination with natural history made the A-levels in Botany and Zoology much more to my taste, but, unfortunately, I was not a good scholar.

 These are quotes from my book “Walking with Gosse” [1]: 

As Biology was not among the most popular subjects at TBGS, we took A-Levels in both Botany and Zoology at the South Devon Technical College, in a building adjacent to the school. Teaching was shared between the two institutions, with Botany taught by Mr Hood from the Grammar School and Zoology by Mr Cosway from the Tech…

 …and another excerpt [1]: 

…I always enjoyed visiting Paignton Zoo to gaze at the animals and I joined the “Peacock Association” (the Friends of the Zoo) to gain free entry and to attend meetings with guest speakers. On the south side of the Zoo was an area closed to the public, with a high double gate that led to mature woodland and a hillside that was grazed by rabbits. Mr Hood had kept a record of the distribution of plants on the hillside over several years and a group of us Botany students was taken there to continue mapping the site using quadrats. It was something that was organised each year to teach botanical surveying techniques and I really enjoyed this field work. My earlier flower collecting meant that I could identify many plants, although I now used Latin names rather than the common ones, and I went back to the site on my own a few times to expand the survey in other areas. This impressed, and surprised, Mr Hood who, like Mr Cosway, didn’t think I had much of a future academically [the latter having recommended that I give up Zoology]. 

I liked Mr Hood, as he clearly loved plants and seemed independent-minded, although we only had occasional glimpses of the human side of our schoolmasters. He had spent time in India with the Army and was almost a caricature of someone from that background, having a large moustache and habitually wearing a rumpled tweed sports jacket and cavalry twills. Occasionally, he talked to us about the Western Ghats and some of his Indian adventures and these were very exotic for me, an insular Paigntonian.

The freedom of the Tech. was such that I never worked as hard as I should have done in classes and it also meant that, with a couple of friends, we thought little of skipping school to go collecting marine animals from the local shore (see below). We should have been in the School Library, but identifying the animals in our collections was much more fun and we also brought back specimens and set them up in aquarium tanks.

Our form room was the Biology Lab. in the main school building and it was the scene of several pranks. One came from our collections, as we soon discovered that seaweed kept in a large jar decomposed to produce a shocking and pervasive smell. What could be more fun than to secrete an open jar of rotting wrack near a radiator in the corridor and then retrieve it once the area had become filled with its perfume? We also discovered that bubbling gas into a sink of water to which “Teepol” had been added produced large quantities of foam that would spread along a bench and that throwing a lighted match into the foam would produce a wonderful sheet of flame that burned itself out in a second or two.

Perhaps the most infamous prank came when we went to a local pub and bought a couple of flagons of cider that we distilled to produce applejack. We knew well enough that distillates might contain harmful chemicals, in addition to ethyl alcohol, so we were reluctant to drink the stuff that we had made. I can still remember the smell of it though, and the pleasure to be obtained by our behaviour and, as with all the other pranks, the school was seemingly unaware of our activities. As mentioned earlier, the Head’s Study was just along our corridor and “Joe” Harmer (MA Cantab. FRAS) didn’t have a highly-developed sense of humour. If I’d been caught there would have been trouble (and more doubt about my academic abilities), even though I was only a passive participant in the activities. Visits to the shore were an exception, as I was fascinated by all that I discovered there, and played an active role in searches.

My chances of gaining a good reference on my university application form would also have been affected if my behaviour during the 1964 Sixth Form Conference had been discovered. These conferences were held in different schools each year and there were lots of group debates that were very enjoyable: conferences were also a chance to meet girls. At the one held at TBGS, the day started with a religious service at a local church and then there were sessions until lunchtime, during which three of us (highly illegally) went to “The Rising Sun”. After a couple of pints of beer each, we left to walk back to school, singing our version of the 1964 hit by The Animals:

There is a house in Torre, Torquay

They call the Rising Sun 

And it’s been the ruin of many a poor boy

And God I know, I’m one 

Well, it didn’t lead to my ruin, but it might have done. On return to the conference, I had the misfortune to sit next to a teacher from another school and had to ask him to let me out as I needed to get rid of some of the fluid that I’d accumulated. He must have found it odd that I left the debate so soon after it started, and also that I smelt a little of alcohol. An anxious few days followed, but I got away with it and I did get my university place and that’s where I changed beyond recognition. I was now much more diligent and I have to say that it was at university where it all started for me. School was just part of the build-up, although I recognise the dedication, and excellence, of some masters and the friendship of fellow students. While rarely happy to see buildings being demolished (another image by Tom Jolliffe is shown below), there’s some satisfaction in seeing the end of the old TBGS. My time there wasn’t the happiest period of my life.

[1] Roger S Wotton (2020) Walking with Gosse. e-book (available widely).

Skylarks and their inspirational song

One of my favourite local walks in summer is along a path below Ivinghoe Beacon, then climbing up to the ridge to look out over the extensive lowlands below. In the past, there was an added bonus, as there were several skylark nests in the fields that formed the first part of the walk and it was a joy to listen to their song and then try to spot them high up: very high up, for they take a bit of finding without binoculars. It is only the males that sing in this way and the flight is used to advertise their breeding territory. They may fly up several hundred metres before “hovering” for a minute or two, then descending rapidly. Singing is constant on the upward flight and when the skylark appears suspended at its zenith. 

Sadly, there are no longer skylarks in the fields next to Ivinghoe Beacon; at least, I haven’t heard them. Changes in farming practice and, especially, the time of year when grain is planted is one reason why these birds are now on the British conservation Red list [1]. Grain crops planted in early winter grow too tall for the larks in the breeding season, as they need easy access to the nest. 

Although they are rather dull in colour (see the image above) compared to some other birds, the effect of skylark song (heard in [1]) is far from dull and it has inspired many poets, for example, John Milton and George Meredith:

John Milton: L'Allegro (lines 40-44)

 

To hear the lark begin his flight

And singing startle the dull night

From his watch-tower in the skies

Till the dappled dawn doth rise

George Meredith: The Lark Ascending 

(lines 1-4; 65-70: and 121-122):

He rises and begins to round,

He drops the silver chain of sound,

Of many links without a break,

In chirrup, whistle, slur and shake.

 

For singing till his heaven fills,

‘Tis love of earth that he instils,

And ever winging up and up,

Our valley is his golden cup

And he the wine which overflows

to lift us with him as he goes.

 

Till lost on his aërial rings

In light, and then the fancy sings. 

The lines from Milton stimulated Samuel Palmer to paint The Rising of the Skylark (shown below). As Milton’s lines suggest, the lark is high in the sky at dawn, being visible only as a speck identified by following the gaze of the human observer by the gate. It is an idyllic scene and its atmosphere owes something to Turner, recognised at that time for his genius in painting light. Palmer created this Romantic view in 1839 while he was based in Shoreham in Kent, with a house close to the River Darent. 

The valley of the Darent had a special significance for Palmer and it does for me, too, in a lesser way. Not, I’m afraid, for any artistic endeavours, but it was where I conducted experiments on aquatic insect larvae and I collected material from the chalk stream to work on in the laboratory. Having been very keen on Art History since undergraduate years, I always nodded at Palmer’s house when I arrived in Shoreham and parked next to the bridge by his house before starting my collection in the river. 

The quoted lines from George Meredith were inscribed on the manuscript of Ralph Vaughan Williams' The Lark Ascending, that shared its title with that of the poem. It was written just before the outbreak of the First World War, but didn’t receive its first performance in orchestral form until 1921. It has been recorded by many artists and a link to a recent performance is given below [2].

Vaughan Williams’ work was voted to be the most popular of all pieces of music by listeners to Desert Island Discs [3] and also placed first in Classic FM’s Hall of Fame [4]. That is not a surprise, as it has lyrical beauty and feels connected to British, and, more specifically, English folk music; a genre from which Vaughan Williams gained inspiration. Hearing this music in his head must a have been a solace to the composer as he served in both the Medical Corps and the Royal Artillery during the First World War, just as George Butterworth must have found comfort in recalling his lovely The Banks of Green Willow. That piece was also inspired by English folk tunes and was composed just before the war broke out, but, sadly, Butterworth was killed in the trenches [5]. Vaughan Williams survived, but he did suffer deafness from the noise of gunfire.

I love the works by Palmer and Vaughan Williams and their Romanticism touches a nerve with me. Given their popularity, it seems that I am not alone. The drab, but beautifully singing, skylark has been an inspiration for many other poets, painters and composers and I hope that we can do something to keep their numbers up, and even restore them to their earlier abundance. Skylarks inspire us, but we should remember that their song did not evolve for our benefit, but for theirs.

[1] https://www.rspb.org.uk/birds-and-wildlife/wildlife-guides/bird-a-z/skylark/

[2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZR2JlDnT2l8&ab_channel=RichardBrittain 

[3] https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p04qpmw9

[4] https://www.udiscovermusic.com/classical-features/vaughan-williams-lark-ascending/

[5] http://www.rwotton.blogspot.com/2013/02/the-banks-of-green-willow.html

My thanks to Alexander Wotton who was the (unknowing) catalyst for this article.

 

Palmer’s painting is held by the National Museum of Wales: https://museum.wales/art/online/?action=show_item&item=1436

The full poem L’Allegro by John Milton is available here: https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/44731/lallegro

The full poem The Lark Ascending by George Meredith is available here: https://allpoetry.com/The-Lark-Ascending

 

School summer holidays in the early 1960s

I attended Torquay Boys’ Grammar School from 1958-1965 (now demolished to make way for housing – see the image below, taken by Tom Jolliffe, just before the end [1]). Weekdays for 36 weeks of the year were spent learning some interesting things, some that were needed to pass examinations, and other activities like Games and Gym that someone considered to be good for me. There were a few excellent masters, some that were good, and then the rest, but, fortunately, only one or two that were very unpleasant. Of these, some were bullies and some so struck the fear of God into us that it was a relief when their classes ended. 

It was not a disappointment when summer holidays came around and Assembly on the last day of term always featured “Lord, dismiss us with Thy blessing”, sung with something of a sense of relief. One year, the piano in the Hall was modified by having drawing pins inserted in all the hammers and the student who played had a look of mock surprise at the resulting sound. Of course, we enjoyed this thoroughly, although we knew better than to laugh. Some masters smirked a little, but “Joe”, the Head Master, took it personally and looked like thunder. “Joe” was John Harmer MA (Cantab.) FRAS and he always appeared in an immaculate gown that somehow added to his sense of importance.

It was said that “Joe” was handy with a cane, a punishment that was confined to the privacy of his office. There was no chance of me finding out as I was always well-behaved, going through my school career with just a single detention and only one whacking. That came from “Hoppy” Hopwood when he discovered several of us in our form room when we should have been in the playground. “Hoppy” taught music and was very enthusiastic about his subject and also in giving taps with his black plimsoll. They were a feature of many music lessons.

 Anyway, at the end of the summer term there was six weeks break, but this coincided with the large influx of tourists to the holiday towns of Torbay. At the start of my career at TBGS that was good, as the increased number of trains meant some good trainspotting, but I tired of that in early adolescence as I wanted to get away from the crowds of holidaymakers. My interest then turned to walking around the coast and in the countryside, and I couldn’t resist looking in rock pools and streams, and being astonished by all the different animals and plants that I saw. 

The other passion was to buy Holiday Runabout Tickets, sometimes in pairs. These allowed unlimited travel over specified local railway lines and, as many small branch lines were still open, a chance to explore parts of Devon, Somerset and Dorset in a way that couldn’t be done on foot or by bus (no-one in our family had a car). Some of the branch line trains consisted of a single carriage pulled by a small steam engine and they wound their way through the countryside at a leisurely pace, stopping at small stations that were often far from the villages that they were built to serve. On one trip from Torrington to Halwill Junction, our train picked up a freight wagon en route and towed that down the line, a practice that I had never experienced before, but a regular feature of this form of rural transport at the time. 

There were few passengers on these trains and it was inevitable that the lines would be closed for economic reasons, but I was so pleased to have had the chance to ride over them (you can get some of the atmosphere by viewing a videoclip [2]). It’s no wonder that I became a fan of John Betjeman.

What a splendid contrast it all was to school life and I looked forward to these summer holiday journeys very much for a couple of years. After the branch lines closed, I developed other interests, while maintaining my passion for walking and natural history. The latter are constants that have been with me throughout the last sixty years; the Grammar School buildings and the branch lines disappearing into the world of nostalgia.

[1] Tom Jolliffe / Former Torquay Boys' Grammar School / CC BY-SA 2.0

[2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ak9WgSYzQ50&ab_channel=ACEWEO-

 

Outsiders and the world of scientific publication

All areas of life are influenced by establishment views – where those in authority, or have expertise, influence the acceptance of new views or opinions. In an earlier post, I described why the conclusions drawn by John Vaughan Thompson were not readily accepted, and suggested that there were three factors why this was so [1]:

(i) His background as an independent, amateur researcher made him an “outsider”;

(ii) His work was published privately and was not widely available; and

(iii) His discoveries challenged the scientific establishment of the time.

Does this apply today?

In the nineteenth century, when Thompson was active, there was much still to be discovered about the life history and behaviour of organisms, and we now know so much more. Yet there continue to be many observers and amateur researchers who have a fund of knowledge that is not published in scientific journals and does not become part of the mainstream.

During the early 1970s, I was a PhD student working at the Moor House Field Station, high in the Pennines. It was a remote place that was once a hunting lodge, at least 5 miles from the nearest village [2], and needed a permanent caretaker to maintain the buildings, machinery, and land. At the time, it was someone called Jim and he had a passion for the natural world and, especially, for the biology of dippers (Cinclus cinclus) [3], that were relatively common in moorland streams like Moss Burn (see above) and other tributaries of the River Tees. As a result, Jim had a great insight into the breeding, distribution, and behaviour of these fascinating birds and it was always a pleasure to get him talking about them. I encouraged him to write about his observations, but he wouldn’t do so, and thus his knowledge was only known to those who engaged him in conversation.

How would someone like Jim share their knowledge in the 2020s? By conversation, certainly, but we now have the internet and all manner of sites on which observations can be posted. Of course, there are problems of accessing the information, and searches using keywords can come up with huge numbers of entries that must then be sifted through. Some sites allow labels that aid search engines but we all experience the difficulty of access, even though much information is readily accessible! This is the world of “grey literature” and would someone interested in publishing in an academic journal use Jim’s observations? Almost certainly not.

Some mainstream journals accept observations, but the majority require papers based on research and/or scholarship, to be submitted according to their house style and rules for submission. Many journals feature in abstracts and search engines like “Web of Knowledge”, but there are several hurdles to overcome before a paper is accepted. The most prestigious ones will not send all submitted papers out to referees, and rejection can also come after receipt of referees’ comments. In my (limited) experience it is uncommon for a paper to be accepted as submitted, and “minor revisions” or “major revisions” are usually required. To an author this can be a frustrating process, as referees may have agendas: most, however, take their role as referees seriously and want to help the author and the editor. Once accepted, there is then the wait for publication, but all this is for the academic community, not for someone with important observations that can add to the grey literature, much of which is not peer reviewed. If John Vaughan Thompson had attempted to publish in one of the leading journals, he would likely have seen his papers rejected, given the response he received. Such is the power of the establishment in any discipline.

[1] https://rwotton.blogspot.com/2021/10/being-outsider-story-of-john-vaughan.html

[2] https://rwotton.blogspot.com/2018/04/tempus-fugit.html 

[3] https://www.rspb.org.uk/birds-and-wildlife/wildlife-guides/bird-a-z/dipper/

 

  

Homage to Sir Alister Hardy – Natural Historian and Artist

In describing new discoveries, or when writing for a wider audience, natural historians in the past accompanied their observations with illustrations, some of which were made by others and some of which they made themselves. At the forefront of natural historian/illustrators is Philip Henry Gosse, whose father, a professional artist, taught his son to paint in watercolour, a medium that he used to great effect. He also made a large number of line drawings. 

Nowadays, there are many means of producing beautiful and informative illustrations using photography and digital methods and we see the beginning of the transition to these media in Alister Hardy’s “The Open Sea: The World of Plankton”. The book is illustrated by black-and-white photographs taken by Douglas P. Wilson and line drawings and paintings made by Hardy himself. Wilson encountered problems when taking photographs of deep-sea animals that had been brought to the surface as the accurate portrayal of their colours required long exposures that were not practical in the 1950s. This is what Hardy wrote [1]: 

It was my hope, and that of the editors, that in addition to his black-and-whites Dr Wilson would have been able to contribute a series of colour photographs of the living plankton and especially of the richly pigmented animals from the ocean depths. At that time the electronic flash was only just being developed and he felt unable to attempt them. 

It’s a reminder of how much we take beautiful images, films, videos, etc. for granted in the modern era.  In the Introduction to “The Open Sea: The World of Plankton” Hardy describes his technique for making illustrations and this is worth quoting in full [1]: 

All save seven of the 142 drawings in the plates were made from living examples or, in a few cases, from those taken freshly from the net when some deep-water fish and plankton animals were dead on reaching the surface.. .. It may be of interest to record how the drawings were made. All the animals, except the larger squids and jelly-fish, were drawn either swimming in flat-glass dishes placed on a background of millimetre squared paper where they were viewed with a simple dissecting lens, or on a slide under a compound microscope provided with a squared micrometer eyepiece; in either case the drawings were first made in outline on paper which had been ruled with faint pencil lines into squares which corresponded to those against which the specimen was viewed. In this way the shape and relative proportions of the parts could be drawn in pencil and checked and rechecked with the animal until it was quite certain they were correct. The outline was then gone over with the finest brush to replace the pencil by a permanent and more expressive water-colour line; were rubbed out and the full colouring of the drawing proceeded with. 

Here are some examples (more are given at the end):  

It is tempting to suggest that their style, especially the dark-field paintings, were influenced by the illustrations in Gosse’s “A Naturalist’s Rambles on the Devonshire Coast” [2]. Certainly, both natural historians appreciated that a lively text is boosted by quality images, but few have the talent, and patience, of Gosse and Hardy. 

“The Open Sea: The World of Plankton” was completed at a time when natural history was beginning to be overtaken by deterministic approaches for the study of living organisms. After the structure of DNA was elucidated by Crick and Watson [and others], many began to see the possibility of understanding living creatures by looking at their biochemistry linked to their genetics. This bottom-up approach now dominates academic Biology, and even ecologists, who look at very complex systems with many variables, are fond of reductionist modelling in an attempt to understand what they observe and measure. 

Alister Hardy (above) was appointed Linacre Professor of Zoology at Oxford University in 1945, one of the most prestigious appointments offered by any university. In the biography written to celebrate his life, published by the Royal Society [3], we read: 

In his inaugural address he looked forward to the encouragement of field studies in ecology and behaviour. In his teaching the direction was away from comparative anatomy and towards general zoology. His colleague, Dr Peter Brunet, saw him as foremost a naturalist who encouraged observation rather than analysis. Physicochemical explanations of life, which left no room for awe, did not attract him. There was still a nature mystic within him. 

It is an approach that is valuable, and natural history should be taught more extensively in our current age: a contrast to the mechanistic view that promotes the idea that answers will eventually be found for nearly everything about living creatures, communities and ecosystems. 

Gosse promoted the idea of a sense of wonder in many of his books, especially in “The Romance of Natural History” that was published in two series in 1860 and 1861 [4,5]. Gosse was driven by a profound belief in the literal truth of the Bible and saw everything in terms of God’s Creation. Hardy’s mysticism was less rigid and more wide-ranging and he went on to establish a foundation dedicated to “a future science of natural theology” [6], the papers of which are now held at the University of Wales Trinity Saint David at Lampeter [7]. Whether one uses theistic, or atheistic, explanations, a sense of awe at what one sees in the natural world is invaluable for interpreting our sense of being. 

Hardy and Gosse are fascinating natural historians from whom we can learn much. 

(Of course, I had no possibility of meeting Gosse in person and I never met Alister Hardy, who died as recently as 1985. However, I claim one small claim to contact with the latter, as one of my University Tutors was Michael Hardy, Sir Alister Hardy’s son).

[1] Alister C. Hardy (1956) The Open Sea. Its Natural History: The World of Plankton. London, Collins New Naturalist. 

[2] Philip Henry Gosse (1853) A Naturalist’s Rambles on the Devonshire Coast. London, John Van Voorst. 

[3] Norman Bertram Marshall (1986) Alister Clavering Hardy, 10th February 1896 – 22nd May 1985. https://doi.org/10.1098/rsbm.1986.0008 

[4] Philip Henry Gosse (1860) The Romance of Natural History [First Series]. London, J. Nisbet & Co. 

[5] Philip Henry Gosse (1861) The Romance of Natural History [Second Series]. London, James Nisbet & Co. 

[6] Cyril Lucas (2004) Hardy, Sir Alister Clavering. Oxford Dictionary of National Biography https://doi.org/10.1093/ref:odnb/31196 

[7] https://www.uwtsd.ac.uk/library/alister-hardy-religious-experience-research-centre/ 

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

 

 

 

 

Being an outsider – the story of John Vaughan Thompson

The study of marine organisms, by both professionals and amateurs, underwent an explosion in the 19th century. Although most interest was in animals and plants of the shore, there was also a developing fascination with plankton, studied by means of nets. Among the pioneers of this approach was John Vaughan Thompson (above), who is little known and doesn’t merit a mention in Lynn Barber’s “The Heyday of Natural History” [1], yet his contribution to our understanding of the life cycles of marine organisms was very important. This is what Sir Alister Hardy said in the Introduction to the New Naturalist book “The Open Sea: The World of Plankton” [2]. (The well-known cover of my worn copy is shown below the quote). 

In nearly all the text-books of oceanography it is stated that the tow-net was first used in 1844 by the German naturalist Johannes Müller, and I have myself been guilty of repeating this error. It is certain that Müller’s researches excited the scientific world and led many others to follow him; but our own great amateur naturalist J. Vaughan Thompson, when serving as an army surgeon in Ireland, was using a tow-net to collect plankton from the sea off Cork as early as 1828. It was there that he first described the zoëa, the young planktonic stage of the crab. A little later, 1833, he discovered the true nature of the barnacles and so solved an age-long puzzle. These enigmatic creatures, fixed to rocks or the bottom of ships, had been thought to be aberrant molluscs. Thompson caught little undoubted crustaceans in his tow-net and found that they settled down to be transformed into barnacles. His classical discoveries were described in privately printed memoirs which he published in Cork; they are among the rarest items of biological literature.

 

Adding to the important role that Hardy describes, we read [3] that: 

Thompson not only mastered the use of a fine-meshed net from a moving vessel, but also developed the ingenious method of fastening the net over the spout of the ship’s sea water pumps – arguably the first use of a continuous plankton sampler. 

Davis [3] also wrote: 

Thompson’s studies in marine biology.. ..revolutionised some aspects of zoological thought. His name is unfamiliar however, even to marine zoologists, partly because of the general absorption of his discoveries and the waning of the controversies his research caused. He has not escaped recognition entirely, however, with distinguished naturalists including Charles Darwin, E.R.Lankester, T.R.R.Stebbing, C.M.Yonge, and Sir Sidney Harmer recognising and paying tribute to his genius. 

So why was Thompson questioned by established marine biologists and why were his publications difficult to find, as Hardy [2] has stated? Before answering those questions, we need to find out more about Thompson. 

During his motherless childhood in Berwick, Thompson had a love of natural history and recorded the distribution of plants in the area. He studied medicine at the University of Edinburgh in 1797 and 1798 and then joined the army as a surgeon, again studying natural history on all his postings. It was as a surgeon that Thompson was assigned to Cork in1816 “the location of his most famous discoveries and the wellspring of all his subsequent publications” [4]. 

In his biography, Damkaer writes further: 

Looking back on Thompson’s discoveries it is now more surprising to believe they were so surprising. The transition between his observations and their acceptance happened fairly quickly, but there was a reluctance to give Thompson much credit when his discoveries were seen to be so commonplace and so easily demonstrated. Perhaps some researchers were simply embarrassed to admit that they had missed such phenomena. 

Fortunately, Adam Nicolson has brought Thompson to a wider audience [5], describing him as “the great hidden hero” of studies on metamorphosis in crustaceans. As he says: 

No one believed him. The biological establishment in Britain and Europe poo-pooed the revelations from Cork.. ..Thompson was right and the grandees wrong but he was poor, publishing privately in Cork and they rich, with all the resources and influence behind them of the great scientific institutions in London, Berlin and Paris. 

There are thus three components to the lack of recognition of Thompson’s work: 

(i) His background as an independent, amateur researcher made him an “outsider”;

(ii) His discoveries challenged the scientific establishment of the time; and

(iii) His work was published privately and was not widely available. 

Have things changed markedly since Thompson’s time and are there lessons to be learned from Thompson’s story? 

 

[1] Lynn Barber (1980) The Heyday of Natural History. Jonathan Cape, London. 

[2] Alister Hardy (1956) The Open Sea: The World of Plankton. Collins New Naturalist, London. 

[3] Peter Davis (2004) Thompson, John Vaughan (1779-1847). Oxford Dictionary of National Biography https://doi.org/10.1093/ref:odnb/2723 

[4] David M. Damkaer (2016) John Vaughan Thompson (1779-1847), pioneer planktonologist: A life renewed. Journal of Crustacean Biology 36:256-262. 

[5] Adam Nicolson (2021) The Sea is not made of Water. William Collins, London. 

 

P.S. For those wishing to look at Thompson’s original work, his descriptions are now available on the Biodiversity Heritage Library website:  https://www.biodiversitylibrary.org/item/50371#page/5/mode/1up