From North Pole to Equator: Studies of Wild Life and Scenes in Many Lands

by Alfred Edmund Brehm

I.

The foundations of zoology were laid by Aristotle some three hundred years before Christ, but they remained unbuilt on for nearly eighteen centuries. Here and there some enthusiast strove unaided, but only a fragmentary superstructure was reared. In fact, men were pre-occupied with tasks of civilization more serious than the prosecution of zoology, though that is not trivial. Gradually, however, great social movements, such as the Crusades and the collapse of Feudalism; great intellectual and emotional movements, such as those of the Renaissance; great inventions, such as that of printing, gave new life to Europe, and zoology shared in the re-awakening. Yet the natural history of the Middle Ages was in great part mystical; fancy and superstition ran riot along paths where science afterwards established order, and, for all practical purposes, the history of zoology, apart from the efforts of a few pioneers, may be said to date from the sixteenth century.

Now, one indubitable factor in the scientific renaissance of the sixteenth century was the enthusiasm of the early travellers, and this stimulus, periodically recurrent, has never failed to have a similar effect—of giving new life to science. But while science, and zoology as a branch of it, has been evolving during the last three centuries, the traveller, too, has shared in the evolution. It is this which we wish to trace.

I. The Romantic Type. Many of the old travellers, from Herodotus onwards, were observant and enthusiastic; most were credulous and garrulous. In days when the critical spirit was young, and verification hardly possible, there could not but be a strong temptation to tell extraordinary “travellers’ tales”. And they did. Nor need we scoff at them loudly, for the type dies hard; every year such tales are told.

Oderico de Pordenone and other mediæval travellers who give some substance to the mythical Sir John de Maundeville were travellers of this genial type. Oderico describes an interesting connecting link between the animal and vegetable kingdom, a literal “zoophyte”, the “vegetable lamb”, which seems to have been a woolly Scythian fern, with its counterpart in the large fungus which colonials sometimes speak of as the “vegetable sheep”. As for the pretended Sir John, he had in his power of swallowing marvels a gape hardly less than that of the great snakes which he describes. But even now do we not see his snakes in at least the picture-books on which innocent youth is nurtured? The basilisk (one of the most harmless of lizards) “sleyeth men beholding it”; the “cocodrilles also sley men”—they do indeed—“and eate them weeping, and they have no tongue”. “The griffin of Bactria hath a body greater than eight lyons and stall worthier than a hundred egles, for certainly he will beare to his nest flying, a horse and a man upon his back.” He was not readily daunted, Sir John, for when they told him of the lamb-tree which bears lambs in its pods, his British pluck did not desert him, and he gave answer that he “held it for no marvayle, for in his country are trees which bear fruit which become birds flying, and they are good to eate, and that that falleth on the water, liveth, and that that falleth on earth, dyeth; and they marvailed much thereat”. The tale of the barnacle-tree was a trump card in those days!

Another example of this type, but rising distinctly above it in trustworthiness, was the Venetian Marco Polo, who in the thirteenth century explored Asia from the Black Sea to Pekin, from the Altai to Sumatra, and doubtless saw much, though not quite so much as he describes. He will correct the fables of his predecessors, he tells us, demonstrating gravely that the unicorn or rhinoceros does not allow himself to be captured by a gentle maiden, but he proceeds to describe tailed men, yea, headless men, without, so far as can be seen, any touch of sarcasm. Of how many marvels, from porcupines throwing off their spines and snakes with clawed fore-feet, to the great Rukh, which could bear not merely a poor Sinbad but an elephant through the air, is it not written in the books of Ser Marco Polo of Venezia?

II. The Encyclopædist Type.—This unwieldy title, suggestive of an omnivorous hunger for knowledge, is conveniently, as well as technically, descriptive of a type of naturalist characteristic of the early years of the scientific renaissance. Edward Wotton (d. 1555), the Swiss Gesner (d. 1565), the Italian Aldrovandi (d. 1605), the Scotsman Johnson (d. 1675), are good examples. These encyclopædists were at least impressed with the necessity of getting close to the facts of nature, of observing for themselves, and we cannot blame them much if their critical faculties were dulled by the strength of their enthusiasm. They could not all at once forget the mediæval dreams, nor did they make any strenuous effort to rationalize the materials which they so industriously gathered. They harvested but did not thrash. Ostrich-like, their appetite was greater than their power of digesting. A hasty judgment might call them mere compilers, for they gathered all possible information from all sources, but, on closer acquaintance, the encyclopædists grow upon one. Their industry was astounding, their ambition lofty; and they prepared the way for men like Ray and Linnæus, in whom was the genius of order.

Associated with this period there were many naturalist-travellers, most of whom are hardly now remembered, save perhaps when we repeat the name of some plant or animal which commemorates its discoverer. José d’Acosta (d. 1600), a missionary in Peru, described some of the gigantic fossils of South America; Francesco Hernanded published about 1615 a book on the natural history of Mexico with 1200 illustrations; Marcgrav and Piso explored Brazil; Jacob Bontius, the East Indies; Prosper Alpinus, Egypt; Belon, the Mediterranean region; and there were many others. But it is useless to multiply what must here remain mere citations of names. The point is simply this, that, associated with the marvellous accumulative industry of the encyclopædists and with the renaissance of zoology in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, there were numerous naturalist-travellers who described what they saw, and not what they fancied might be seen.

III. The General Naturalist Type.—As Ray (d. 1705) and Linnæus (d. 1778) began to reduce to order the accumulations of the encyclopædists, and as the anatomists and physiologists began the precise study of structure and function, the naturalist-travellers became more definite in their aims and more accurate in their observations. Linnæus himself sent several of his pupils on precisely scientific journeys. Moreover, in the eighteenth century there were not a few expeditions of geographical and physical purpose which occasionally condescended to take a zoologist on board. Thus Captain Cook was accompanied on his first voyage (1768-1781) by Banks and Solander, and on his second voyage by the Forsters, father and son. On his third voyage he expressly forbade the intrusion of any naturalist, but from all that we can gather it would have been better for himself if he had not done so. In these combined voyages there was nascent the idea of co-operative expeditions, of which the greatest has been that of the Challenger.

In illustration of travellers who were not specialists, but in varying degrees widely interested naturalists, it will be sufficient to cite three names—Thomas Pennant, Peter Pallas, and, greatest of all, Alexander von Humboldt.