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

by Alfred Edmund Brehm

Of Thomas Pennant (1726-1798) we may note that he was one of the early travellers in Scotland, which was then, as he says, almost as unknown as Kamchatka, and that he extorted from Dr. Johnson the admission, “He’s a Whig, sir, a sad dog; but he’s the best traveller I ever read; he observes more things than any one else does”. He knew Buffon and corresponded with Linnæus, and was the author of several works on British and North American zoology. His so-called Arctic Zoology is mainly a sketch of the fauna in the northern regions of North America, begun “when the empire of Great Britain was entire, and possessed the northern part of the New World with envied splendour”. His perspective is excellent! the botanist, the fossilist, the historian, the geographer must, he says, accompany him on his zoological tours, “to trace the gradual increase of the animal world from the scanty pittance given to the rocks of Spitzbergen to the swarms of beings which enliven the vegetating plains of Senegal; to point out the causes of the local niggardness of certain places, and the prodigious plenty in others”. It was about the same time (1777) that E. A. W. Zimmermann, Professor of Mathematics at Brunswick, published a quarto in Latin, entitled Specimen Zoologiæ Geographicæ Quadrupedum, “with a most curious map”, says Pennant, “in which is given the name of every animal in its proper climate, so that a view of the whole quadruped creation is placed before one’s eyes, in a manner perfectly new and instructive”. It was wonderful then, but the map in question looks commonplace enough nowadays.

Peter Simon Pallas (1741-1811) was a student of medicine and natural science, and did good work as a systematic and anatomical zoologist. He was the first, we believe, to express the relationships of animals in a genealogical tree, but his interest for us here lies in his zoological exploration of Russia and Siberia, the results of which are embodied in a series of bulky volumes, admirable in their careful thoroughness. We rank him rather as one of the forerunners of Humboldt than as a zoologist, for his services to ethnology and geology were of great importance. He pondered over the results of his explorations, and many of his questionings in regard to geographical distribution, the influence of climate, the variation of animals, and similar problems, were prophetic of the light which was soon to dawn on biological science.

Alexander von Humboldt (1769-1859) was undoubtedly one of the greatest naturalists of the century which his life well nigh covered. Geologist, botanist, zoologist, and more, he was almost the last of the all-round naturalists. In this indeed lay his weakness as well as his strength, for great breadth of view is apt to imply a lack of precision as to details. In boyhood, “when life”, as he says, “appears an unlimited horizon”, he had strong desires after travel, which were in part gratified by excursions with George Forster and by Swiss explorations with the sagacious old geographer Leopold von Buch. These, however, only whetted his enthusiasm for journeys with a larger radius. At length, after many discouragements, he sailed in 1799 from Corunna, with Aimé Bonpland as companion, and spent five years in exploring the equinoctial regions of the New World. The full record of his voyage one cannot be expected to read, for there are about thirty volumes of it in the complete edition, but what we should all know is Humboldt’s Personal Narrative, in which the chief results of his explorations are charmingly set forth. Later in life (1829) he went with Ehrenberg and Rose to North Asia, and his crowning work was the publication of Cosmos (1845-58), which originated in a series of lectures delivered in the University of Berlin. In front of that building his statue now stands, along with that of his not less famous brother Wilhelm.

We think of Humboldt not so much as an early explorer of tropical America, nor because he described the habits of the condor and made observations on electric eels, nor because he furnished Cuvier and Latreille with many new specimens, but rather as a magnificent type of the naturalist-traveller, observant, widely interested, and thoughtful, who pointed forward to Darwin in the success with which he realized the complexity of inter-relations in nature. Many a traveller, even among his contemporaries, discovered more new plants and animals than the author of Cosmos, but none approached him as an all-round naturalist, able to look out on all orders of facts with keenly intelligent eyes, a man, moreover, in whom devotion to science never dulled poetic feeling. His work is of real importance in the history of geographical distribution, for he endeavoured to interpret the peculiarities of the various faunas in connection with the peculiar environment of the different regions—a consideration which is at least an element in the solution of some of the problems of distribution. It is especially important in regard to plants, and one may perhaps say that Humboldt, by his vivid pictures of the vegetable “physiognomy” of different regions, and by his observations on the relations between climate and flora, laid the foundations of the scientific study of the geographical distribution of plants. We find in some of his Charakterbilder, for example in his Views of Nature, the prototype of those synthetic pictures which give Brehm’s popular lectures their peculiar interest and value.

IV. The Specialist Type.—It would say little for scientific discipline if it were true that a man learned, let us say, in zoology, could spend years in a new country without having something fresh to tell us about matters outside of his specialism—the rocks, the plants, and the people. But it is not true. There have been few great travellers who have been narrow specialists, and one might find more than one case of a naturalist starting on his travels as a zoologist and returning an anthropologist as well. Yet it is evident enough that few men can be master of more than one craft. There have been few travellers like Humboldt, few records like Darwin’s Voyage of the Beagle (1831-6). Hence we recognize more and more as we approach our own day that naturalist-travellers have been successful either as specialists, or, on the other hand, in so far as they have furnished material for generalization (Type V.). The specialism may of course take various forms: a journey may be undertaken by one who is purely an ornithologist, or it may be undertaken with one particular problem in view, or it may be organized, like the Challenger expedition, with the co-operation of a number of specialists.

The French took the lead in organizing zoological expeditions. As early as 1800 they sent out the Géographe, Naturaliste, and Casuarina, zoologically conducted by Bury de St. Vincent, Péron, and Lesueur. Further expeditions followed with Quoy and Gaimard, Lesson, Eydoux, Souleyet, Dupetit-Thouars, and others as zoological guides. The English whaling industry gave early opportunity to not a few naturalists; and it is now a long time since Hooker went with Sir James Ross on the South Polar expedition and Huxley went on the Rattlesnake to the Australian Barrier Reef. The Russians were also active, one of the more famous travellers being Kotzebue, who was accompanied on one of his two voyages (1823-6) round the world by Chamisso and Eschscholtz. In the early part of this century the Americans were also enterprising, the work of Dana being perhaps the most noteworthy. It would require several pages to mention even the names of the naturalists who have had their years of wandering, and have added their pages and sketches to the book of the world’s fauna and flora, but such an enumeration would serve no useful purpose here.

There is, however, one form of zoological exploration which deserves a chapter to itself, that is the exploration of the Deep Sea. Several generations of marine zoologists had been at work before a zoology of the deep sea was dreamed of even as a possibility. It is true that in 1818 Sir John Ross had found a star-fish (Astrophyton) at a depth of 800-1000 fathoms, but this was forgotten; and in 1841 Edward Forbes dredged to no purpose in fairly deep water in the Ægean Sea. Indeed those who thought about the great depths at all deemed it unlikely that there could be life there, and if it had not been for the practical affair of laying the ocean cables, we might possibly have been still in ignorance of the abyssal fauna.

But the cables had to be laid—no easy task—and it became important to know at least the topography of the depths. Cables broke, too, and had to be fished up again, and when that which ran between Sardinia and Algiers was lifted, in 1860, from a depth of 60-1000 fathoms, no less than 15 different species of animals were found on it. This was a discovery to fire enthusiasm, and Britain led the way in following it up. In 1868 Wyville Thomson began his explorations on the Lightning, and proved that most of the types of backboneless animals were represented at depths of at least 600 fathoms. Soon followed the similar cruise of the Porcupine, famous inter alia for the discovery of Bathybius, which many sceptics regard as a mare’s nest. From various quarters the quest after the deep-sea fauna began to be prosecuted.

It is now more than a score of years since the world-famous Challenger sailed from Portsmouth with Wyville Thomson, Moseley, John Murray, and Willemoes-Suhm as naturalists. During three and a half years the explorers cruised over 68,900 nautical miles, crossed the Atlantic no less than five times, reached with the long arm of the dredge to depths equal to reversed Himalayas, raised treasures of life from over 500 stations, and brought home spoils over which the savants of Europe have hardly ceased to be busy, and the records of which, now completed under Dr. Murray’s editorship, form a library of about forty huge volumes.

The Challenger expedition was important not only in itself, but in the wave of scientific enthusiasm which it raised. From Germany went forth the Gazelle; Norway sent the Vöringen to Spitzbergen; America has despatched the Tuscarora, the Blake, and the Albatross; from Sweden the Vega and the Sophia sailed to Arctic seas: Count Liechtenstein’s yacht Hertha explored Adria; the Prince of Monaco’s Hirondelle darted hither and thither; the French sent forth the Travailleur and Talisman; the Italians the Vettor Pisani and Washington; Austria and Hungary organized the Poli for work in the Mediterranean; the Germans again have recently specialized in investigating the Plankton, or surface-life of the ocean; and so, with a range even wider than we have indicated, the wave of enthusiasm has spread, one of the latest barques which it has borne being the Prince of Monaco’s, which was specially built for marine exploration.