Heroes of science

by P. Martin Duncan

Struck with the interesting nature of the animals of India, which were then beginning to be studied, Pennant commenced a work about them, and twelve plates were completed. But it was a work far beyond the powers and pocket of a naturalist of that date, and it was not completed. A more congenial work was undertaken by him when he rambled about Scotland noticing the habits of the people and the birds. He seems to have observed much that was interesting, and to have published his remarks. Then he began a work on the genera of birds, on the plan of his books on quadrupeds, and this was not completed. He wrote a book on “Arctic Zoology,” which was of course a compilation from the works of travellers and foreign zoologists who had visited the countries within the arctic circle. He also received stuffed specimens from different foreign museums. It was a capital book, and it acquired a considerable reputation amongst naturalists, from its containing figures and descriptions of animals hitherto but little known. It is read at the present day, and is a proof of Pennant’s exactitude. Ever anxious to go on working, he even in his sixty-seventh year planned an extensive work which was to consider the natural history and antiquities of every country in the world. He absolutely did produce two great volumes of this work, taking Hindostan as his subject.

The great merit of Pennant was that he observed so much and was a capital practical zoologist. Moreover, his great knowledge of other things and his general accomplishments enabled him to sift the good from the bad zoology of his day. He appears to have lived the life of a student and naturalist when the kingdom was always in a whirlwind of politics, and when foreign troubles prevailed. Unlike most of his class, for he was a little country squire, living on his own estate at Downing, he devoted himself to nature, and for many years his books gave great enjoyment to thousands of his countrymen. They are most readable books, full of anecdotes, and it is evident that he was a master of his mother tongue, a great antiquary, besides a naturalist of the first order. He was one of the few men who followed the science of zoology without having the previous education of a medical man, and, like all good zoologists, he was an excellent botanist.

Some of Pennant’s tours through England, Wales, and Scotland are exceedingly instructive in the antiquities of places, but the most interesting remarks are upon natural history subjects, some of which are scientific and others not at all so. When in Lincolnshire he noticed the fens near Revesby Abbey, eight miles beyond Horncastle, which he says are of vast extent, but serve for little other purpose than the rearing of great numbers of geese, which are the wealth of the fenmen. “During the breeding season these birds are lodged in the same houses with the inhabitants and even in their very bed-chambers. In every apartment there are three rows of coarse wicker pens, placed one above another; each bird has its separate lodge divided from the other, which it keeps possession of during its time of setting. A person called a gozzard attends the flock, and twice a day drives the whole to water; then brings them back to their habitations, helping those that live in the upper stories to their nests, without even misplacing a single bird. The geese are plucked five times in the year. The first plucking is at Lady Day, for feathers and quills, and the same is renewed, for feathers only, four times between this and Michaelmas. The old geese submit very quietly to the operation, but the young ones are very noisy and unruly. I once saw this performed, and observed that the goslings of six weeks old were not spared, for their tails were plucked, as I was told to habituate them early to what they were to come to. If the season proves cold, numbers of geese die from this barbarous custom. Vast numbers are driven annually to London to supply the markets; among them all the superannuated geese and ganders (here called cagmags) which serve to fatigue the jaws of the good citizens who are so unfortunate as to meet with them.” He proceeds, “It is observable that once in seven or eight years, immense shoals of sticklebacks appear in the Welland below Spalding, and attempt coming up the river in a vast column. They are supposed to be the collected multitudes washed out of the fens by the floods of several years, and carried into some deep hole. When, overcharged with numbers, they are obliged to attempt a change of place, they move up the river in such quantities as to enable a man who was employed in taking them, to earn, for a considerable time, four shillings a day by selling them at a halfpenny per bushel. They were used to manure land, and attempts have been made to get oil from them.” “The birds which inhabit the different fens are very numerous; I never met with a finer field for the zoologist to range in. Besides the common wild duck, wild geese, gorganies, pochards, shovellers, and teals breed here. I have seen in the east fen a small flock of the tufted ducks; but they seemed only to make it a baiting place. The pewits, gulls, and black terns abound; the last in vast flocks almost deafen one with their clamour, and a few of the great terns are seen amongst them. I saw several of the great crested grebes on the east fen, called there gaunts, and met with one of their floating nests with eggs in it. The lesser crested grebe, the black and dusky grebe, and the little grebe are also inhabitants of the fens, together with the coots, water-hens, spotted water-hens, water-rails, ruffs, redshanks, lapwings or wipes, red crested godwits and whimbrels.” “But the greatest curiosity in those parts is the vast heronry at Cressi Hall, six miles from Spalding. The herons resort there in February to repair their nests, settle there in the spring to breed, and quit the place during the winter. They are as numerous as rooks, and their nests are so crowded together that myself and the company that was with me, counted not less than eighty on one spreading oak. I found that the crested heron was only the male of the other, and it made a most beautiful appearance with its snowy neck and long crest streaming with the wind.” Visiting Scarborough, and giving much information about the different kinds of fish caught, he states: “At a distance of four or five leagues from shore, during the months of July and August, it is remarked that at the depth of six or seven fathoms from the surface, the water appears to be saturated like a thick jelly, filled with the ova of fish, which reaches ten or twelve fathoms deeper; this is known by its adhering to the ropes, the cables, and anchor when they are fishing.” “Landing at a small island further north, we found the female eider ducks at that time sitting; the lower part of their nests was made of sea plants, the upper part was formed of the down which they pulled off their own breasts, in which the eggs were surrounded and warmly bedded. In some nests were three and in others five eggs of large size and pale olive colour, as smooth and glossy as if varnished over. The nests are built on the beach among the loose pebbles, not far from the water. The ducks sit very close, nor will they rise until you almost tread upon them. We robbed the nests of some down, and found that the down of one only weighs three quarters of an ounce, but was so elastic as to fill the crown of a hat.”

Pennant deserved good health and had it, for, except when old age came on, he was a singularly healthy man. He died in 1798, at the age of seventy-two years.

Jean Baptiste Antoine de Monet, also called the Chevalier de Lamarck, was born at Bazantin, a village of Picardy, on April 1st, 1744. He was the eleventh child of Pierre de Monet, the principal person of the neighbourhood, whose small estate was disproportionate to his huge family. But the Church was a resource for such families, and occasionally its great prizes were taken by the younger members of noble houses. So M. de Monet determined to prepare his son, at an early age, for this hopeful future, and sent him to the Jesuit College at Amiens. However, the inclinations of the child were not those which made it probable that he would succeed in the direction which his father had chosen for him. Everything around the boy, at home, was quite opposed to a clerical career. For centuries his ancestors had carried arms, and his eldest brother was killed at the siege of Bergen-op-Zoom. Two brothers were in the army, and at that time France was in dire trouble, and required every man who could fight, it was therefore not probable that young Lamarck would stay at home. Nevertheless, his father resisted his desire to enter the army, and the young man had to study year after year, until he was sixteen years of age. Then in 1760 the father died, and the youth was left to his own resources. He set forth for the army, mounted on a sorry horse, and accompanied by a poor boy out of the village, to journey across France into Germany to join the French army. He had a letter of introduction from one of his neighbours, Madame Lameth, to M. de Lartié, colonel of the regiment of Beaujolais, who did not receive him very gladly, for the wretchedness of the boy made him look more helpless than he really was. Nevertheless, he sent Lamarck to his barracks and had him to do duty. It was at a most critical moment that the brave, self-reliant boy joined the army. It was about July 14th, 1761, and M. de Broglie had just united his force with that of the Prince du Sorbise, preparatory to attacking, on the next day, the allied army, commanded by Frederick of Brunswick. At break of day M. de Lartié inspected his regiment, and the first person he saw was the newly-arrived volunteer, who, without orders, had placed himself in the first rank of the grenadier company. The battle, which was fought at Fissingshausen, between Ham and Leppstadt, was lost by the French, and during the fight, the company, in which was M. de Lamarck, was placed in a locality on which the whole of the allied artillery was concentrated, and it was forgotten to be moved during the confusion of the retreat. All the officers and sub-officers were killed, and only sixteen men remained, when the oldest grenadier, seeing that they were left behind by their army, proposed to the young volunteer that they should retreat. Lamarck said, “They have posted us here, and we ought not to move until we are relieved,” and insisted on remaining. By-and-by the colonel, missing the company, sent them an order to retreat by safe ways, and under the shelter of what they could get. This act of great courage was told to the Marshal de Broglie, and he made Lamarck an officer on the spot. Then he was made lieutenant. But such a brilliant commencement was not to have a military termination, and a miserable accident gave a new direction to his life. When Lamarck, after the war, was in garrison at Monaco, one of his fellow-officers lifted him up by the head, and the result was to injure his neck. He nearly died from the effects of this folly, and was saved by a distinguished surgeon at Paris, M. Tenon, whose operation left Lamarck with life, and a fearfully scarred neck, and unable to follow his profession. The treatment occupied a whole year, and he was so poor, that one of his biographers states, rather cruelly, that his necessary solitude gave him plenty of time for meditation. It is remarkable that although Lamarck cared more for the army than for his studies at college he really worked there, and what he learned was of great use to him in his future career. His hours of weary suffering were sometimes employed in studying the clouds, and in noticing their different shapes and appearances. He got by this means some vague ideas of meteorology. He had already been attracted, during his stay at Monaco, by the curious vegetation of that rocky country, and lad taken a fancy for botany from reading a treatise on common plants, which happened to fall in his way. He therefore began to see that the profession of arms was not the only one worth living for, or in which distinction might be earned; and he took the bold resolution of applying himself to the study of medicine. This, considering the smallness of his resources, was hardly less hazardous than his former determination to join the army. Unable to defray the expense attending the studies to which he now applied himself, he was forced to seek employment as a banker’s clerk, and thus to work for the means of pursuing his purpose. He studied medicine four years, and at the end of that time, not finding it accord with his taste, he relinquished it, in order to attach himself the more closely to botany. In this science he laboured most perseveringly, and after a preparation of ten years he suddenly revealed himself and his views to the learned world in a work as remarkable for the novelty of the plan, as for the mode of execution. “For a long time,” says Cuvier, “while collecting plants, and visiting the Jardin du Roi, Lamarck gave way to discussions with other botanists on the imperfections of all the systems of classification then known, and on the ease with which a new system might be created, capable of determining plants with greater quickness and certainty. Wishing to prove what he had so often affirmed he set to work, and after six months of incessant labour he produced his “Flore Française.” This work was merely an epitome of plants indigenous to France, to which Lamarck had not ventured to add one new species; but it was a convenient and sure guide to the name of every plant, and was peculiarly acceptable at a time when the writings of Rousseau had rendered botany popular. By Lamarck’s arrangement, the most easily reconciled portions of the systems then in vogue, namely, those of Tournefort, Linnæus, and Jussieu, were selected to form a new method of classification. This method was admired by the Academy of Sciences, and was also recommended by Buffon, who had sufficient interest to get it published at the expense of the government, for the benefit of the author who much needed such aid. Lamarck was promoted to a vacant place in the Académie des Sciences, and during 1781-82 he went as tutor and botanist to Buffon’s son through Holland, Germany, and Hungary, visiting public establishments and learned men. On his return to France, he applied himself zealously to his former studies, and produced the botanical portion of the “Encyclopédie Methodique.” Lamarck laboured diligently at his work, and even with too much precipitation, for haste was injurious to correctness. He also drew a series of plates to illustrate the different genera of plants. These appeared, arranged according to the Linnæan system, though contrary to the wish of the author. Lamarck went on with the work until the breaking out of the Revolution arrested the publication of the Encyclopédie.

In 1788 Lamarck was associated with Daubenton as botanist of the Cabinet du Jardin du Roi, and charged with the preservation and arrangement of the herbariums. Here, amidst his peaceful occupations and studies, he remained unmolested amidst all the troubles of the Revolution. But Lamarck was miserably poor; his pension for his services in the army, was less than one shilling a day, and he wrote for bad pay. Buffon could not give him a position worth anything; and it was not until the successor of that great man came in office that Lamarck had a little salary given to him as one of the assistants in the herbarium. Even this miserable appointment was not assured to him, for the National Assembly was desirous of suppressing the establishment, and finally did so. Lamarck had married, and had a family, and weary indeed must have been his life had he not been devoted to science. He took no part in the French revolution, and whilst poverty at home and danger out of doors were constant, he persisted in studying nature. Years passed away, and the best part of a life was spent, and still Lamarck was not a zoologist. The eternal fame which he attained began to be earned after the fiftieth year of his age, when circumstances over which he had no control gave him the opportunity of distinguishing himself, and of adding materially to the truths of science as well as to its theories. The Jardin et Cabinet du Roi were rearranged in their purpose and name in 1793, and were called the Museum of Natural History; and all the old officials were made professors, and had to teach the subjects best known or chosen by them. Lamarck, as the last comer, had to take what the others left and would not undertake to teach. It was the professorship which related to the class of animals, called by Linnæus, worms and insects, and which had hitherto been almost overlooked, on account of the supposed unimportance of the subject.

Until that time Lamarck had never studied animals, and of course knew nothing of the branch of zoology which was now entrusted to him. He had taken an interest in shells, and had made a small collection, but this was all. But he did not shrink from the task before him. He set to work with inexhaustible courage, availing himself of the advice of his friends, and applying to the new study all that sagacity and perseverance which had already been so invaluable to him in his botanical works. By his indefatigable zeal in this new sphere of inquiry Lamarck was soon enabled to discover and to demonstrate that the animals whose history had been left to him through contempt, were quite as interesting as others, if not more so, on account of their vast numbers, the important part they perform in nature, the infinite variety of their forms, and the wonders of their organization. His extraordinary labours in this department have contributed much more to his fame than his botanical writings, and are certainly more valuable. He seems to have exercised his abilities to the utmost in these researches; and if, since that time, it has been necessary in some instances to alter, to amend, or to extend the limits of his work, yet it remains a lasting memento of his talents, and it will be long ere any one will be found sufficiently profound in knowledge to undertake a general revision and alteration of his works.

At the present day, when any student begins to learn the zoology of the lower animals, he will find a very great number of genera with the name of Lamarck placed after them, indicating that he first of all described and published them. As the student becomes accomplished he will appreciate Lamarck more and more, and will come to the conclusion that no one has done such good and solid work as that distinguished Frenchman, amongst the vast assemblage of animals which he first of all called invertebrata, or animals without backbones. This term he used in preference to the old one of white or colourless-blooded animals, as he soon saw that some had red blood. Lamarck worked very hard in describing and grouping the genera, and gradually modified the zoology of those lower forms of life. First of all he classified them by their anatomy, and then, after about fifteen years’ labour, remodelled his classification, and published a system of invertebrata, containing the classes, orders, and genera of the animals, mentioning their most important anatomical characters. In this book he, for the first time amongst zoologists, began with the most simple and least highly organized animals, the converse having been the method previously. There was a reason in this that will be noticed further on. Out of the confusion of old he made the great groups appear clear and well defined. Thus from amongst the insects he separated the crustacea or crab tribe, and he introduced that of the arachnida or spiders. Then he described and limited a class of worms called by him annelida; moreover, he placed the microscopic infusoria in a class by themselves, and removed them from the jumble of the polypes. His work extended into the mollusca, both bivalve and univalve; he named many genera and species of corals, and in every group showed a master mind. The fossil shells found in such abundance at this time, in the neighbourhood of Paris, attracted his attention, and he laboured on their description and explanation. In fact, the enormous labours of Lamarck consolidated the zoology of the lower animals, and his writings became the text-books of all his successors, and will be referred to, as long as science lasts. He had a most singular capacity for distinguishing animals into kinds or species, and a more important one of observing the alliances or common characters of different species. All his descriptive work was of a standard and solid nature. His great work appeared from 1815 to 1822, and it was founded on that just mentioned; some of it was edited by his daughter, and M. Latreille wrote the parts on insects, and much of those of the mollusca was due to M. Valenciennes. Five volumes were by Lamarck himself.

It is a very unusual occurrence for a man to take up a new subject after he is fifty years of age, and to become a master in it. But Lamarck did this. It is true that his previous training as a botanist had prepared him, and it is also true that his years of solitude and poverty had given him a singularly placid and meditative mind, and this was strengthened by his natural courage. Had Lamarck been a descriptive zoologist only, he would have been great; but the very method which made him great originated in some remarkable speculations which had hardly been expressed, seriously, by any man before. Not only did he place the animal kingdom with the lowest first, but he considered the will, instinct, and apparent reason of animals, and classified them accordingly with those which are apathetic, sensible, and intelligent. The idea of lowness of organization or of structure and lowness of nervous power amongst the simplest animals struck him to be of primary importance. Hitherto, quite as many people believed that the highest and most intelligent animals were created first, and that the lower ones had degenerated from them. Lamarck conceived that nature, acting by law, commenced with the simplest things, and that one species formed others, so that the present animals and plants are the outcome of those of the past history of the earth. He believed in incessant change in nature, and that when our knowledge is complete the apparently well separated and defined species will be found to be united by intermediate forms, and cease to be species.

Hitherto naturalists had considered kinds of animals and plants, or species as they are more properly called, to have been specially created as they are seen by us, and that they were unalterable and invariable. No one with any great knowledge of animals and plants had speculated about the origin of species, and the causes of the differences of kinds, or had endeavoured to place all the great classes of the animal kingdom in a series, maintaining that they were related by descent. Right or wrong in his speculations, Lamarck made an epoch in zoology, by writing on the philosophy of zoology, and dealing with the possible causes of the different kinds of animals. He considered that during all the geological ages, down to the present time, animals and plants had been exposed to great changes in their external conditions; changes of climate, and of physical geography had happened, and that whilst some species had become extinct many had been changed, little by little, into others. Lamarck, and M. Geoffrey St. Hilaire declared it to be their opinion that there had been an uninterrupted succession in the animal kingdom, effected by means of birth and offspring from parents, from the earliest ages of the world to the present day, and that the ancient animals, whose remains have been preserved in strata, however different, may nevertheless have been the ancestors of those now in being.