Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-v9fdk Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-06T08:16:50.540Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Lampreys, lungfish and elasmobranchs: Cambridge zoology and the politics of animal selection

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  14 May 2007

HELEN BLACKMAN
HELEN BLACKMAN
Affiliation:
The Cardiff School of History and Archaeology, Cardiff University, Humanities Building, Colum Drive, Cardiff, CF10 3EU, UK. Email: [email protected].
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

The Cambridge school of animal morphology dominated British zoology in the late nineteenth century. Historians have argued that they were very successful until the death of their leader F. M. Balfour in 1882, when the school all but died with him. This paper argues that their initial success came about because their work fitted well with the university in the 1870s and 1880s. They attempted to trace evolutionary trees by studying individual development. To do this they needed access to species they considered primitive. Balfour made use of his social networks to aid the school and to collect the specimens they needed for their work. The school has been portrayed as failing in the 1890s when students rejected dry laboratory-bound studies. However, a new generation of researchers who followed Balfour had to travel extensively if they were to obtain the organisms they needed. International travel was popular amongst zoologists and the Cambridge school developed their own extensive networks. A new breed of adventurer–zoologists arose, but because of the school's tenuous position within the university they were unable to equal Balfour's success.

Type
Research Article
Information
The British Journal for the History of Science , Volume 40 , Issue 3 , September 2007 , pp. 413 - 437
Copyright
Copyright © British Society for the History of Science 2007

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

1  G. Geison, Michael Foster and the Cambridge School of Physiology: The Scientific Enterprise in Late Victorian Society, Princeton, NJ, 1978, 124–30; B. Hall, ‘Francis Maitland Balfour’, in NDNB, 60 vols., Oxford, 2004, iii, 523–5; T. Alexander, ‘Francis Maitland Balfour's contributions to embryology’, Ph.D. thesis, University of California, 1969, University Microfilm 70–2181.

2  E. Nordenskiöld, The History of Biology, New York, 1928; M. Ridley, ‘Embryology and classical zoology in Great Britain’, in A History of Embryology (ed. T. J. Horder, J. A. Witowski and C. C. Wylie), Cambridge, 1986, 35–67.

3  Item 5, 18 October 1907, Min.V.2, Cambridge University Library, Dept of Manuscripts and University Archives (hereafter CUA). The pages in this minute book are not numbered, so references are by date and item number of the minute. S. F. Harmer, A. Sedgwick and A. E. Shipley as a committee of the SBBG, reporting on the vacancy in animal morphology, 16 October 1907, Min.V.6, facing p. 68, CUA.

4  Geison, op. cit. (1), 89–94.

5  On the development of the NST see R. Macleod and R. Moseley, ‘Breaking the circle of the sciences: the Natural Sciences Tripos and the “examination revolution”’, in Days of Judgement: Science, Examination and the Organisation of Knowledge in Victorian England (ed. R. Macleod), Driffield, North Humberside, 1982, 189–212; Holmes, R. F., ‘A historical note on the Natural Science Tripos’, Cambridge Review (1965), 86, 199, 201–3Google Scholar, 222–3, 225, 235–9, 241; D. A. Winstanley, Later Victorian Cambridge, Cambridge, 1947, 184–8.

6  Foster, M., ‘Francis Maitland Balfour’, Proceedings of the Royal Society (1883), 35, 20–7.Google Scholar

7  Cambridge University Reporter (CUR), 31 October 1882, 107–8.

8  CUR, 28 March 1882, 426–8.

9  M. L. Richmond, ‘Adam Sedgwick’, in NDNB, op. cit. (1), il, 649–50.

10  Annual Reports for the MLRS were published in the Cambridge University Reporter in May or June. For the change in names see CUR, 8 June 1892, 935; and 8 June 1893, 959.

11  Item 5, 18 October 1907, Min.V.2, CUA. The pages in this minute book are not numbered, so references are by date and item number of the minute.

12  Item 1, 4 August 1908, Min.V.2, CUA.

13  Richards, E., ‘A question of property rights: Richard Owen's evolutionism reassessed’, BJHS (1987), 20, 129–71, 133–4.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

14  Hosfeld, U. and Olsson, L., ‘The road from Haeckel: the Jena tradition in evolutionary morphology and the origins of “evo-devo”’, Biology and Philosophy (2003), 18, 285–307, 287–8CrossRefGoogle Scholar. See also S. J. Gould, Ontogeny and Phylogeny, London, 2002 (first published 1977).

15  L. K. Nyhart, Biology Takes Form: Animal Morphology and the German Universities, 1800–1900, London, 1995, 183–5.

16  Sedgwick, A., ‘On the law of development commonly known as Von Baer's Law; and on the significance of ancestral rudiments in embryonic development’ (1894), reprinted in Studies from the Morphological Laboratory in the University of Cambridge (1896), 6, 75–92Google Scholar.

17  Ridley, op. cit. (2), 44.

18  R. E. Kohler, Landscapes and Labscapes: Exploring the Lab–Field Border in Biology, London, 2002, 23.

19  Kohler, op. cit. (18), 24, 28, 35.

20  See, for example, the letter between W. F. R. Weldon and Balfour in which Weldon recounts his work on the wall lizard, later published in the Quarterly Journal of Microscopical Science (1 June 1882, Balfour family papers, National Archives of Scotland (hereafter NAS), GD433/2/103B/97). There is also an undated letter between J. F. Bullar and Balfour sent from Naples in which Bullar describes finding worms and catching lizards using a loop of horse hair attached to a stick (NAS, GD433/2/103/A/106).

21  H. Ritvo, ‘Zoological nomenclature and the empire of Victorian science’, in Victorian Science in Context (ed. Bernard Lightman), London, 1997, 334–53, 342, 338.

22  A. J. Balfour, Chapters of Autobiography, London, 1930, 96–104.

23  D. A. Winstanley, Later Victorian Cambridge, Cambridge, 1947, 269–8; Statutes for the University of Cambridge … under the Universities of Oxford and Cambridge Act, 1877, Cambridge, 1883, 734; see for example Salisbury to Balfour (hereafter FMB), 22 May 1881, NAS GD433/2/103/C.

24  Evans to FMB, 12 May 1873, NAS GD433/2/103A/115; Evans to FMB, 22 September 1873, NAS GD433/2/103A/121.

25  Evans to FMB, 28 September 1876, NAS GD433/2/103C/16; Evans to FMB, 25 May [1882], NAS GD433/2/103/C/54 (no year is given but Evans makes reference to Balfour's chair). See also Balfour, op. cit. (22), 97.

26  Dohrn to FMB, 13 April 1878, NAS GD433/2/103C/83.

27  Dohrn to FMB, 16 September 1879, NAS GD433/2/103/C/90.

28  D. Thomson, Europe since Napoleon, London, 1988, 515; P. M. Sykes, Afghanistan, London, 1940, 113–18.

29  There is some disagreement over the influence of Naples. Maienschein argues it was the model for marine stations that followed, whereas Benson questions the closeness of the connection between Naples and Woods Hole (J. Maienschein, Transforming Traditions in American Biology, 1880–1915, London, 1991, 102; Benson, K., ‘Review paper: the Naples Stazione Zoologica and its impact on the emergence of American marine biology’, Journal of the History of Biology (1988), 21, 331–41, 335)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

30  Maienschein, op. cit. (29), 96–8.

31  J. Lester, E. Ray Lankester and the Making of Modern British Biology (ed. P. J. Bowler), Stanford in the Vale, Oxon, 1995, 34, 37, 43.

32  See, for example, Imperial College Archives, THH, HUX00887, Huxley to Dohrn, 15 November 1873; THH, HUX00892, Huxley to Dohrn, 5 March 1874; THH, HUX00893, Huxley to Dohrn, 6 March 1874; Charles Darwin to George Darwin, 15 November [1873], NAS GD433/2/103A/1.

33  THH, HUX00892, Huxley to Dohrn, 5 March 1874.

34  THH, HUX01270, Foster to Huxley, 1 April 1874.

35  Dohrn to FMB, 11 June 1874, NAS GD433/2/103/A/36.

36  Dohrn to FMB, 19 July 1874, NAS GD433/2/103A/137.

37  Dohrn to FMB, 21 July 1874, NAS GD433/2/103A/138.

38  Lester, op. cit. (31), 45.

39  Dohrn to FMB, 21 July 1874, NAS GD433/2/103A/138.

40  Dohrn to FMB, 21 July 1874, NAS GD433/2/103A/138.

41  Dew Smith to FMB, 24 November 1874, NAS GD433/2/103A/38.

42  Dohrn to FMB, 1 March 1875, NAS GD433/2/103A/33.

43  Moseley, H. N., ‘Francis Maitland Balfour’, Fortnightly Review (1882), 32, 568–80, 577Google Scholar.

44  Foster, M., ‘Francis Maitland Balfour’, Nature (1882), 26, 313–14, 313CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Foster, op. cit. (6), 23.

45  Foster, op. cit. (44), 313.

46  Moseley, op. cit. (43), 570.

47  Lankester (hereafter ERL) to FMB, 11 April [1875], NAS GD433/2/103A/42.

48  Lester, op. cit. (31), 47.

49  Dohrn to Dew Smith, 19 September 1874, NAS GD433/2/103A/142; Dew Smith to FMB, 24 November 1874, NAS GD433/2/103A/38.

50  Dew Smith to FMB, undated, NAS GD433/2/103A/53.

51  ERL to FMB, 11 April [1875], NAS GD433/2/103A/42; underlining in original. Various species of river lamprey are referred to as ‘lamperns’.

52  Foster to FMB, 23 April [1875], NAS GD433/2/103A /83.

53  ERL to FMB, 5 May [1875], NAS GD433/2/103A /92.

54  Foster to FMB, 16 May [1875], NAS GD433/2/103A/45.

55  Foster to FMB, 9 August [1875], NAS GD433/2/103A/85. Foster commuted from his home in Huntingdon to Cambridge. Lampreys were also called lamper eels.

56  Foster to FMB, 9 August [1875], NAS GD433/2/103A/85.

57  Lester, op. cit. (31), 80.

58  In February 1878 Lankester wrote to Balfour suggesting that ‘As to Lampreys, I think we should make enquiries at Teddington. They take such a mass of Lamperns there that it must be possible to get some ripe with ova and sperm. I fear those Worcester people are hopeless’. Underlining in original. ERL to FMB, 18 February [1878] NAS GD433/2/103B/31.

59  ERL to FMB, 29 April [1875], GD433/2/103A/15; Dew Smith to ERL, undated, GD433/2/103A/153; copy of a letter from FMB to Churchill, 14 June 1875, GD433/2/103A/154.

60  E. S. Goodrich, Vertebrata Craniata. First Fascicle: Cyclostomes and Fishes, Part 9 of A Treatise on Zoology (ed. E. R. Lankester), London, 1909, 30.

61  Balfour, Comparative Embryology, 2 vols., 1881, London, ii, 518, 733.

62  Dohrn to FMB, 28 May 1875, NAS GD433/2/103A/147.

63  P. J. Bowler, Life's Splendid Drama: Evolutionary Biology and the Reconstruction of Life's Ancestry 1860–1940, London, 1996, 206–7, 210.

64  ERL to FMB, 30 May [1875], NAS GD433/2/103A/11.

65  ‘Memorial to the late Professor Balfour. Meeting at the Union Society’, Cambridge Review, 1 November 1882, 55–8. This account summarizes the comments of various people present at the meeting. Comment by Harold Harley, 57.

66  Letter from University Museum of Zoology and Comparative Anatomy to the Senate, CUR, 29 May 1883, 749–52.

67  Comment by Foster, op. cit. (65), 56.

68  Cambridge Chronicle and University Journal, 5 August 1882, 4.

69  Comment by Foster, op. cit. (65), 57.

70  Comment by Foster, op. cit. (65), 57.

71  R. Macleod, ‘Embryology and empire: the Balfour Students and the quest for intermediate forms in the laboratory of the Pacific’, in Darwin's Laboratory (ed. R. Macleod and P. F. Rehbock), Honolulu, 1994, 140–65, 149.

72  Macleod, op. cit. (71), 155; Ridley, op. cit. (2), 44.

73  Kohler, op. cit. (18), 23.

74  Macleod, op. cit. (71), 152, 154. Of those who turned away from evolutionary embryology, Bateson is perhaps the best known. After making significant discoveries, he rejected the speculative nature of evolutionary embryology and turned to a study of heredity and variation.

75  Minutes of a meeting of the managers of the Balfour Memorial Fund, 30 October 1893, CUA Zoo 10/1. Pages are not numbered; reference is by date.

76  Minutes, op. cit. (75).

77  For details of Willey's life see Kerr, J. G., ‘Arthur Willey 1867–1942’, Obituary Notices of Fellows of the Royal Society (1943), 4, 394–410CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

78  Kerr, op. cit. (77), 396.

79  Kerr, op. cit. (77), 402, 407.

80  Kerr, op. cit. (77), 404, 405.

81  Kerr, op. cit. (77), 405.

82  J. G. Kerr, A Naturalist in the Gran Chaco, Cambridge, 1950, 1.

83  Kerr, op. cit. (82), 158, 165.

84  J. J. Lister to Newton, 13 November 1891, Min.V.4, p. 94, CUA.

85  D. L. Schacter, Forgotten Ideas, Neglected Pioneers: Richard Semon and the Story of Memory, Cambridge, MA, 2001, 30.

86  Schacter, op. cit. (85), 39–40.

87  Schacter, op. cit. (85), 41–9.

88  H. F. Osborn, The Origin and Evolution of Life, London, 1918, 172–3.

89  Kerr, op. cit. (82), 169.

90  Kerr, op. cit. (82), 172.

91  Kerr, op. cit. (82), 179, 183.

92  Kerr, op. cit. (82), 194.

93  Kerr, op. cit. (82), 226.

94  J. G. Kerr (ed), The Work of John Samuel Budgett, London, 1907, 15–22.

95  Kerr, op. cit. (94), 25.

96  Kerr, op. cit. (94), 45–6, 52.

97  Kerr, op. cit. (94), 12–13.

98  Kerr, op. cit. (94), 2–3.

99  Kerr, op. cit. (94), 23.

100  Kerr, op. cit. (94), 91, 93.

101  Kerr, op. cit. (94), 8.

102  Kerr, op. cit. (94), 9.

103  Kerr, op. cit. (94), 87–8.

104  Kerr, op. cit. (94), 33.

105  Kerr, op. cit. (94), 17, 42.

106  Kerr, op. cit. (94), 37.

107  Kerr, op. cit. (94), 50–1.

108  Hall, B., ‘John Samuel Budgett (1872–1904): in pursuit of Polypterus’, BioScience (2001), 51, 399–407CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

109  10 December 1885, Balfour Memorial Fund, Minute Book of the Managers, CUA, Zoo 10/1.

110  CUR, 6 June 1886, 729.