Children of the wilderness

A young girl disappears in the forest while playing with a cousin. The cousin is found several days later, but no one can find the girl. Some time later, stories emerge from the forest about a girl seen walking alongside a tiger, about a wild woman walking around with long hair and nails, but she is never found and the search is eventually abandoned. Thirty-eight years later, she is finally rediscovered at the age of 42, after having wandered through the forests on the borders of three different countries. 

This sounds like a chapter from a magical realist novel, or some fairy-tale fable, but it is the true story of Ng Chhaidy from the district of Mizoram in India, close to the border with Myanmar. Chhaidy’s story is astonishing for the length of time that she has been missing, long enough for her to lose the ability to use language, even though she was fluent in her native Mara when she disappeared as a four-year-old. It seems remarkable to those of us living in the developed and urbanized world, far removed from close contact with forest and wilderness, that such a thing could happen in modern times. 

Scientific turnover and the fate of old theory

The Arts and Sciences are often seen as non-overlapping complements, as naturally opposed as North and South, or the two sexes male and female. It's therefore surprising to find someone who can make a significant career in both, not just as an amateur but as a paid professional.

Vladimir Nabokov is best known as the author of the novel Lolita, but before becoming famous for his writing in English, he was a professional lepidopterist, an expert on a group of butterflies known as the Blues. An earlier blog post here highlighted some recent research on "his" group of butterflies.

His two careers were also the subject of an essay by Stephen Jay Gould. Gould used Nabokov's example to examine our attitudes to "genius". If Nabokov was a genius in literature, does it follow that his scientific work was also illuminated by the same genius? Was his scientific writing especially fluent or literary, as some literary critics claim? Gould found that, in the opinion of other professional lepidopterists, Nabokov's scientific work was competent and painstaking, but not especially pathbreaking or profound. Nor was his scientific writing unusually poetic or stylistically striking, in the way that his novels were.

In fact, Gould goes as far as to characterize Nabokov as being somewhat of a "stick in the mud." At the time when he was engaged in his butterfly work full-time at the Museum of Comparative Zoology at Harvard, from 1942 to 1948, a revolution was underway in taxonomy. Where previously the morphological characters, such as wing coloration or genital anatomy (a serious preoccupation of much of entomology!) were the means by which new species were defined, the budding science of cytology (the study of cells) had introduced chromosomes as yet another important character. "Cryptic" species with identical morphology were now being defined on the basis of their differing karyotypes (the number and appearance of the chromosomes). Nabokov rejected the use of chromosomes for defining new species, perhaps as a matter of practicality: pinned butterfly specimens in museums only preserve the morphology, so it would be impossible to distinguish karyotype variants in the museum cabinet.

His autobiography, however, seems to belie this depiction of Nabokov as a rigid conservative. Nabokov spoke about "great upheavals... taking place in the development of systematics." The year that Nabokov started working in the Museum was also the year that Ernst Mayr, by then also an emigre to the United States, published his Systematics and the Origin of Species, the book which established the biological species concept, that species (at least for sexual macroorganisms like birds and insects) are defined by their potential for breeding to produce viable offspring. The new emerging school of taxonomy represented by Mayr were strong champions of geographic variation. Species were not immutable, platonic ideals. The variation represented by geographic "races" or subspecies was just as important as the original "type" of a species. Conceptually, this so-called Neo-Darwinian revolution was when darwinism finally became orthodoxy in taxonomy, the field that had inspired it, nearly a century after the publication of the Origin of Species.

Nabokov was aware of this theoretical revolution - how could he have ignored it? This was a tremendous change from the lepidoptery of his youth, which could well be said to be truly "butterfly collecting". As he observed:

"Since the middle of the [19th] century, Continental lepidopterology had been, on the whole, a simple and stable affair, smoothly run by the Germans. Its high priest, Dr. Staudinger, was also the head of the largest firm of insect dealers. Even now, half a century after his death, German lepidopterists have not quite managed to shake off the hypnotic spell occasioned by his authority. He was still alive when his school began to lose ground as a scientific force in the world. While he and his followers stuck to specific and generic names sanctioned by long usage and were content to classify butterflies by characters visible to the naked eye, English-speaking authors were introducing nomenclaturial changes as a result of a strict application of the law of priority and taxonomic changes based on the microscopic study of organs. The Germans did their best to ignore the new trends and continued to cherish the philately-like side of entomology. Their solicitude for the "average collector who should not be made to dissect" is comparable to the way nervous publishers of popular novels pamper the "average reader"--who should not be made to think. 

"There was another more general change, which coincided with my ardent adolescent interest in butterflies and moths. The Victorian and Staudingerian kind of species, hermetic and homogeneous, with sundry (alpine, polar, insular, etc.) "varieties" affixed to it from the outside, as it were, like incidental appendages, was replaced by a new multiform and fluid kind of species, organically consisting of geographical races or subspecies. The evolutionary aspects of the case were thus brought out more clearly, by means of more flexible methods of classification, and further links between butterflies and the central problems of nature were provided by biological investigations."  

(Speak, Memory: An Autobiography Revisited, pp.122-123)

So it wasn't that Nabokov was a conservative who didn't like change. He had already spanned the era between "hobbyist" and scientific entomology. He was already witness to a revolution (in science, and also in his homeland of Russia). There's a quip I've heard attributed to the physicist Max Planck, that science doesn't progress because people come to accept new theories on the strength of their evidence; it progresses because old scientists who believe the old theories die out. It's certainly an exaggeration, but we are equally certainly products of our education. Every generation in science has its own revolution of understanding, and maybe it's unfair to expect someone to accommodate a second one, just as he or she was getting comfortable with the first!

End of a botanical tradition

Botanical Latin is a curious creature, with a grammar and vocabulary very different from classical or medieval Latin. It dates back to the traditional use of Latin in scientific and scholarly works as the common language of learning in multi-lingual Europe. In modern times, it has been restricted to the formal description, called a 'diagnosis', of a newly-published plant species.

As Latin grew less important to general education, however, botanists have had to seek help from other quarters in writing these diagnoses, but because of the independent evolution of botanical Latin for its special purposes:

... when a botanical author thanks a professor of classics for providing a Latin description, this is usually in bad or at any rate unconventional botanical Latin... (W.T. Stearn, Botanical Latin, viii.)

The use of Latin was codified in the International Code of Botanical Nomenclature - a set of rules for keeping the profusion of scientific names in order. It was preserved for both tradition's sake and also because taxonomists have usually argued that a common language is needed to keep communication possible amidst a profusion of vernacular languages. The parallel Zoological Code, however, did away with Latin descriptions a long time ago.

New editions of the Code are voted upon at meetings of the International Botanical Congress, and at the latest meeting in Melbourne, Australia, this tradition of botanical Latin may have met its demise (Nature news and editorial). Attendees have voted for several amendments to the code (full list of proposals here), including dropping the requirement for botanical Latin in new descriptions, and allowing the publication of new species names in electronic journals. The full congress will have to ratify these amendments before they become permanent.

The demise of botanical Latin might have been just a matter of time, but the issue of electronic publication is a relatively new one. Electronic-only journals have been proliferating, but for taxonomy, which is concerned with permanence and record-keeping rather than rapid communication of information, they have distinct disadvantages. There is no guarantee that a server crash or corrupted computer file may not wipe out a species description forever, resulting in a book-keeping nightmare when species names have to be revised or updated. The zoological Code, for example, still requires that a number of hard paper copies be sent to libraries around the world as an insurance against that possibility. This is what the Raffles Bulletin of Zoology, which is published in Singapore as an online journal, does to fulfill the requirements of the code.

So does this mean that William T Stearn's classic reference book, Botanical Latin, will become obsolete immediately? Not necessarily. A big fraction of the historical botanical literature, especially the earliest works from the time of Linnaeus onwards, are written exclusively in Latin and no translations exist for them. We also owe much of our technical nomenclature to Latin and Greek. Botanical Latin may be newly dead, but it still lives on.

Were 19th century naturalists also imperialists?

The 19th century was a fertile time for Western natural history, in large part because of the curiosity that attended their newly acquired colonial dominions around the world, especially in the tropics. Naturalists and adventurers followed closely behind the footsteps of conquering soldiers and colonists, while officials and other colonial expatriates also sent specimens back home to the museums of London, Paris, and other European capitals. In many cases, colonial administrators and intrepid naturalists were one and the same person, as the examples of Rumphius and Stamford Raffles show.

Post-colonial sentiment, however, leads many people to question the Western narrative of the “heroic naturalist” opening up new vistas of knowledge, as the writer Richard Conniff comments upon in this blog post. Were they really discovering new species, or simply claiming credit for knowledge that locals long knew. After all, many European naturalists relied heavily upon local guides and informants, without giving them due credit (a practice that has changed considerably with modern co-authorship and local collaboration courtesies).

In particular he discusses Pére Armand David, a French missionary and naturalist who traveled in Qing dynasty China and discovered (for the West) many species such as Pére David's deer, which were already known to Chinese. Is it fair, then, to call him its discoverer? Some would say to do so would be cultural hubris and insensitivity.

Part of this is to do with how we are limited by past history. Western science was born of the response of European cultures to the newfound knowledge of the world beyond its borders. Its conceit of being universal is partly a historical accident, of being at the right place at the right time, so to speak. The fact that most of the modern world puts Western science in a privileged position as an explanatory framework through which to view the world is part of that historical accident (though see this article for a rejoinder). Now that it has been so widely adopted, to call it “Western” science might no longer be accurate or honest. Calling the European naturalists of old “imperialists” might be true in individual cases (many of them were certainly serving imperial projects or believed in the imperial cause), but to reject their science on these political grounds is a non sequitur.

In some cases, their work helped to preserve local knowledge that might have been lost otherwise (ironically through the socioeconomic change wrought by colonialism). I'm reminded, for example, of I.H. Burkill's monumental compendium, Dictionary of Economic Products of the Malay Peninsula, wherein he recorded many traditional uses of the seemingly innumerable plants, animals, and natural products of Malaya. With development, the traditional strand of transmission for this knowledge between generations has been broken, leaving those of us who are interested to have to acquire it from the written record. Hence the standard Malay dictionary in Malaysia, the Kamus Dewan, frequently refers the reader to Burkill's work and those of other colonial-era writers in the definitions associated with plant names, simply because that is the textual record that we have.

So yes, I would say that many naturalists were imperialists, but we should disentangle their imperial legacy from their scientific one. We can't correct the political injustices of the past, but their documentary record of the lost, rich world which we have lost continuity with can help us recover that heritage and begin to appreciate it again.

Melting Glaciers Reveal Plane Wrecks in Andes

A bizarre and somber side-effect of retreating glaciers in the Andes mountains: decades-old aircraft wrecks and dead climbers, as well as older Inca mummies and 'icemen', are being revealed by the thaw:

"Some discoveries are personal, allowing families closure after years of mourning loved ones who appeared to have vanished. Others have added alluring clues into the history of human migration, diet, health and ethnic origins..."

Read more (NY Times)

John Hunter and the Giants

This isn't the name of a band. John Hunter, the great 18th century surgeon whose anatomical collection now forms the Hunterian Museum of the Royal College of Surgeons, was fascinated by 'freaks' of nature. Among them, the Irish giant Charles Byrne, who measured 2.34 meters in height and became a celebrity when he showed up in London.

Hunter met Byrne in life, and had designs to acquire the giant's skeleton after his death, for his museum. However, Byrne tried to thwart Hunter's plans, and after he died at the age of 22, he had made his friends promise to bury him at sea. Hunter's hired hands, unfortunately for Byrne, managed to bribe or intoxicate the funeral party, or so the story goes, and stole the body away to Hunter's back door in the upmarket Leicester Square neighborhood, where in his basement the body was boiled down to a skeleton.

According to the Guardian, an endocrinologist named Márta Korbonits at London's Barts hospital has found a possible genetic cause for Byrne's gigantism. His growth spurt (and subsequent early death) was due to an excess of growth hormone produced by the pituitary gland. Pituitary tumors are the most common cause of gigantism, and today is treated by surgical removal of the tumor.

She studies a genetic condition called familial isolated pituitary adenoma, which is caused by a mutation in a gene called AIP (Aryl Hydrocarbon Receptor Interacting Protein). According to her work, Byrne's mutation (discovered by sequencing DNA from his teeth) came from a common ancestor as a population of people bearing the AIP mutation in Ireland today. As the article says:

Both Holland and McCloskey [a FIPA survivor and film-maker] came from Tyrone and were fascinated by the number of actual giants in the area, and by the way they figured in Irish folklore not as freaks, but as kings, seers and poets.

---

John Hunter himself was also a colorful character, living in a colorful age. He might be called the prototype of the 'brash surgeon', more interested in showing off their surgical chops (and in Hunter's case - acquiring specimens for his collection) than the comfort of their terrified patients.

A good recent biography of him is Wendy Moore's The Knife Man. In his time (and indeed until the modern age), there was no clear line between medicine and natural history, and many of his famous experiments and observation concern the latter subject.

He was one of the first to experiment with surgical grafting. Among the grafts he performed was that of a freshly-pulled human incisor onto the comb of a rooster. We are told that this required repeated trials–I wonder who donated all those teeth! Eventually, the graft did 'take', and he sacrificed the animal, in order to bisect its comb to see how it connected to the tooth. He found that blood vessels from the rooster had indeed penetrated the tooth pulp: "The uniting of parts of different animals when brought into contact he attributed to the production of adhesive instead of suppurative inflammation, owing to their possession of 'the simple living principle.' " (Encyclopedia Britannica).

After his death, his anatomical collection found its way to the Company of Surgeons. It suffered damage during World War II, but is still on display today in London.

Glimpse of the Past - 'The Borneo Story' Online

The Borneo Story: 'Birds Nest Soup' from The Doozer on Vimeo.

Catching up on leisure reading over New Year, I re-encountered the name of Tom Harrisson, who has been described as a "polymath" - pioneering British anthropologist, WWII hero, long-time director of the Sarawak Museum, conservationist, but also a prickly personality whose character invited controversy and divided opinions.

I was pleased to find that a series of documentaries that he co-produced in the 1950s, titled 'The Borneo Story', is available online. One of them, "Birds Nest Soup", which won a prize at the Cannes Film Festival, is embedded above.

These documentaries are a valuable glimpse into the state of Borneo in the postwar period, when it was still a tropical idyll, relatively untouched by large-scale plantation agriculture. Now, of course, birds nest soup is often commercially produced by inducing swifts to nest in abandoned buildings or purpose-built 'hangars', instead of being collected from the wild.

A 2006 BBC documentary, "The Barefoot Anthropologist" (YouTube), hosted by David Attenborough, gives a sense of the man and his exploits, including how he "restarted headhunting in Borneo". It's not all happy memories, though: one of the Australian soldiers under his command during the war describes how he wanted to shoot Harrisson, and is visibly agitated talking about him, half a century on!

More about his life can be read in the biography by Judith Heimann, The Most Offending Soul Alive.

D'Arcy Thompson at 150

Just as biologists are cleaning up the confetti from last year's big double anniversary of Charles Darwin and his Origin of Species, it's time to celebrate again. This year marks the 150th birthday of D'Arcy Wentworth Thompson, the Scottish polymath (a natural historian, linguist, classicist, physicist, mathematician...) whose most famous book, On Growth and Form (Google Books preview of the 1961 abridgement by J.T. Bonner, with an introduction by Stephen Jay Gould), pioneered the study of biomechanics and biomathematics.

Ownership of Mendel's Pea Breeding Manuscript in Dispute

Gregor Mendel's 1865 paper, "Experiments in Plant Hybridization" is the foundational work of modern genetics. Although its significance was not widely appreciated until its rediscovery at the turn of the century by the trio of de Vries, Correns, and Tschermak, today every student of botany will have heard of this Augustinian monk from Brünn (now Brno, Czech Republic) and his pea garden.

The original manuscript of his work was almost discarded in 1911, and then disappeared entirely after World War II, behind the Iron Curtain. It finally resurfaced in 1988 and was placed in the care of an Augustinian monk in Germany who was also a descendant of the Mendel family. He intended to have it placed in the family's possession; the descendants applied to have it declared a German cultural treasure, but the Augustinian order now disputes the ownership of the manuscript, saying that it should belong to the order. Nicholas Wade reports on the feud in the New York Times.