• E-mail
• Print
• Comment
• Font Size
• Digg
• del.icio.us
• Discuss article

The Rise and Fall of the Boston Society of Natural History

Posted on: Tuesday, 4 May 2004, 06:00 CDT

ABSTRACT - The Boston Society of Natural History, founded in 1830, replaced the Linnaean Society, which had been active from 1813 to 1823. The founding members of both groups were mostly physicians who were interested in natural history. They were concerned with the collection and display of natural objects, the study of specimens, and public education. The large number of important publications that the Boston Society would eventually produce between 1834 and 1946 commenced with a noteworthy volume of the Boston Journal of Natural History. After 30 years of effort, capped by the generosity of Dr. William J. Walker, a beautiful museum building was finally completed in 1863. Soon thereafter, professionals who had mostly been trained by Louis Agassiz at Harvard filled the museum positions. From 1870 until his death in 1902, Alpheus Hyatt, an Agassiz student and an exponent of the neo-Lamarckian School, was director of the Boston Society. He was succeeded by Charles W. Johnson. A paucity of funds during Johnson's tenure caused the trustees to limit the Society's scope to the natural history of New England, and the dispersal of its collections was begun. In 1946, the Society's extensive library was sold, and soon afterwards the museum building was also disposed of. The Society changed its name to the Boston Museum of Science. It was now no longer concerned with research but only with popular education. It is located today in Boston's Science Park beside the Charles River.

THE BOSTON SOCIETY COMES OF AGE

When the Boston Society of Natural History (BSNH) was founded largely as a research institution in February 1830 by seven self- trained naturalists, Boston was still a small city, virtually an island. Beyond the Boston Common extended the rather foul Back Bay; the city was connected to the west only by a narrow causeway. One of its principal cultural institutions was the Boston Athenaeum, founded in 1807, whose initial purpose was as a place where merchants could share shipping news. However, it soon was transformed into a serious library, a center for the fine arts, and a repository of historical artifacts (Pierce and Slautterback 1991). Before the development of manufacturing, especially of textiles, and the advent of the railroad, there was virtually no leisure class in Boston. Everyone of significance had a business or professional occupation. It is not surprising that, after the first meeting of the Boston Society in the home of Dr. Walter Charming, most of those who were to become active members were physicians who had a strong interest in natural history. The exception was naturalist Thomas Nuttall (Fig. 1), who was elected as the Society's first president. Nuttall declined the honor, claiming that he was only a temporary resident of the Boston area. All of the other founding officers of the Society were physicians, as were four of the eight curators who were also chosen at the initial meeting.

The formation of the BSNH was a brave undertaking, since the failed Linnaean Society, begun by a number of the same individuals in 1814, had had the same goals: the collection and display of natural objects, their study, and the education of the public. By 1823, the Linnaean Society had failed for lack of financial support. The Boston Athenaeum declined to house the collections of natural history objects that had been assembled. Harvard University then became the repository of choice. However, when the newly formed BSNH requested the return of this material, it had mostly disappeared. After Nuttall's refusal to serve as president of the new Society, Dr. Benjamin D. Greene, whose interest was botany, was chosen to be head. The Society dedicated itself to an important role in education. Prior to receiving its charter from the Commonwealth of Massachusetts as the Boston Society of Natural History in 1831, a series of lectures on natural history (the topics now unknown) had been offered to the public. These lectures were held in the hall of the Boston Athenaeum, which at that time resided in a mansion on Pearl Street that had been donated by James Perkins. Pearl Street was then an old thoroughfare, beautified by other stately houses and shade trees.

In 1833, the Society relinquished the room it had occupied at the Athenaeum and moved into a hall on the third floor of the new Savings Bank Building on Tremont Street that overlooked the Boston Common. Soon thereafter, collections of shells belonging to Dr. Amos Binney, Jr. (Fig. 2) and of minerals belonging to Dr. Charles Thomas Jackson (Fig. 3) were exhibited. In 1835, Ambrose S. Courtis bequeathed the Society $15,000. Unfortunately, the first payment of $2000 was lost because of the failure of the bank in which it had been deposited, but subsequent payments kept the Society solvent and were to be its chief source of income for the next 25 years. This new wealth gave hope that the Society might prosper. The mammal collection was begun auspiciously in 1836 with the acquisition of the bones of an elephant that had died in a menagerie. According to the original account, these bones were stored and bleached in the "house" of James Blake. One hopes that "house" meant barn! In any case, the skeleton was assembled by Dr. Nathaniel Bradstreet Shurtleff, the Society's first Curator of Comparative Anatomy.

Figure 1. Thomas Nuttall (1786-1859). Elected as first president of the BSNH, but declined to serve since he was not a permanent resident of the city. From Creed (1930).

The first number of the Boston Journal of Natural History appeared in 1834 and continued through seven octavo volumes until it was declared complete in 1863. It was Amos Binney, a founding member of the BSNH and sometime president, who was responsible for the overall quality of the Journal. Among the papers by Society members in this first volume were those by Dr. Augustus Addison Gould and Dr. Thaddeus William Harris on insects; Charles T. Jackson on geology; Binney himself, Joseph Pitty Couthouy, and Dr. David Humphreys Storer on shells; Storer also on fishes; and Dr. Thomas Mayo Brewer on birds. Most of the papers consisted of descriptions of new species, including observations of them. Beginning in 1861 and continuing through nine volumes until 1946, the Society's Journal was followed by a second series in quarto as Memoirs Read Before the Boston Society of Natural History.

Figure 2. Dr. Amos Binney, Jr. (18031847). Founding member of the BSNH and also served as its president. He was responsible for the initial issues of the Boston Journal of Natural History. From Creed (1930).

Figure 3. Dr. Charles T. Jackson (1805-1880). Served the BSNH as Curator of Mineralogy and Geology and as a vice-president. From Creed (1930).

Curators for the Society's special departments were elected for the first time in 1838. By the following year, D. Humphreys Storer could claim that 90 of 120 species of fishes found in Massachusetts and every described reptile, save one, was in the museum collection. In 1843, the Curator of Entomology, Thaddeus W. Harris, complained that the insect collection, which then included the material of the first U.S. authority on spiders, Nicholas Marcellius Heintz (1797- 1856), was infected with Anthreni insects that were especially prone to attack museum specimens. The Curator of Comparative Anatomy subjected mammalian specimens to steam heat to kill the infestations of these insects, and the Curator of Ornithology baked the bird collection to decontaminate it. Only the Curator of Fishes was able to report that the dry portion of the ichthyological collection was in good condition, but a few years later, that too had become infested with insects.

In 1847, the BSNH purchased a building on Mason Street, known as the Massachusetts Medical College, and occupied it the following year (Kilham 1946). In 1853, the Society bought at auction fossil footprints of dinosaurs that had roamed the Connecticut Valley during the Triassic Period. Rev. Edward Hitchcock, who served as the first State Geologist of Massachusetts, considered one of these slabs to be the largest ever found.

In 1861, the Society secured from the Commonwealth half a block of land between Berkeley and Clarendon Streets in the newly filled- in Back Bay. Its neighbor on the block was the recently founded Massachusetts Institute of Technology, which was under the leadership of William Barton Rogers, a member of the BSNH and president of the National Academy of Sciences. Both buildings were designed by architect William Gibbons Preston (1842-1910). The Society's building (Fig. 4) was in the French Renaissance style, a tripartite structure with its floor levels arranged to equate with the proportions of the base, shaft, and capital of a Classical column of the Corinthian order according to the Italian architect Vignola. It remains to this day a rare building in the city, weil set back on all sides. Unlike Louis Agassiz's Museum of Comparative Zoology at Harvard University in Cambridge, designed by George Shell and Henry Greenough of the firm of Shell and Grcgerson (built the year previous before many of Agassiz's students left to fight in the American Civil War), which was composed of brick in the utilitarian style of a New England textile mill and designed to allow forexpansion, the BSNH's new building was an ornate edifice of red Triassic sandstone, with carved animal heads on the keystones of the first floor windows. Its design incorporated numerous galleries to capture natural light. The building was completed in 1863, at the height of the Civil War, and was made possible through the generosity of Dr. William Johnson Walker, who had amassed a large fortune and was one of the largest contributors to the Society's future operations.

Figure 4. Edifice for the Boston Society that was completed in 1863 and occupied through the 1940s. Shown at the left is the original building of the Massachussetts Institute of Technology (1865), founded by BSNH member William B. Rogers. From Bouve (1880).

In 1871, Dr. Thomas Dwight, Jr. purchased a large finback whale (Balaenoptera physalus) and had the carcass towed to Spectacle Island in Boston Harbor, where the bones were carefully cleaned. It was displayed in the main hall of the Society's museum, suspended from the roof (Pig. 5), until the building was sold to a clothier in 1946. This whale skeleton is now on display in the New England Aquarium at Boston's Central Wharf.

Figure 5. Finback whale on display in lhe main gallery of the BSNH's museum. Specimen is now in the New England Aquarium in Boston, MA. From Creed (1930).

Thomas Tracy Bouve (1815-1896) (Fig. 6), a member of the Society since 1841, served first as cabinet keeper, then treasurer, later Curator of Geology and Paleontology, and finally as president from 1870 to 1880, following Jeffries Wyman who had become director of Harvard's Peabody Museum of Anthropology and Ethnology. all of the Society's archaeological material was given to Wyman for the Peabody Museum. Bouve wrote a detailed history of the BSNH's first 50 years (Bouve 1880). Sometimes he gave as much attention to the receipt of a single specimen of no importance as to the acquisition of truly significant material. The latter included the LaFresnaye collection of mounted birds' and a type specimen of Paradoxides harlani, from the Middle Cambrian slate of Braintree, MA. Paradoxides is one of the largest trilobite species ever found and was first described by Dr. Jacob Green (1790-1841) of Philadelphia in 1834. Bouve was among the last of that group of doctors, lawyers, teachers, and businessmen who had originally built the BSNH and had wholeheartedly accepted Nature as the work of a loving God.

SOME ILLUSTRIOUS MEMBERS OF THE EARLY BOSTON SOCIETY

Thomas Nuttall (1786-1859) was born in Yorkshire, England. He immigrated to Philadelphia at the age of 22 and found temporary employment as a printer while pursuing the study of botany. In 1811, he joined the Astoria Party, the first group to traverse the nation after the Lewis and Clark Expedition of 1804-1806.2 After accompanying the Astoria group for some 1500 miles up the Missouri River, Nuttall left to collect botanical specimens on his own in hostile Indian country. After nearly losing his life through his obliviousness to food, time, and distance, he was rescued by a passing Indian. Nuttall then headed east to St. Louis with some fur traders and continued on to New Orleans by flatboat. With the War of 1812 being imminent, Nuttall returned to England. In 1815, he was back in Philadelphia, where by 1817 he was elected to membership in both the Academy of Natural Sciences and the American Philosophical Society.

Figure 6. Thomas T. Bouve (1815-1896). Served as president of the BSNH and as its historian (Bouve 1880). From Creed (1930).

In 1823, Nuttall was hired by Harvard University as the "Professor of Natural History." This position had first been occupied by William Dandridge Peck (1763-1822), who made contributions to zoology (especially entomology) and also was in charge of the newly created Botanical Garden. Among Peck's students at Harvard (all would become members of the BSNH) were Dr. Benjamin D. Greene, 1812; Dr. James Freeman Dana, 1813; Dr. Thaddeus W. Harris, 1815; George Barrell Emerson, 1817; and Dr. Charles Pickering, 1823. Nuttall was Lecturer in Botany and served as curator of the Botanical Garden. In addition to being a botanist, he became a distinguished author in ornithology. Among Nuttall's own students were Dr. Augustus Addison Gould, 1825 (Fig. 7); and Dr. Jeffries Wyman, 1833. Gould, a farm boy from New Ipswich, NH, became a prominent figure in zoology. As a physician, he assisted William Thomas Green Morton in conducting the first public demonstration of ether anesthesia at the Massachusetts General Hospital in 1846 (Gifford 1965). As a conchologist, he described the shells collected on the United States Exploring Expedition (1838-1842) by Joseph P. Couthouy, a fellow member with Gould of the BSNH, and other members of the Expedition's scientific staff. Wyman would serve as president of the BSNH and become the first director of Harvard's Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology, founded by the philanthropist George Foster Peabody in 1866. Peabody also endowed the Peabody Museum (now the Peabody Essex Museum) at Salem, MA, and the Peabody Museum at Yale University, New Haven, CT.

Figure 7. Dr. Augustus A. Gould (1805-1866). Served the BSNH as Curator of Conchology and as a scerctary and vice-president. From Bouve (1880).

Nuttall resigned from Harvard in 1834 in order to travel with Nathaniel Wyeth's second expedition along the Oregon Trail to the Pacific.3 While collecting shells on the beach at San Diego, CA, he was recognized by a crewman of the Alert, the ship that would return him to Boston. The sailor was Richard Henry Dana, Jr., one of Nuttall's former students who had shipped as a deck hand to recuperate from eyestrain. Later, in his classic account of life on a sailing vessel, Two Years Before the Mast (Dana 1840), Dana would recall the crew's reaction to Nuttall, whom they called "Old Curious" because of his perceived eccentricities and his great zeal (disallowed by the captain) to visit the rugged, virtually unapproachable Staten Island4 when the Alert rounded Cape Horn through the ice fields.

Amos Binney (1803-1847), who inaugurated the BSNH's first journal, was a graduate of Brown University, B.S. 1821, and Harvard, M.D. 1826. An astute businessman, Binney quickly made a sufficient fortune to enable him to devote his life to science and art. he intended, "after his own family," to make the BSNH and the Boston Athenaeum the beneficiaries of his bounty. In 1846, Binney traveled to Europe to recover his failing health, but unfortunately he died while in Rome. In his journal, he had written in relation to his children, "May they especially imbibe principles of honor and religion, and may it be their high aim to acquire and deserve the name of Christian gentlemen." he would have been proud of his son, William Greene Binney (1833-1909), another Society member, who was not only principled, but who continued his father's work on the North American terrestrial mollusks. Amos Binney's shell collection and a portion of his library were bequeathed to the BSNH.

Amos Binney's remains are interred in the Mt. Auburn Cemetery at Cambridge, MA, as are those of many other members of the BSNH. Jacob Bigelow (1787-1879), who was active in the Society, founded the cemetery in 1831. A freethinker who conceived of the cemetery as a large private garden, Bigelow laid out its formal lawns, flower beds, gateway, and tower (Bigelow 1988). By combining his botanical knowledge and artistic ability, he became an outstanding early landscape architect. Bigelow's medical degree in 1809 was from the University of Pennsylvania, where he studied under such eminent physicians as Benjamin Rush and Caspar Wistar. he wrote an important work on medical botany (1817-20). As a physician, Bigelow disdained the extreme practices of bloodletting, poisonous drags, and homeopathy. While a member of the earlier Linnaean Society, Bigelow was on a committee with Francis Galley Gray (1790-1856) and John Davis that in 1817 reported on the sighting of a supposed sea serpent off Massachusett's shores (Davis et al. 1817). Bigelow later published an article on what he believed was an immature specimen of the sea serpent (Bigelow 1820, Dexter 1986). Jeffries Wyman subsequently showed this "spawn" to be a deformed black snake, and it is now thought that the serpent was probably a pod of porpoises (Brown 1990). When the Linnaean Society was founded, Gray became its first Curator of Shells. Shortly before his death, Gray donated $50,000 to found Louis Agassiz's museum at Harvard that Gray insisted be named the Museum of Comparative Zoology

During Gray's early nineteenth-century Boston, cowry shells arranged in a scientifically classified collection, or prints assembled with an equal care for their systematic representation of art specimens, were worth more than mere money, for they demonstrated that America could rise intellectually and morally above the wealth of its fathers (Cohn 1986). In an 1845 classification of the occupations of Bostonians, twenty engravers and one conchologist were listed under the category "Contributing to Literature and Fine Arts," whereas 230 merchants (including two museum keepers) were simply part of the "Unclassified Residue of the Population" (Cohn 1986). The conchologist was probably John Warren, described by DaIl (1888) as a stout, florid, old Englishman who dealt in shells and curios. Warren supplied shells to Sarah Pickcring Pratt (1807-1866) and Ldward Richards Mayo (died 1891), both of whose collections were presented to the BSNH (Johnson 2002).

A geological survey of Massachusetts was undertaken during 1830- 1833, under the direction of Rev. Edward Hitchcock (1793-1864), a professor of chemistry and president of Amherst College. he reported on the discovery of dinosaur footprints in the Triassic formations of the Connecticut Valley and also included in his paper modest accounts of the fauna and flora of the state (H\itchcock 1836). In 1837, the Legislature authorized a second, more extensive survey. Among those selected to report on the zoology and botany of Massachusetts were a number of members of the Society: Dr. D. Humphreys Storer, fishes and reptiles (Storer 1839); Dr. Augustus A. Gould, Mollusca, Crustacea, and Radiata (Gould 1841); Dr. Thaddeus W. Harris, insects (Harris 1841); and George B. Emerson, trees and shrubs (Emerson 1846).

When D. Humphreys Storer (1804-1891) (Fig. 8) undertook to write his report on the fishes and reptiles of Massachusetts, he admitted that he "could scarcely tell the difference between a flounder and any other flatfish." Storer was born in Portland, ME. After graduating from Bowdoin College in 1822, he studied medicine in Boston under Dr. John Collins Warren and received his medical degree from Harvard in 1825. In 1838, he succeeded Dr. Walter Channing as Attending Physician at the Boston Lying-in Hospital, which had been founded in 1832, largely through the efforts of Channing. In 1837, Storer, along with Dr. Oliver Wendell Holmes and others, had founded the Tremont Medical Society to improve the study of obstetrics. The success of this undertaking enabled Storer to become dean of the Harvard Medical School (1855-1864). In 1837, Storer had begun an ambitious translation from the French of Louis Charles Kiener's General Species and Iconography of Recent Shells, which though aborted because of lack of interest or financial support, resulted in a grateful Kiener naming two species of marine mollusks after him. Storer could often be found at the wharves and in the fish markets, searching for unusual fish while attired in a long swallow- tailed coat and a tall silk hat. he worked daily on his specimens in the BSNH's museum, from 5 a.m. until breakfast time writing his ichthyological report, which was published in 1839. When Louis Agassiz arrived in the United States in 1846, Storer's A Synopsis of the Fishes of North America had just appeared in print. Storer was one of the first people that Agassiz visited, and they became fast friends. Storer's wife, Abigail, was the sister of the noted ornithologist, Thomas M. Brewer. When he died in 1891, Storer was the oldest physician in Boston.

After graduating from Harvard College with a B.A. in 1825, Augustus A. Gould (1805-1866) studied medicine under Drs. James Jackson and Walter Channing. The young physician, while waiting for his practice to become adequate to support him, catalogued and classified the 50,000 pamphlets in the Boston Athenaeum. For these four folio volumes of patient industry, Gould received the princely sum of $50!

From its inception, Gould was one of the most active and productive members of the BSNH. In 1833, the scholarly young man published Lamarck's Genera of Shells with a Catalogue of Species, Translated from the French. Gould described a number of new species in the Society's Journal before he was assigned to report on the invertebrates of Massachusetts. His preliminary findings were published in 1840 as Results of an Examination of the Species of Shells of Massachusetts and Their Geographic Distribution. This was an epoch-making work, since the topic of distribution had received little attention elsewhere and none in the United States. Could noted that Cape Cod formed a barrier to some species. Of the 203 species, he found 80 that did not occur south of Cape Cod and 30 that did not extend north of it. Gould's Report of the Invertebrata of Massachusetts, which appeared in 1841, was the first monograph published in the United States that attempted to describe the entire molluscan fauna of a geographical region. Specimens of every named species were deposited in the collection of the Society as well as in the cabinet of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts.

Figure 8. Dr. D. Humphrey Storcr. (1804-1891). Was Curator of Ichthyology and Herpetology at the BSNH. Also served as a secretary and vice-president. From Bouve(l 880).

Gould received a very complimentary letter from Louis Agassiz, who became his close friend and colleague. In 1848, the two men copublished a textbook, Principles of Zoology. Gould had been working on the book before meeting Agassiz, but Agassiz became the senior author (Agassiz and Gould 1848). The text presented the concepts of the fixity of species, catastrophes, and the successive creation of fauna and flora by the Deity. It contained a frontispiece that showed how the radiates (cnidarians and echinoderms), mollusks, articulates (insects, crustaceans, and worms), and vertebrates had been mutually exclusive zoological categories from the beginning of time and which also illustrated the "crust of the Earth as related to zoology." Sixteen editions were published before Agassiz's death in 1879, although the book had long been out of date (Lurie 1960).

Figure 9. Dr. Thaddeus W. Harris (1795-1856). Was Curator of Insects for the BSNH. From Scudder (1869).

Gould edited the late Amos Binney's Terrestrial Air-breathing Mollusks of the United States (1851-1857). The first volumes, which contained beautifully executed anatomical drawings by Joseph Leidy of Philadelphia, were engraved by DeLarue of Paris. Both DeLarue and the subsequent engraver, Alexander Lawson of Philadelphia, died before the completion of the plates of shells. Many of the later plates were delineated by Benjamin Nutting and by Alexander Lawson's daughter, Helen. The engravings of the plates were not completed until 1857.

Thaddeus W. Harris (1795-1856) (Fig. 9) was a son of the minister of the First Congregational Church of Dorchester, MA. His father, Rev. Thomas Mason Harris, authored The Natural History of the Bible (1820). It appears that young Harris became interested in natural history after graduating from Harvard College in 1815. It was while still at Harvard, preparing for a medical degree, that he fell under the influence of Professor William D. Peck, who gave special lectures on natural history. Harris later wrote, "It was this early and much esteemed friend who first developed my taste for entomology, and stimulated me to cultivate it." Thaddeus Harris was unsuccessful as a physician. Writing to his friend, Nicholas M. Hentz, a fellow entomologist and specialist in spiders, he expressed a desire to change careers. Their correspondence was published by Scudder (1869). In 1831, Harris was appointed as librarian of Harvard University, a post his father had held briefly. Here in 1841 he completed his report on Insects Injurious to Vegetation, for which the Commonwealth paid him $175. It was republished as a treatise the following year, and a second edition appeared in 1852. The best known revised edition was published in 1862 after Harris's death and contained eight plates and wood cuts never seen by the author. Harris was constantly overworked, and at times he suffered from nervous exhaustion and severe headaches. he fathered 12 children before expiring at the age of 60. His library, manuscripts, and collection were purchased for the BSNH through the efforts of several patrons.

George B. Emerson (1797-1881) (Fig. 10) was born at Wells, ME, when that region was still part of Massachusetts. His father was a well-known physician, said to be a man of cultivation and taste. Young Emerson had already familiarized himself with the local botany before he was sent to Governor Dummer Academy at Byfield, MA. he entered Harvard in 1813 and spent the long vacations teaching in country schools. After earning his degree in 1817, Emerson became headmaster of an independent school in Lancaster, MA. Two years later, President John Thornton Kirkland of Harvard appointed Emerson to be a tutor in the Department of Mathematics. Emerson later became the first principal of Boston's English Classical School, and in 1823 he organized a school for girls. Emerson was a founding member of the BSNH, and in 1837 he became the Society's president. At that time, Governor Edward Everett, who had known Emerson at Harvard, appointed him to conduct the 1837 scientific survey of the Commonwealth and approved of the men Emerson chose to complete the undertaking. Emerson's own work on the trees and shrubs of the region was not only scientifically admirable, but, it was said, "makes the reader at once the interested student and the personal friend, to speak of the tree or shrub which the writer may be describing at the timc."(Bouve 1880).

Emerson's report on education in Massachusetts led to the formation of the Board of Education. Horace Mann, then president of the Senate of the Great and General Court of the Commonwealth, became its first secretary. The report also led to important reforms in public education. Early in life, Emerson had wished to go to the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, but his subsequent studies led him toward the ministry, a profession to which it was said he was particularly fitted by nature (Bouve 1880). Notwithstanding, Emerson's main contributions to society were in educational reform and botany. In 1875, he published a new edition of his A Report on the Trees and Shrubs Growing Naturally in the Forests of Massachusetts that was illustrated with colored plates. Emerson's last prominent appearance before the BSNH had been the previous year when he delivered the eulogy upon the death of Louis Agassiz. After his own demise, Emerson's herbarium of some 50,000 specimens was deposited in the Society's collections. A fourth edition of his botanical report appeared posthumously in 1887.

Figure 10. George B. Emerson (1797-1881). Served the BSNH as a curator, especially of plants. From Bouvc (1880).

Joseph P. Couthouy (1808-1864) (Fig. 11), a mariner by profession and an ardent conchologist, described a number of new species of marine mollusks in the first and second volumes of the Society's Journal. In 1837, Couthouy was chosen to accompany the United States Exploring Expedition, under Captain Charles Wilkes, to sur\vey the Pacific Ocean, Antarctica, and the northwestern coast of North America as conchologist to the Scientific Corps (Philbrick 2003). On August 1, 1838, before his departure, Couthouy presented his admirable shell collection to the Society with the proviso that he could reclaim it 4 years from that date. On August 18th, the squadron sailed from Norfolk, VA, returning to New York in june 1842. Couthouy left the Expedition in Samoa after an altercation with Wilkes. Couthouy subsequently set sail as captain of a merchant vessel and visited islands of the South Pacific, South America, and Europe before returning to the U.S. On the return voyage, Couthouy's ship was lost off Cape Cod, but he and his crew were rescued. Although he worked on the Exploring Expedition's shell collection in Washington, DC, a salary decrease and further friction with Wilkes led Couthouy to resign from government service. Augustus A. Gould was then appointed to describe and illustrate the new species of mollusks that had been discovered by the Expedition. Gould prepared preliminary descriptions that appeared in the Society's Proceedings (1846-1850). The U.S. Government in 1852 published the completed text, and the sumptuous colored plates appeared in 1856. Couthouy was killed during the Civil War while commanding a Union vessel on the Red River in Louisiana.

Figure 11. Joseph P. Couthouy (1808-1864). Contributed his conchological expertise to the BSNH. From Arthur F. Gray collection in Department of Mollusks, Museum of Comparative Zoology.

In 1846, Louis Agassiz had traveled from Switzerland to deliver the Lowell Institute Lectures in Boston and thereafter remained in the United States. he became a professor in the newly formed Lawrence Scientific School at Harvard University and an active member in the BSNH. Perhaps because of Agassiz's enthusiasm, attendance at the meetings in the Society's new building on Mason Street doubled. Also in 1846, an unknown 27-year-old dentist, William T. G. Morton, demonstrated the first use of ether as a general anesthetic at the Massachusetts General Hospital. Dr. Henry J. Bigelow, a visiting surgeon at the hospital, had read Morion's newspaper advertisement promising painless oral surgery, and he wished to verify Morion's claim. Unknown to Bigelow, Morton was then lodging at the home of Augustus A. Gould, who suggested to Morton the use of a respirator for his demonstration. Dr. John C. Warren (1778-1856), successor to Amos Binney as president of the BSNH, allowed Morton to demonstrate the anesthetic properties of ether while Warren performed surgery on a patient. Morion's sometime preceptor, Dr. Charles T. Jackson, claimed (probably correctly) that he had first discovered ether's anesthetic properties. However, according to Thomas T. Bouve, who would become a long-time president of the BSNH, Morton was the first person to demonstrate ether's utility publicly (Bouve 1880). Although Morton included Jackson on his patent application, Jackson spent the rest of his days claiming to be the discoverer of surgical anesthesia. Jackson had previously claimed to have discovered gun cotton, now credited to Christian Friedrich Schoenbien, and that he had given Samuel Finley Breese Morse the principles of the telegraph, patented by Morse in 1840.

As a youth, Jackson (1805-1880) had made a walking tour with a party that included William McClure ("Father of American Geology") the ichthyologist Charles Alexandre Lesueur, and the mineralogist Gerard Troost (all early members of Philadelphia's Academy of Natural Sciences), which demonstrated his early interest in natural history and geology. Jackson returned to Boston and attended Harvard Medical School, graduating in 1829. he soon abandoned medicine and established a laboratory for instruction in analytical chemistry, the first of its kind to enroll students. In 1827 and 1829 Jackson visited Nova Scotia with his friend Francis Alger to geologize. he later became the first State Geologist of Maine, Rhode Island, and New Hampshire (1836-1844). Jackson was a descriptive geologist who was more interested in mineralogy than in stratigraphy; he was also concerned with the economic advantages that might devolve from his geological investigations. Bouve (1880) mentions the constant zeal in the welfare of the BSNH that was displayed by Jackson and his work on the geological collections. In 1873, Jackson was diagnosed as insane, possibly precipitated by angst that he never received what he believed was his right of priority in the ether controversy (Fenster 2001). Jackson never recovered and died in an asylum in 1880. His prominent headstone in Mt. Auburn Cemetery boldly proclaims his contribution to anesthesiology. Today Jackson's stately home in Plymouth, MA, is headquarters of the Mayflower Society. It was in the parlor of this home that Jackson's sister, Lydia, married the transcendentalist Ralph Waldo Emerson.

PROFESSIONAL BIOLOGISTS PREVAIL IN THE BOSTON SOCIETY

In 1863, Alpheus Hyatt (1838-1902) (Fig. 12) assumed the post of Curator of Mollusks of the BSNH. In 1870, he was elected as custodian (i.e., director) of the Society. Hyatt, one of Louis Agassiz's students, had become an evolutionist upon reading Charles Darwin's On the Origin of Species (1859), in spite of his mentor's firm adherence to creationism and the constancy of species. Hyatt was not a true Darwinian, however, but became, along with the vertebrate paleontologist Edward Drinker Cope, a leading exponent of the American neo-Lamarckian School. This theory was best developed in Hyatt's paper on Tertiary species of Planorbis snails in American Naturalist, in which he argued that species, like individuals, have a pre-determined cycle of youth, maturity, and old age, leading to extinction (Hyatt 1882). This concept held some credence, especially among paleontologists, until the modern evolutionary synthesis was established in the 1940s. Two years earlier, Hyatt had published an extensive treatise on Planorbis (Hyatt 1880). he not only kept intact the specimens of Planorbis he had mounted for the plates, but he had a special wooden case constructed for their preservation. It is now in the Department of Invertebrate Paleontology at the Museum of Comparative Zoology.

Among eight other individuals who studied with Louis Agassiz from 1860 to 1864, seven served as curators or on committees of the BSNH at one time or another, and many made important contributions to its publications. Frederick Ward Putnam (1839-1915), who served for a period as Curator of Fishes, succeeded Jeffries Wyman as director of Harvard's Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnography. Samuel Hubbard Scudder (1837-1896) was Curator of Insects from 1859 to 1870 and served as Entomologist of the Commonwcalth of Massachusetts during 1871-73. Alpheus Spring Packard, Jr. (1839-1905) was Curator of Crustaceans from 1863 to 1870. Besides being an entomologist, Packard was also a geologist and paleontologist, as well as a champion of neo-Lamarckism. Nathaniel Southgate Shaler (1841-1906), who served on the Society's Paleontology Committee for a time, became a well-known Harvard professor and a noted geologist. Addison Emery Verrill (1839-1927) curated radiates from 1874 to 1870 and went on to become Yale University's first professor of Zoology. Louis' son Alexander Agassiz (1835-1910) served briefly as Curator of Entomology before devoting his time and fortune to the Museum of Comparative Zoology and to the study of marine zoology. Edward Sylvester Morse (1838-1923) was Curator of Mollusks between 1867 and 1870. he then became director of the Peabody Museum in Salem, MA (1880-1914), after which he returned to the BSNH as its president.

In its first 40 years, the BSNH had founded a museum and a library, published scientific papers, presented lectures, and concerned itself with public education. In 1871, a decision was made that would eventually have a profound effect on the Society's museum. "It was decided to rearrange the contents of the Museum in a scientific method in which the exhibits would rest on a logical background of relationship" (Bouve 1880). It was further decided to form separate New England collections within each department. Despite the generous bequest of William J. Walker, Hyatt's annual reports indicate indirectly that the lack of available funds was preventing the Society from maintaining its former place as one of the world's leading scientific institutions. It must have been painful for some of the members and curators to witness the growth of the Museum of Comparative Zoology, especially after Alexander Agassiz was able to pour his own wealth and time into it. Nevertheless, many of the former students of Louis Agassiz made respectable contributions to the BSNH's publications, as did Hyatt's own student, Robert Tracy Jackson (1861-1948), who served Harvard as an associate professor of zoology and the Museum of Comparative Zoology as Curator of Fossil Echinoderms (1928-1939). he produced two major neo-Lamarckian works published in the Society's Memoirs: "Phylogeny of the Pelecypoda" (Jackson 1890) and "Phylogeny of the Echini" (Jackson 1912).

Figure 12. Alpheus Hyatt (1838-1902). Served the BSNH in multiple capacities, including as director. From Creed (1930).

THE SOCIETY'S COLLECTIONS RESTRICTED TO NEW ENGLAND

Hyatt died abruptly on the street in 1902 while on his way to a museum meeting. Through his efforts, the prestige of the BSNH's museum had been well maintained abroad. But now the museum was in disarray, described as "a fearful hodge-podge of ill cared [for] and often repulsive exhibits, which belonged by right in a medical school or some repository other than a public exhibition" (Creed 1930). Subsequently, the John C. Warren medical collection was sent to the Harvard Medical School, and remnants of it are now on display in its Countway Library. This dreadful situation, along with a c\ircumscribed income, is what confronted Charles Willison Johnson (1863-1931) (Pig. 13) when he accepted the position formerly held by Hyatt. Johnson had come to Boston from the Wagner Free Institute of Science in Philadelphia, where during a 14-year stint he had revamped that institution. His own interests were primarily insects and mollusks. His wife, Carrie, was the daughter of John Ford, a well-known conchologist connected with the Philadelphia Academy of Natural Sciences. Johnson began to expand and improve the New England collections and built new display cases to house the specimens. Volume 7 of the Society's Occasional Papers (1904-1925) was devoted to 15 lists of the fauna of New England.

During 1914, it was decided that the Society should limit its interests to New England, and the dispersal of its research collections was begun. The LaFresnye birds, specimens from Charles Wilson Peale's Philadelphia museum of art and history that included two pheasants which Peale had received from George Washington, and birds from the United States Exploring Expedition of 1838-42, were sent to the Museum of Comparative Zoology. Over the years, fossils, shells, and other natural history materials followed. The Society's extensive insect collection was given to Boston University, where it is still housed. Certain geological specimens were acquired by the Institute for Quaternary Studies, University of Mainc-Orono. The botanical specimens went to various herbaria at Harvard University. Eventually, even most of the New Ungland material was also disposed of. The type specimen of Paradoxides harlini, a large trilobite from the Middle Cambrian slates at Braintrce, MA (a site no longer extant), now resides in the Museum of Comparative Zoology. When Edward S. Morse served as president of the BSNH (1914-20) after retiring as director of the Peabody Museum in Salem, he must have wondered if a similar fate would befall the natural history collections that he had so meticulously assembled for the Peabody Museum's great East India Hall. And such was to be the case. In 1942, Thomas Barbour (Pig. 14) arranged with his friend Ernest Dodge, director of the Peabody Museum, to have those natural history specimens worth retaining to be given to the Museum of Comparative Zoology. Since then, the re-named Peabody Essex Museum has limited its interests in natural history to that of Essex County, MA.

William Otis Crosby's (1850-1925) classic study, "Geology of the Boston Basin" appeared in the BSNH's Occasional Papers (1893-1900), as did the "Fauna of New England" (1904-1925). The Memoirs included "The Pishes of New England: The Salmon Family," by William Converse Kendall (1914, 1935); "The Whalebone Whales of New England," by Glover Morrill Allen (Allen 1916); and "The Turtles of New England," by Dr. Harold Lester Babcock (Babcock 1919). Babcock also wrote two natural history guides for the Society, one on New England snakes (Babcock 1929) and another on the turtles (Babcock 1938). The museum's grotesque exhibits of comparative anatomy were removed and replaced with habitat groups, such as one with a black bear and Canadian porcupine and another showing a beaver group with the dam, pond, and lodge in sections, which 1 still recall. These exhibits replaced a number of stiffly mounted mammals.

Figure 13. Charles W. Johnson (1863-1931). Succeeded Alpheus Hyatt as director of the BSNH. From Creed (1930).

Figure 14. Thomas Barbour (1884-1946). Presided over the dismantling of the BSNH as a research institution. From Barbour (1946).

When the BSNH's centennial celebration volume Milestones (Creed 1930) was published during the Great Depression that gripped the country, the officers read like the Boston Social Register. Edward Wigglesworth was serving both as director and as Curator of Geology and Mineralogy. This treatise was more backward looking than forward thinking, however. It mentioned how the Society's holdings included the mounted bald eagle that served as a model for John James Audubon's engraving in his Birds of America; a pair of Oystercatchers shot by the famed orator Daniel Webster (who, according to a plaque in Boston's Olde Union Oyster House, was a great consumer of oysters himself!); and some bird eggs and a nest donated by naturalist and transcendental author Henry David Thoreau. Future plans called for a building similar to the original one but occupying a much greater portion of the site.

THE BOSTON SOCIETY WINDS DOWN

Charles W. Johnson died in 1931, and permanent new leadership for the BSNH did not occur until 1941 with the appointment of Bradford H. Washburn, Jr. as director upon the approval of Thomas Barbour (1884-1946), director of the Museum of Comparative Zoology. Washburn, the son of a local Episcopalian bishop, was a mountaineer and photographer (Decaneas 1999). Hc was soon away in the military during World War IT, and Henry Drummond Russell, Associate in Malacology at the Museum of Comparative Zoology, was for a time in nominal charge of the BSNH's museum. During this period, I worked in the Society's mollusk collection, locating a number of the type specimens described by Joseph P. Couthouy before going off to war myself. I was then unaware that Couthouy's unpublished journal, written while he was on the United States Exploring Expedition, was in the possession of the BSNH. As a stripling, I best remember Mary B. Cobb, the faithful librarian who presided in the reading room on the left of the front entrance of the museum (Fig. 15); Samuel Newton Folius Sanford, Curator of Marine Invertebrates, a self- trained naturalist and author of The Marine Life of the Massachusetts South Shore (Sanford 1935); and the vivacious, young Assistant Curator of Birds, Ruth Dixon Turner, who was eventually to become a Harvard professor and the world's expert on shipworms.

Since 1912, the Society's library was claimed to be the sixth largest of its kind in the country. However, the only rivals I can think of are the holdings of the Smithsonian Institution, the Philadelphia Academy of Natural Sciences, the American Museum of Natural History (which included the Lyceum of Natural History), and the Museum of Comparative Zoology. The Society's library was valued at $250,000. In 1946, it was sold for that amount to the Allan Hancock Foundation, which is now part of the Hancock Library of Biology and Oceanography, University of Southern California. The sale of the library was approved by Thomas Harbour, a powerful figure both as director of the Museum of Comparative Zoology and as a trustee of the BSNH. None of the Society's books or periodicals that were not represented in the Boston area were supposed to be disposed of.

Also in 1946, the Society's ornate building on Berkeley Street was sold to a clothier, and at this writing it is still occupied by one. The building's exterior is largely unchanged, except that the carved mammal heads on the keystones of the first floor windows have been removed. Many of the interior galleries with their wrought iron railings also remain largely unchanged (Fig. 16). What was left of the Society's natural history collections was placed in storage. All of the organization's Proceedings, Memoirs, and Occasional Paters ceased publication after 1946. The days of the BSNH as a research institution were over. The remaining stock of the Society's publications was put into storage along with the collections. In 1962, these journals were slated to be discarded, but I was allowed to rescue them, and they were offered for sale over many years by the Museum of Comparative Zoology.

Figure 15. Library of the BSNH with original water color paintings of New England birds by Louis Agissiz Fuertes (no relation to Louis Agassiz). The paintings were made for Edward Howe Forbush's Birds of Massachusetts and Other New England States (1925). In 1961, they were recalled from the Boston Museum of Science by the Common wealth of Massachussctls (Peek 1981). From Creed (1930).

On October 30,1946, the BSNH's museum was changed by vote of the trustees to the Boston Museum of Science. "This new short name has been adopted in order to broaden the scope and appeal of the new museum. The exhibits will consist of four main parts: natural history, general science, the Planetarium and changing industrial exhibits to show the inseparable relation between nature, science, and the industries which have made New England famous. No change has been made in our distinguished corporate name. The Boston Society of Natural History will operate the new Museum of Science." (1947, Progress Report, p. 5). The successful development of this institution as a center of popular education over the last half century is not part of this story. The Boston Museum of Science is now located in Boston's Science Park along the Charles River. The endearing symbol of the museum is Spooky, patterned after a great horned owl that was donated to the organization as an owlet in 1951 and which lived to the age of 38 years. Today over 1.6 million people visit the museum and its more than 400 interactive exhibits each year.

Figure 16. A typical gallery, showing wrought iron railings, in the BSNH's museum, exhibiting New England crustaceans here. Curator of Birds Winthrop Sprague Brooks is emerging from the work room. Taken by the author (1942).

MAJOR PUBLICATIONS OF THE BOSTON SOCIETY OF NATURAL HISTORY

1834-1863. Boston Journal of Natural History. Vols. 1-7.

1841-1942. Proceedings of the Boston Society of Natural History. Vols. 1-42.

1865-1868. Conditions and Doings of the Boston Socieyt of Natural History as Exhibited by the Annual Reports of the Custodian, Treasurer, Librarian and Curators. [Afterwards published in the Proceedings until 1906 (Vol. 33), when they were discontinued.]

1866-1946. New Series of the Boston Journal of Natural History: Memoirs of the Boston Society of Natural History. Vol. 1-9, 4to.

1869-1941. Occasional papers o\f the Boston Society of Natural History. Vols. 1-8.

1869. Agassiz, L. Address Delivered on the Centennial Anniversary of the Birth of Alexander von Humboldt, under the Auspices of the Boston Society of natural History. Welch, Bigelow & Co., Cambridge, MA.

1880. Bouve, T. T. Historical Sketch of the Boston Society of Natural Histroy: With a Notice of the Linnaean Socity, Witch Preceded It. Anniversary Memoirs of the Boston Society of Natural Histor. Press of A.A. Kingman, Boston, MA. 250 pp.

1906-1914. Bulletin of the Boston Society of Natural History. Nos. 1-88.

1929. Babcock, H.L. The Snakes of New England. Boston Society of Natural History. Natural History Guides. No. 1, 30 pp., 4 col. pls.

1930. Creed, P.R. [ed.]. Milestone: The Boston Society of Natural History, 1830-1930. Printed for the Society, Boston, MA. 117 pp., 39 pls.

1938. Babcock, H.L. Field Guide to New England Turtles. New England Museum of Natural History, Natural History Guides. No. 2, 56 pp., 9 col. pls.

New England Museum of Natural History Progress Report. July 1946, December 1946, July 1947, December 1947.

The Society also published a few minor works. Among these were four small guides for Science-Teaching, produced by Alpheus Hyatt, George Lincoln Goodale, and Mrs. Louis Agassiz (all ca. 1880). Guides to a number of the display cases of minerals, rocks, and fossils by William O. Crosby (1881, 1886, 1889, 1892) were sold to visitors, as were later guides to the museum that appeared in 1919, 1922, and 1927.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Profound thanks are extended to Dr. Kenneth Jay Boss, Professor of Biology, Harvard University, and Curator in Malacology, Museum of Comparative Zoology; Dr. Michael Arthur Rex, Professor of Biology, University of Massachusetts, Buston, and Associate in Malacology, Museum of Comparative Zoology; and Dr. Alan Robert Kabat, Esq., also an Associate in Malacology, Museum of Comparative Zoology. They took time to read the manuscript critically, materially improve it, and save the author from a number of errors. Thanks are also offered to Dr. Scott McClung Martin for his encouragement and his many helpful suggestions in the preparation of the manuscript. Adam J. Baldinger, Collections Manager, Museum of Comparative Zoology, has been most kind in helping in innumerable ways and cheerfully suffered many interruptions of his own work. Finally, thanks arc offered to Klissa C. Cadillic, Special Library Assistant/Technology, Allston Branch, Boston Public Library, who has opened to me the world of the personal computer.

LITERATURE CITED

Agassiz, L., and A.A. Gould. 1848. Principles of Zoology: Touching the Structure. Development, Distribution, and Natural Arrangement of the Races of Animals, Living and Extinct. Gould, Kendall and Lincoln. Boston, MA. 216 pp., 170 text figs.

Allen, G.M. 1916. The whalebone whales of New England. Memoirs of the Boston Society of Natural History, 8(1):105-322, 9 pls.

Babcock. H.L. 1919. The turtles of New England, Memoirs of the Boston Society of Natural History. 8(3):323-431,16 col. pls.

Babcock, H.L. 1929. The Snakes of New England. Boston Society of Natural History. Natural History Guides. Nu. 1, 30 pp. 4 col. pis.

Babcock, H.L. 1938. Field Guide to New England Turtles. New England Museum of Natural History. Natural History Guides. No. 2,56 pp.,9 col. pls.

Barbour, T. 1946. A Naturalist's Scrapbook. Harvard University Press, Cambridge, MA. 218 pp.

Bigelow, J. 1820. Documents and remarks respecting the sea- serpent. American Journal of Science and Arts. 2(1): 147-164.

Bigelow, J. 1988. A History of Mt. Auburn Cemetery. Applewood Books, Cambridge, MA. 263 pp. |reprint of original 1860 edition|

Bouvo, T.T. 1880. Historical Sketch of the Boston Society of Natural History: With a Notice of the Linnacan Society, Which Preceded It. Anniversary Memoirs of the Boston Society of Natural History. Press of A.A. Kingman, Boston, MA. 250 pp.

Brown, C.M. 1990. A natural history of the Gloucester sea serpent: Knowledge, power, and the culture of science in antebellum America. American Quarterly, 42:402-436.

Cohn. M.B. 1986. Erancis Calley Gray and Art Collecting for America. Harvard University Art Museums, Cambridge, MA. 344 pp.

Creed, P.R. [ed.]. 1930. Milestones: The Boston Society of Natural History, 1830-1930. Printed for the Society, Boston, MA. 117 pp., 39 pls.

Dall, W.H. 1888. Some American conchologists. Biological Society of Washington, 4: 95-134.

Dana, R.H. 1840. Two Years Before the Mast: A Personal Narrative of Life at Sea. Harper, New York, NY. 483 pp.

Davis, J., J. Bigclow, and FC. Gray. 1817. Report of a Committee of the Linnacan Society of New England, Relative to a Large Marine Animal, Supposed to be a Serpent, seen near Cape Ann, Massachusetts, in August 1817. Cummings and Milliard, Boston, MA. 52 pp., 2 pis. (1 fold.).

Decaneas, A. [Ed.]. 1999. Bradford Washburn: Mountain Photography. Mountaineers, Seattle, WA. 142 pp.

Dexter, R.W. 1986. Cape Ann visits of the great sca-scrpcnt. American Neptune, 46(4):213-220.

Emerson, G.B. 1846. A Report on the Trees and Shrubs Growing Naturally in the Forests of Massachusetts. Published Agreeably to an Order of the Legislature, by the Commissioners on the Zoological and Botanical Survey of the State. Dutton and Wentworth, Boston, MA. 547 pp. 17 [mostly] col. pls. [published in five editions]

Fenster, J. M. 2001. Ether Day: The Strange Talc of America's Greatest Medical Discovery and the Haunted Men Who Made It. HarpcrCollins Publishers, New York, NY. 278 pp.

Gifford, G.E. 1965. The forgotten man in the ether controversy [Augustus A. Gould]. Harvard Medical Alumni Bulletin, 40(2):14-I9.

Gould, A.A. 1841. Report on the Invcrtcbrata of Massachusetts, Comprising the Mollusca, Crustacea, Annelida, and Radiata. Published Agreeably to an Order of the Legislature, by the Commissioners on the Zoological and Botanical Survey of the State. Folsom, Wells, and Thurston, Cambridge, MA. 373 pp., 15 pis. |an enlarged edition, edited by William G. Binney, appeared in 1870]

Harris, T.W. 1841. A Report on the Insects of Massachusetts, Injurious to Vegetation. Published Agreeably to an Order of the Legislature, by the Commissioners on the Zoological and Botanical Survey of the State. Folsom, Wells, and Thurston, Cambridge, MA. 459 pp. [Subsequent editions were published under the title A Treatise on Some of the Insects Injuroius to Vegetation. They were enlarged, and color plates were added.)

Hitchcock, E. 1836. Ornithichnology: Description of the foot marks of birds (Ornithichnitcs) on new red sandstone in Massachusetts. American Journal of Science and Arts, 29(2):307-340.

Hyatt, A. 1880. The Genesis of the Tertiary Species of Planorbis at Steinheim. Anniversary Memoirs of the Boston Society of Natural History. 114 pp., 8 pls.

Hyatt. A. 1882. Transformations of Planorbis at Steinheim, with remarks on the effects of gravity upon the forms of shells and animals. American Naturalist, 16(6):441-453. 2pls.

Jackson, R.T. 1890. Phytogeny of the Pelecypoda. The Aviculidae and their allies. Memoirs of the Boston Society of Natural History, 4(8):277-400, pls. 23-30.

Jackson, R.T. 1912. Phytogeny of the Echini, with a revision of the Paleozoic species. Memoirs of the Boston Society of Natural History, 7:1-492, 6 pls.

Johnson, R.I. 2002. The mollusk collection of the Boston Society of Natural History and its disposition. Occasional Papers on Mollusks, 6 (80): 148

Kilham, W.H. 1946. Boston after Bulfinch: An Account of its Architecture, 1800-1900. Harvard University Press, Cambridge, MA. 114 pp., 32 pls.

Lurie, E. 1960. Louis Agassiz.: A Life in Science. University of Chicago Press, Chicago, IL. 449 pp.

Peck, R.M. 1982. A Celebration of Birds: The Life and Art of Louis Agassiz Fuertcs. Walker and Co., New York, NY. 178 pp.

Philbrick, N. 2003. Sea of Glory: America's Voyage of Discovery, the U.S. Exploring Expedition, 1838-1842. Viking Penguin, New York. NY. 452 pp.

Pierce, S., and C. Slautterback. 1991. Boston Lithography, 1825- 1880: The Boston Athenaeum Collection. Boston Anthcnacum, Boston, MA. 191 pp.

Sanford, S.N.P. 1935. The Marine Life of the Massachusetts South Shore. South Shore Nature Club. 31 pp.

Scudder, S.H. [Ed.]. 1869. Entomological correspondence of W. T. Harris. Occasional Papers of the Boston Society of Natural History, 1:1-375, 4 pls.

Storer, D.H. 1839. Reports on the Ichthyology and Herpetology of Massachusetts. Published Agreeably to an Order of the Legislature, by the Commissioners on the Zoological and Botanical Survey of the State. Dutton and Wentworth, Boston, MA. 253 pp., 4 pis. [A supplement, pp. 405-416, was bound at the end of: Peabody, W. B. O.1839. A Report on the Ornithology of Massachusetts.]

RICHARD I. JOHNSON*

Department of Mollusks, Museum of Comparative Zoology, Harvard University, 26 Oxford Street, Cambridge, MA 02138.

APPENDIX 1: ADDITIONAL READING

Bouve, T. T. 1881. Dr. Charles T. Jackson. Proceedings of the Boston Society of Natural History. 21(1):40-44. [biographical sketch]

Brooks, W.K. 1909. Memoir of Alpheus Hyatt. 1838-1902. National Academy of Sciences Biographical Memoirs, 6:311-325, portrait, [biographical sketch]

Cockerell, T.D.A. 1920. Biographical memoir of Alpheus Spring Packard, 1839-1905. National Academy of Sciences Biographical Memoirs, 9:181-236, portrait, [biographical sketch]

Coe, W.R. 1930. Biographical memoir of Addison Emery Verrill, 1839-1926. National Academy of Sciences Biographical Memoirs, 14:19- 66, portrait. [biographical sketch]

Ellis, G.E. 1880. Memoir of Jacob Bigclow. John Wilson & Son, Cambridge, MA. 1880. [biographical treatment]

Gifford, G.E. 1964. The ichthyologist dean [D. Humphreys Storer]. Harvard Medical Alumni Bulletin, 39(1):23-27. [biographical sketch]

Gifford, G.E. 1965. Physician of many facets [Jacob Bigelow]. Harvard Medical Alumni Bulletin, 39(4):34-39. [biographical sketch]

Goodale, G.L. 1913. Biographical memoir of Alexander Agassiz, 1835-1910. National Academy o\f Sciences Biographical Memoirs, 7:291- 305, portrait. [biographical sketch]

Gould, A.A. 1851. Memoir [of Amos Binney], pp. xi-xxix. In Terrestrial Air-breathing Mollusks of the United States, and the Adjacent Territories of North America. Vol. I. Charles C. Little and James Brown, Boston, MA. [iographical sketch]

Grausten, J.E. 1967. Thomas Nuttall, Naturalist: Explorations in America, 1808-1841. Harvard University Press, Cambridge, MA. 481 pp. [biographical treatment]

Gray, A.F. 1933. Charles Willison Johnson, 1863-1932. Nautilus, 46(4):129-134. [biographical sketch]

Higginson, T.W. 1869. Memoir of Thaddeus Harris. Occasional Papers of the Boston Society of Natural History, 1: xi-xxxvii. [biographical sketch]

Johnson, R.I. 1946. Joseph Pitty Couthouy. A bibliography and catalogue of his species. Occasional Papers on Mollusks, 1(5):33- 40. [includes biographical sketch]

Johnson, R.I. 1964. The Recent Mollusca of Augustus Addison Gould. United States National Museum Bulletin 239:1-182, 45 pis. [includes biographical sketch]

Lesley, J.P. 1877. Memoir of Edward Hitchcock, 1793-1864. National Academy of Sciences Biographical Memoirs, 1:113-134. [biographical sketch]

Livingstone, D.N. 1987. Nathaniel Southgate Shaler and the Culture of American Science. University of Alabama Press, Tuscaloosa, AL. 395 pp. [biographical treatment]

Loveridge, A. 1953. Harold Lester Babcock 1886-1953. Copcia, (3):134-I35. [biographical sketch]

Lyons, S. 2002. Sea monsters: myth or genuine relic of the past. Pp. 60-70, ln Oceanographic History: The Pacific and Beyond (K. R. Benson and P. F. Rehbock, eds.). University of Washington Press, Seattle, WA. [includes material on the sea serpent seen off the Massachusetts coast in the nineteenth century]

Mallis, A. 1971. American Entomologists. Rutgers University Press: New Brunswick, NJ. 549 pp. |the best source on the topic; includes biographical vignettes about Thomas W. Harris and Alpheus S. Packard, Jr.]

Mayor, A.G. 1911. Alphcus Hyatt. Popular Science Monthly, 78(February):129-146. [biographical sketch]

Mayor, A.G. 1924. Samuel Hubbard Scudder, 1837-1911. National Academy of Sciences Biographical Memoirs, 17:74-104, portrait. [biographical sketch]

Peters, J. 1948. Thomas Barbour, 1884-1946. The Auk, 65:432-438, pl. 12. [biographical sketch]

Shrock, R.R. 1972. The Geologists Crosby of Boston: William Otis Crosby (1850-1925) and Irving Ballard Crosby (1891-1959). Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA. 175 pp. [biographical treatment]

Tozzer, A.M. 1935. Biographical memoir of Frederic Ward Putnam, 1839-1915. National Academy of Sciences Biographical Memoirs, 16:125- 153, portrait. [biographical sketch]

Waterston, R.C. 1884. Memoir ol George Barrell Emerson, Ll.D. John Wilson and Son. Cambridge. MA. 124 pp. [biographical treatment]

Wayman, D.C. 1942. Edward Sylvester Morse: A Biography. Harvard University Press, Cambridge, MA. 457 pp. |the standard biography on Morse]

Wentworth, M. 2003. The Naked Couthouy. Pp. 158-163, col. potrait, In Look Again: Essays on the Boston Athenaeum's Art Collections. The Boston Athenaeum, Boston, MA.

Wilder. B.G. 1910. Jeffries Wyman (1814-1874). Pp. 171-209, In American Men of Science, Henry Holt and Co., New York, NY. [biographical sketch]

Winsor, M.P. 1991. Reading the Shape of Nature: Comparative Zoology at the Agassiz Museum. University of Chicago Press, Chicago, IL 324 pp. [traces the history of Harvard's Museum of Comparative Zoology, founded by Louis Agassiz]

Wyman, J., and W.H. Dall. 1903. Biographical memoir of Augustus Addison Gould. National Academy of Sciences Biographical Memoirs, 5:91-113, portrait, [biographical sketchl

APPENDIX 2: FOOTNOTES

1 In 1865, Dr. Henry Bryant purchased the entire bird collection of the Count Lafrcsnayc de Falaise and presented it to the BSNH. This was the largest private bird collection in Europe. It consisted of 9000 mounted birds, and many of the type specimens had been described by the Count himself. When originally prepared for auction, the labels were removed from the specimens. Fortunately, since the specimens bore corresponding numbers and the set of labels was preserved, the story has a happy ending. Many of the specimens were found still to have scientific value. The birds were later dismounted and became cabinet specimens. They are now in the Museum of Comparative Zoology at Harvard.

2 The New York financier John Jacob Astor bankrolled the expedition to the Pacific Coast in 1811 to establish a trade route. A fort was established at present-day Astoria, Oregon. This fort was captured by the British in 1813 but retaken by American forces in 1818.

3 Nathaniel Jarvis Wyeth, a Boston merchant, organized and led two expeditions to Oregon's fur country primarily to establish a trapping business to compete with the entrenched companies. He also dreamed of farming, lumbering, and fishing opportunities. Wyeth's first expedition was in 1832 and the second in 1834. His route was a precursor to the famous Oregon Trail that was followed by thousands of pioneers a decade later.

4 Today this island is Argentina's IsIa de los Bstados.

Copyright Northeastern Naturalist 2004

More News in this Category