Darwin's drawers

Not to be confused with Vickie's knickers, the title here refers to a remarkable rediscovery of antique slides prepared by botanist Joseph Hooker after being collected by Charles Darwin (1809-1882). Dr. Howard Falcon-Lang, Fellow at Royal Holloway, relates, “While searching through an old cabinet, I spotted some drawers marked ‘unregistered fossil plants’. I can’t resist a mystery, so I pulled one open. What I found inside made my jaw drop! Inside the drawer were hundreds of beautiful glass slides made by polishing fossil plants into thin translucent sheets. This process allows them to be studied under the microscope. Almost the first slide I picked up was labelled ‘C. Darwin Esq.’ This turned out to be a piece of fossil wood collected by Darwin during his famous Voyage of the Beagle in 1834!” Of the 314 fossil specimens, 17 had been gathered by Darwin when he was on the Beagle (slideshow here). The Geological Survey implemented a formal registry process for acquisitions in 1848, but by that time Hooker had left for an expedition in the Himalayas. After many relocations, the collection passed out of memory. Dr. John Ludden, Executive Director of the Geological Survey, remarked, “This is quite a remarkable discovery. It really makes one wonder what else might be hiding in our collections.”

This is only the latest reappearance of specimens collected by Darwin. In 2009 - the 200th anniversary of his birth - the only egg from the voyage on the H.M.S. Beagle was rediscovered by 80-year-old volunteer Liz Wetton while cataloging and reboxing the bird egg collection at Cambridge University's Zoology Museum (photos here). Wetton described, "It was an exhilarating experience. After working on the egg collections for 10 years this was a tremendous thing to happen. I've been moving the egg collection from the Victorian drawers into new boxes and when this one said 'C. Darwin' I thought it may be important." The find also reminds me of the painstaking documentation of a cabinet that belonged to a rival of Darwin after it was purchased at an antique shop (see Alfred Russel Wallace's cabinet and A second look at Wallace's cabinet).

ABOVE: Microscope slides from the Sir Joseph D. Hooker Collection, British Geological Survey: 1st image) Petrified conifer from near Whitby, North Yorkshire, U.K., 2nd image) Large conifer axis from Scarborough, Yorkshire, U.K., 3rd image) Stigmaria from Wolverhampton, West Midlands, U.K., 4th image) Strobili from unknown locality.

A second look at Wallace's cabinet

Images © Robert Heggestad 2009 – All Rights Reserved

Just 4 days after my post about the specimens collected by British naturalist Alfred Russel Wallace, I was thrilled to receive an e-mail from the very man who now owns the cabinet! Robert Heggestad explained that he had heard about my blog from a friend in Indonesia and offered to send me more information, which he did. The photos above and the data below are selected from the 800-page PowerPoint containing the results of his research and a 68-page paper in which he connects the specimens to the scientist’s unique travels and research. “As you can imagine,” Heggestad writes, “after spending the past three years learning about his multifaceted life, I have become a great Wallace fan.” He notes that the cabinet is no longer on exhibit, but is still at the American Museum of Natural History cared for by Dr. David Grimaldi, Curator of Diptera, Fossil Insects & Lepidoptera, who will publish a paper on the historical and scientific significance of the collection. “I think this is a fabulous thing…a national treasure, actually,” says Dr. Grimaldi.

The collection contains some 1679 specimens in 26 glass-topped drawers that were originally hermetically sealed. “Of dragon-flies, I have many pretty species…” Wallace wrote in a letter from Singapore in 1854, and indeed the cabinet contains 36 dragon and caddis flies (1^st image). The drawers in which the 398 butterflies and 294 moths were pinned had been built with a compartment along the front filled with camphor crystals, used to prevent damage to insect collections by other small insects. Wallace’s butterfly specimens include a “cracker” butterfly (Papilio amphinome, 2^nd image), native to South America and named for the unusual sound the males produce as part of their territorial displays; a brush-footed butterfly (Papilio clymena, 3^rd image) collected in Brazil and commonly known as an “88” because of the pattern on its wings. The moths include a blue underwing (Catocala fraxini, 4^th image), named for the bright hindwings hidden beneath dull forewings, and 2 species of sphinx moth (Sphingidae jambica, 5^th image, and Sphingidae rustica, 6^th image), known for their quick and sustained flying ability, for which they are often mistaken for hummingbirds. Of the sphinx moth, Wallace wrote, “this moth, shortly after its immergence from the cocoon, as shown by the bloom on its unruffled scales, may be seen poised stationary in the air, with its long hair-like proboscis uncurled and inserted into the minute orifices of flowers; and no one, I believe, has ever seen this moth learning to perform its difficult task which requires such unerring aim.”

Among the 396 shells (7^th image) and stones and 86 pods and botanical specimens (8^th image) is the fruit of a large leguminous tree of Brazil (Hymenaea, 9^th image), the pulpy center of which is edible. But perhaps the most intriguing specimen is the skin of an African sun bird (10^th image), an Old World bird also reminiscent of hummingbirds because of the iridescent coloration of the males.

The collection also includes a British butterfly that is now extinct, fireflies and bedbugs captured by Wallace when he was 11 years old, and glasswing butterflies. The cabinet includes 2 specimens of the death’s-head moth featured in “The Silence of the Lambs.” Wallace gathered insects with “protective resemblances” - beetles that look like dewdrops, and moths that look like leaves, sticks, and bird droppings – and insects that mimic each other. He had many examples of protective coloration. He collected multiples of a single species to show individual variation. Wallace believed “that a superior intelligence, acting nevertheless through natural and universal laws, has guided the development of man in a definite direction and for a special purpose” - a more theistic view than Darwin, and the equivalent of today’s theory of “intelligent design.”

Cabinet of Alfred Russel Wallace

The title of my blog references cabinets of curiosity, which have been assembled - first in entire rooms and then in pieces of furniture - since at least the 16th c. They reached the peak of popularity in the 17th c. and were again all the rage among the Victorians. One of these 19th c. gentlemen was British naturalist Alfred Russel Wallace (1823-1913). Best known as a co-discoverer of the theory of natural selection. for which Charles Darwin (1809-1882) received all the credit, Wallace (7th image) is also notable for advocating Spiritualism, opposing militarism, supporting women's suffrage, warning about deforestation and invasive species, considering whether Mars was habitable, proving that the earth was round, objecting to compulsory vaccination, experimenting with mesmerism, and pioneering biogeography. Imagine owning one of Wallace's historic cabinets, complete with its contents! That privilege belongs to an individual.

Unattributed to the naturalist at the time, the cabinet in question (images above) was purchased in 1979 for $600 by Washington, D.C., attorney Robert Heggestad. He began researching its provenance in 2007. Through handwriting analysis of the labels against correspondence, Heggestad demonstrated that the 1,700-item collection in 26 drawers - including butterflies, beetles, moths, shells, flies, bees, praying mantises, tarantulas, seedpods, a hornet's nest, and a small bird - was assembled by Wallace. And after finding a description of an exotic tea cup-shaped pod that he recognized from his collection, Heggestad began documenting references in Wallace's work to specimens in the cabinet, resulting in a 62-page report to support the theory that the collection once belonged to Wallace. The dates on the specimens correspond to the times and locations where he was conducting field work (U.K. before 1848, Brazil from 1848 to 1852, and Indonesia/Malaysia from 1854 to 1862) and the construction of the cabinet matches the design that the scientist himself advocated. It is Wallace's only known personal collection still in its original cabinet. It is believed that the specimens in the rosewood cabinet were assembled for instructional purposes by the scientist, who visited the U.S. only once - in 1886/1887 - on a lecture tour.

To allow the historical collection more of an audience than visitors to his dining room, Haggestad has offered the cabinet for sale to the Smithsonian and the American Museum of Natural History. The cabinet was loaned to the AMNH in New York in 2009 for a display commemorating the 150th anniversary of Darwin's seminal work, On the Origin of Species by the Means of Natural Selection. "When you see how and what specimens are laid out in this cabinet, the organizing mind of one of the greatest scientists of the 19th century is revealed," says one curator. Great yes, household name no. But Wallace never cared about notoriety and never begrudged his fate. He became Darwin's friend, used the term "Darwinism" to describe the theory of evolution they had arrived at independently, and said that Darwin deserved the glory.