The Pack Rats of Science

A Naturalist’s Scrapbook by Thomas Barbour (Harvard University Press, $3.00) opens the door to the museums of the world and reveals something of the lives of the great “pack rats” of science, as he calls himself and other collectors. It tells, in simple words, stories about some of those who have spent their lives preserving from destruction not only the unbelievably interesting fossil fragments and skeletons of creatures which, many millions of years ago, filled the swamps and walked the beaches of the world, but also many extant species of animals and plants which may be on the way to extinction.

It is a most revealing narrative of a boy who took a fancy to snakes and turtles and birds and frogs and to fossil remains which he either found himself or came to know by visiting Natural History Museums. He associated with men who were devoting their days and nights to poring over specimens which they pinned in insect boxes, or pickled in alcohol, or patched together with cement and glue, fanatically careful to see that their specimens were made safe, preserved for a hundred years or more. These men knew that their specimens form the factual basis of man’s philosophy regarding living substance and its changing form.

Through Dr. Barbour’s book, there runs the enthusiasm of a great man who did not care much about machines or chemical discoveries, but possessed a phenomenal memory for any animal form which was alive or had ever lived. Anything which bore on the great question of evolution fascinated him. A craving for something deeper than the mere facts tinges the whole philosophy of the book. He was much interested in land bridges between islands now far apart, which might have been in existence when there was more ice in the polar icecaps and less water in the oceans, and which might explain the puzzling distribution of animals and plants. Knowing that the eruption of Krakatao had killed all the animals on that tropical island in the Sunda Strait, he was curious to learn what animals had first returned to populate its barren wastes.

Harlow Shapley’s theory that the earth in its journey might have passed through the tail of some enormous comet which would have altered profoundly the temperature of the world’s atmosphere entered deeply into Dr. Barbour’s consideration of the problems in which he was most interested.

I think he mourned, as few have, the extinction of rare birds, such as those of the island of Guadalupe and the ivory-billed woodpecker of our Atlantic coast. The threatened extinction of a reptile species disturbed him. He tells fascinating stories of how specimens in private hands were got into the Museum of Comparative Zoology, of which he was the Director. When he was asked the obvious question, “How many specimens of birds are there in the Museum?” he replied, “I cannot answer, nor can anyone else without spending months of time or trouble, which is not worth the doing.”

His book is full of anecdotes about interesting personalities from the time of Louis Agassiz to the present. Some of them would perhaps have been left out had Tom been other than he was, a grown-up boy with the habit of speaking out his prejudices, and with a warmth of affection and a sentimentality which many at first could not imagine formed an important part of such a physical giant.

He admits to being a “sentimental old codger,” and anyone who reads the touching petition addressed to Warren Hastings by an Indian princess pleading for the life of her husband, who had been condemned to death by that ruthless governor, will understand the tears that came into his eyes. It was found by chance on a little scrap of paper that had been tucked into the skull of an Indian tiger shot by Mrs. Barbour’s uncle, James Higginson.

Tom was a gourmet and enjoyed the flavor of an amazing variety of game, having tasted wherever he traveled the specialties of the region, from the fat grubs of the Maoris of New Zealand to the armadillos of the West Indies. He was one of the few men of my acquaintance who really liked to try the new fruits and vegetables; which we plant explorers introduced from different parts of the world. I came to look upon his “Eateria” in his Museum as a place where any new food would be given a kindly reception.

The chapters of the’book which describe his travels in New Guinea and among the Spice Islands forty years ago, and later in Africa, South America, and the islands of the Caribbean, contain his observations on evolution and reflect his boyish enthusiasm about natural objects of all sorts. I could follow him in some of these journeys, for I landed thirty-five years later on Morotai, that strange island of the Pacific about which he had written in his diary: “This is the best place yet.” And I had looked longingly across the strait at Halmahera, along whose coast he had collected so many years before.

I cannot help thinking that as T.B. let his mind run over the scenes of his life while he was writing this book, he suspected his days were numbered, and that he wanted to unburden his mind of some things which worried him about museums. He and I spent hours discussing the problem of labels; he wanted to make the exhibits more appealing. The difficulties of interesting a wide public in such things as fossils, minerals, butterflies, sea shells, the vanishing mammals of the earth, and the endless variety of fishes and other denizens of the deep bothered him.

I used to try to cheer him with the idea that museums were repositories of unique things, things often not replaceable, things entirely distinct from wordy descriptions of them. Our opinions about them are subject to change at any time, but the objects themselves remain indefinitely. “Be content, dear Tom,” I said, “that you have built up a marvelous storehouse of knowledge of a kind that can be preserved in no other way.”