Natural History

On 18 January 1773, less than twenty-four hours after first entering Antarctic waters and concerned by the ice gathering around the Resolution, Commander James Cook surveyed the waters. A few hours later he wrote in his journal: ‘From the mast head I could see nothing to the Southward but Ice, in the Whole extent from East to WSW without the least appearance of any partition.’

When the English zoologist John Gould died in London in February 1881, he was renowned for his scientific and descriptive studies, principally of birds – those found in his native Britain, the Himalayas, Europe, Australia, North America, and New Guinea – but also of Australian mammals. In the course of his self-made career, Gould produced forty-one large volumes, handsomely illustrated with 3000 plates. These were the work of several artistic collaborators, including, importantly, his wife, Elizabeth, and – early and briefly – Edward Lear, famous later in his own right for his limericks and as a masterly writer of nonsense verse and prose. In addition to his great published works of natural history, Gould was the author of many learned papers and the recipient of high honours from scientific societies. As a leader in his field, he interacted as an equal with aristocratic men of science and affairs; the members of the governing class of his day.

When the first specimen of the Platypus reached Europe in 1798, it was received with incredulity by zoologists. With anatomical and morphological characteristics seemingly belonging to reptiles, birds, and mammals, it simply did not fit into the existing classifications. Further, it appeared to lack mammary glands and therefore could not be classed as a mammal, yet it had obvious mammalian characteristics such as fur and a single bone comprising the lower jaw. It was also noted that there was only one external body opening, the cloaca, into which the uteri, the gut, and the kidneys empty. Hence the name Monotreme (having one hole) applied by English anatomist Sir Everard Home in 1802. Put simply, the Platypus created more than its share of headaches for taxonomists.

A few years ago, I heard Michael Cathcart speak on ‘the myth of the inland sea’. It was one of the funniest takes on Australian history I have heard. He related how his initially confident search for statements of belief in an inland sea by early Australian colonists petered out in the face of lack of evidence. Certainly, the explorer Charles Sturt believed in an inland sea and in his divine mission to discover it, but by 1845 he knew better. Finding little other evidence of the inland sea as the impetus for exploration, Cathcart decided it must be a creation of historians from Ernest Giles in 1889 to Derek Parker in 2007, with the idea recycled uncritically from book to book. Cathcart intended his research to be an academic thesis in history. How hard it must have been to be his academic supervisor. Each session must have ended in laughter and a mounting sense of desperation. How could an increasing lack of evidence be turned to good thesis account?

The press release for David Owen’s latest book describes it as a ‘thoroughly researched’ work by a shark ‘outsider’ that aims to ‘comprehensively overturn our negative and damaging perceptions of sharks’. I cannot claim expert knowledge of sharks, but personal experience makes me a suitable subject on which to measure the author’s effectiveness. When I was a child, one of my sisters was bitten in shallow water by a shark that had breached a netted beach in North Queensland. Although her injuries were not life-threatening, the resulting panic had a lasting effect: I rarely swim in the ocean, and have a healthy respect for sharks.

A magnet on my fridge has a cartoon image of a Tasmanian Devil and reads: ‘Send Tassie more Tourists – the last ones were delicious!’ David Owen and David Pemberton’s book shows how flawed the stereotype of the Devil as an insatiable, aggressive animal is. They reveal the Devil’s complex nature in this well-researched and detailed work, which is the first on the Devil to be published.

After rain at cooler times of the year, the bush is full of fungi. Fruit-bodies of mushrooms, truffles, puffballs, morels, slime moulds and other larger fungi spring forth in a great variety of shapes and colours. For select Australian fauna and flora, such as birds, reptiles or orchids, there are comprehensive and richly illustrated field guides, which have sufficient text to assist the user in putting names to species encountered. However, existing guides to Australian fungi cover a rather limited number of species, or lack text. Putting names to the multitude of fungi is therefore rather difficult.

George Seddon is well-known as an environmentalist and academic. Western Australian readers will remember in particular his Sense of Place (1972). He is currently an Honorary Senior Research Fellow in the Centre for Studies in Australian Literature at the University of Western Australia and Emeritus Professor in Environmental Science at the University of Melbourne.

In his scientific foreword to Descent of Spirit, E. J. Steele, currently a Visiting Fellow at the John Curtin School of Medicine in Canberra, asks: