There Ain’t ‘Alf Some Clever Bastards – Part Twenty Five

Hugh Edwin Strickland (1811 – 1853)

The latest inductee to our Hall of Fame is Hugh Strickland who made his name as a geologist and ornithologist. As a boy he became interested in natural history and whilst at Oriel College, Oxford he attended the lectures of John Kidd on anatomy and William Buckland on geology. Their passion for their subjects encouraged the young Strickland to develop his passion for zoology and geology.

After graduating with a BA in 1831 and a MA the following year, our hero returned to his home near Tewkesbury and began to study the geology of the Vale of Evesham, sending papers to the Geological Society of London in 1833 and 1834. He continued with his interest in birds and having been introduced to William Hamilton accompanied him in 1835 on a trip through Asia Minor, the Thracian Bosphorus and to the Greek island of Zante. The trip was very productive and inspired Strickland to write and present to the Geological Society the following year (1836) papers on the geology of the areas. He also published a book in 1842 describing the results of his journey and subsequent trip to Armenia, entitled Researches in Asia Minor, Pontus and Armenia.

In 1842 he was commissioned by the British Association to consider developing rules for zoological nomenclature. His report went on to develop a codification based on the principle of priority which to this day is the fundamental guiding principle for biological nomenclature. In his researches Strickland did much pioneering work into the grouping and classification of birds – the result, a chart consisting of bits of paper stuck together with circles in paint identifying the groupings – and it is clear that his analytical approach took him to the cusp of realising that birds (and, by extension, all fauna) were part of an evolutionary process. He also wrote a book, with Alexander Melville, on the Dodo and other extinct birds of Mauritius and the area in 1848.

All very worthy and by 1852 he had been elected a Fellow of the Royal Society. But his claim to our Hall of Fame rests upon his untimely demise. “Poor Hugh” as he came to be known had been attending a meeting of the British Association at Hull in 1853. Having stopped off to view Flamborough Head he then went off on 14^th September 1853 to examine the railway cuttings of the new Manchester, Sheffield and Lincolnshire railway near Retford. Standing a little way up the track just beyond a tunnel to make a sketch of the strata revealed by the excavations, he stepped back from the down-line on to the up-line to let a slow coal train go past. Being so near the tunnel and the noise of the coal train being deafening, our hero was unaware that he had stepped into the path of an express train. Despite the driver’s frantic attempts to stop the train, Strickland was struck and died instantaneously. His gold watch stopped upon impact, showing the time to be 20 minutes past 4. So notorious was his death that it was still being used as a warning to geology undergraduates in the 1980s not to examine railway cuttings.

Hugh Strickland, for being a martyr to your love of geology, you are a worthy inductee!

If you enjoyed this, why not try Fifty Clever Bastards by Martin Fone which is now available on Amazon in Kindle format and paperback. For details follow the link https://www.amazon.co.uk/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Daps&field-keywords=fifty+clever+bastards

A Cabinet Of Curiosities

 

Two Temple Place, in an area occupied by barristers and baristas, is one of London’s best kept secrets – a wonderful, heavily carved monument to late Victorian and Edwardian opulence. Now under the care of the Bulldog Trust it opens its doors in the winter season to the hoi polloi, hosting exhibitions featuring collections from outside of the metropolis. Discoveries: Art, Science and Exploration is its third exhibition which runs through to 27th April and features artefacts, exhibits and curiosities from eight museums at Cambridge University. And what a cornucopia of delights it turns out to be.

Housed in three rooms, the visitor moves from one astonishing item to another. There is a tiny Tinamou egg which belonged to Charles Darwin (after the Tinamou, obviously) – he has written his name on the dark brown shell – and it is the only surviving specimen from his expedition in the Beagle. It bears a crack said to have been caused by Darwin trying to put it in too small a container.

In the hallway is a magnificent model of the double-helix shape of DNA, made in 1953 and it has a sort of meccano feel to it. I am fascinated by orreries and there is a magnificent example dating from the 1780s. Geologists can take delight from an enormous 120 million old ammonite and a much younger fossil of an ichthyosaur, carved out of the rocks by the queen of Dorset fossil hunters, Mary Anning, and sold for the princely sum of £50 to Adam Sedgwick.

One of the show pieces is a dodo skeleton pieced together from bones scattered around the marshy areas of Mauritius.

There are also pieces of art dotted around, those which caught my eye were a series of prints by Isaac Frost which were designed to show that the Earth was at the centre of the universe. This tenet of Muggletonian belief is beautifully illustrated and compared and contrasted with the Newtonian view of the universe. They are fascinating examples of wrong-headedness subtly executed in pastel colours.

What really piqued my interest was a chart produced by Hugh Strickland in 1843 and is an attempt to group birds by type and to standardise nomenclature. It also shows that Strickland was on the cusp of realising that there was an evolutionary dynamic involved. The chart, pieces of paper stuck together with rudimentary colouring, has the feel of the residue you associate with a brain-storming session. For all its crudity it is epoch-making and, the organisers claim, it is the first time it has been displayed to the public.

Some of the exhibits defy any serious attempt to study them – a couple of drawers stuffed full of fossils and ossified remnants of fish, a bizarre double panel of paddles and weaponry to name just two – and some are just too stunning for words – a Sufi snakes and ladders board, the only one of its type and, the curator, suspects one that was filched, rather like Wilkie Collins’ Moonstone, during the unrests in India.

For a Classics grad it was good to be reacquainted with the Roman copies of Praxiteles’ Athena and Hermes, so often my study companions.

My only cavil is that it was sunny when I visited and the light streaming through the magnificent stained glass windows made it difficult to read some of the verbiage explaining what you were seeing.

I came away truly uplifted. Unfortunately, one old lady was so transported by what she had seen she took a tumble and had to be whisked away by ambulance. This required us to go down into the bowels of the building to get out via another exit. Such are the trials and tribulations of a museum goer!