(1845–1906) 'Local Naturalist Was Dubbed T
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Ostolaza, Carlos See under Mauseth. P Oswald, Felix Leonard (1845–1906) ‘Local Naturalist was dubbed “the monkey man”— Tragedy of Dr. Oswald’, Springfield Republican, July 25, 1925 ■ ‘Dr. Felix L. Oswald’, Boston Evening Transcript, October 1, 1906 ■ Dr. Felix Leopold Oswald’, Blue-grass Blade (Lexington, Kentucky), March 21, 1909, page 2. Packard, Alpheus Spring (1839–1905) Mitchell 1993, Entry ‘Packard, Alpheus S.’ ■ T.D.A. The Belgian, later American physician, naturalist and Cockerell, ‘Biographical Memoir of Alpheus Spring author Felix Leonard Oswald was born in Namur, Packard (1839–1905)’, Biographical Memoirs of the Belgium on 6 December 1845; he died in a train acci- National Academy of Sciences 9 (1920), p. 181–236. dent at New York Central Station in Syracuse, New York on 27 September 1906. The American zoologist Alpheus Spring Packard Jr He studied medicine at Göttingen, Heidelberg and was born in Brunswick, Maine on 19 February 1839 Brussels, where he qualified as a physician. In 1866 he and died in Providence, Rhode Island on 14 February went as a military doctor with a corps of Belgian vol- 1905. Already early on he was interested in natural unteers in support of Emperor Maximilian of Mexico history, collecting first minerals, then shells, and final- (1832–1867). After Maximilian’s death his interest ly insects. turned to natural history. He travelled extensively in In 1857 he was admitted to Bowdoin College in the interior of Mexico and other countries, and finally Brunswick, Maine. Packard befriended professor Paul settled in the United States, first in New York, later in Ansel Chadbourne (1823-1883) of Williams College Springfield, Massachusetts; at the time of his death he (Williamstown, Massachusetts) when the latter gave lived in East Greenbush, New York. He was an out- lectures on natural history at Bowdoin College. This spoken freethinker and wrote many popular scientific led to an invitation to join the Williams College articles and books, such as The secret of the East; or, the Expedition, led by Chadbourne, to the Labrador coast. origin of the Christian religion (1883), Physical education In October 1861 Packard went to Cambridge, (1883), The bible of nature (1901), Body and mind (1901). Massachusetts, to study at the Lawrence Scientific His travels in the interior of Mexico are described in School (part of Harvard) under Louis Agassiz.* He Summer-land sketches (1880). stayed there until 1864, earning a little money doing He studied the habits of simians in his own home; work for the museum, while at the same time study- he is said to have had always two or three monkeys, ing for his M.D. degree, which he obtained from the which he allowed to move freely through his house. Maine medical School at Bowdoin in 1864. In that During his occasional absences from home Oswald year, too, Packard joined the painter, photographer entrusted their care to boys of the neighbourhood. In and explorer William Bradford (1823–1892) on another 1905, when he was away again, his house and its con- expedition to Labrador. Packard reported on his two tents, including his two monkey pets, were set on fire Labrador expeditions only much later in his book The and destroyed. Labrador coast (1891). While waiting for a train to Albany at the New York He then briefly served as an army assistant surgeon Central Station in Syracuse, he was killed by a north- during the Civil War for the First Maine Veteran bound train; railway employees declared he had com- Volunteers until the end of the war in July 1865. For mitted suicide. a year he was acting librarian and custodian of the Boston Society of Natural History, and in 1866 he 1880 was appointed curator of the Essex Institute (found- Summerland sketches, or rambles in the backwoods of ed in 1884). From 1867 to 1878 he was curator, later Mexico and Central America. Illustrations by H.F. director, of the Peabody Academy of Science at Salem Frany and H. Faber. Philadelphia, Pennsylvania: J.B. (founded in 1868). This latter institute changed its Lippincott & Co. Description: 425, illus.; 22 cm. name in 1915 to Peabody Museum of Salem, final- German: ly merging with the Essex Institute in 1992 to form ¶¶ 1881, Streifzüge in den Urwäldern von Mexico und the Peabody Essex Institute. From 1871 to 1873 he Central-Amerika. Leipzig: Brockhaus. Description: xxiv, served as State Entomologist of Massachusetts, 384, 76 illus. Reprinted 1884. and from 1887 to 1882 he was a member of the U.S. Entomological Commission. In 1878 he became a Professor of Geology and Zoology at Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island. He was elected a member by the National Academy of Sciences (1872) as a member, and by several 328 | Ostolaza, Carlos prestigious foreign scientific associations, including in 1782 and settled in Saint-Domingue (now Haiti) the Linnean Society of London and the Zoologisch- on an estate belonging to his wife. It is said that he Botanische Gesellschaft in Vienna. devoted his final years on scientific work concerning Packard was an early adherent of Darwin’s* theories America. Pagès was murdered during a slave insurrec- and wrote an important textbook, Textbook of entomolo- tion in 1793. gy (1898). In 1867 he founded, together with colleagues The truthfulness of his narrative has been doubted, from the Peabody Academy, the popular-scientific but his work was very popular and was translated into journal The American naturalist; serving as its editor-in- several languages. chief for 20 years. Nouveau voyage autour du monde, en Asie, en Amérique et en Afrique, en 1788, 1789 et 1790: précédé d’un voyage 1891 en Italie et en Sicile en 1787... is not by P.M.F. Pagès but The Labrador coast: a journal of two summer cruises to that by a namesake, François Xavier Pagès (1745–1802), region. With notes on its early discovery, on the Eskimo, though it is in some catalogues wrongly ascribed to on its physical geography, geology and natural history. P.M.F. Pagès. Includes a Catalogue of plants reported by various trav- ellers as growing on the coast of Labrador (p. 451–474) 1782 compiled by J. Macoun and a Bibliography of books Voyages autour du monde et vers les deux pôles, par terre et and articles relating to the geography and civil and natural par mer, pendant les années 1767, 1768, 1769, 1770, 1771, history of Labrador (p. 475–501). New York: N.D.C. 1773, 1774 & 1776. 2 vols. Paris: Moutard. Description: Hodges & London: Kegan Paul, Trench and Trübner. 432; 272; 10 ll. of fold. pl.; 20 cm. Description: 6, 513, 12 ll. of pl., map; 24 cm. ¶¶ 1783, Berne: Nouvelle Société Typographique. Description: 3 vols in one; 19 cm. The third volume Pagès, Pierre Marie François vicomte de (1748–1793) has as imprint ‘En Suisee, Libraires associés’. Without Entry ‘Pagès (Pierre Marie François, vicomte de)’ NBG the pl. and maps of first edition, 2 fold. ll. of tables at 39, col. 42–44 ■ Entry ‘Pagès, Pierre Marie François’ the end of the third volume. in the Biographie universelle ancienne et moderne, ¶¶ 1991, Autour du monde: voyage de François de Pages par Delagrave, Paris 1870–1873 ■ Howgego 2003, p. 783 terre et par mer, 1767–1771. Series: Voyages et décou- ■M.M. Sibley, ‘Pagès, Pierre Marie François de’, vertes. Edited by N. Broc. Paris: Imprimerie Nationale. Handbook of Texas Online, www.thsonline.org/hand- Description: 303, illus. (some col.); 31 cm. book/online/articles/fpa09), accessed 09-09-2014 Dutch: ■ M.M. Sibley (editor) ‘Across Texas in 1767: The ¶¶ 1784, Zee- en land-reizen rondom de waereld, en naar Travels of Captain Pagès’, The Southwestern Historical derzelver beider poolen. Rotterdam: Arrenberg & Zoon. Quarterly 70 (1967). Pages 593–622 contain a trans- Description: xviii, 261. This edition corresponds to lation of the part of Pagès’ book dealing with Texas, vol. 1 of the original French edition with an introduction on Pagès’ reliability. English: ¶¶ 1791–1792, Travels round the world, in the years 1767, The French mariner, traveller and scientist Pierre 1768, 1769, 1770, 1771. 3 vols. London: J. Murray. Marie François (vicomte) de Pagès was born in Description: xiv, 289; iv,361, [3pa]; xxii, [2], 303, [1]; Toulouse in 1748. In 1764 he entered the navy as a illus.; 21 cm. The third volume has the year 1792. midshipman, becoming second lieutenant in 1767. ¶¶ 1791, anr. ed. Dublin: P. Byrne, W. McKenzie, Around that time he was stationed in Saint-Domingue J. Moore, J. Rice, W. Jones, A. Grueber, G. Draper, (Haiti). In 1767 he was also asked to discover a R. White. Description: xv, [1], 437, [1]; 21 cm. The text northwest passage via the east coast of Asia. He corresponds to the first two volumes of the London left the navy and sailed for New Orleans, reaching edition. Natchitoches via Mississippi and the Red River. Then ¶¶ 1793, 2nd enl. and corr. ed. 3 vols. London: he went across Texas to San Antonio, and through J. Murray. Description: illus., fold. table; 23 cm. Other Mexico to Acapulco. Via Guam, the Philippines, sources give 1792–1793 as the years of publication Bombay, Iraq and Palestine he returned to Marseilles of this edition. Description: xx, 300; xii, 268; xxiv, and re-entered the navy in 1772. [4], 303. This description is based on scans from He described this journey in the first volume of the Hathitrust site and from ‘Eighteenth century his Voyage autour du monde (1782). The second vol- Collections online’; the third volume was not reprinted ume describes a journey with a Dutch whaler to but is actually part of the first edition. As I have been Spitsbergen, with details on whaling and the biology unable to locate a copy of volume 3 with “second edi- of the whale, and the second unsuccessful voyage to tion” or the year 1793 on the title page, I suspect that the South Pole of Yves Joseph de Kerguelen-Tremarec the three-volume sets of the second edition are in fact (1734-1797), who was looking for the great southern made up of the revised vols 1 and 2, while vol.