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CSIRO PUBLISHING www.publish.csiro.au/journals/hras Historical Records of Australian Science, 2006, 17, 283–300 Reviews Compiled by Libby Robin Centre for Resource and Environmental Studies (CRES), Australian National University, Canberra, ACT 0200, Australia. Email: [email protected] Hugh Tyndale-Biscoe: Life of Marsupials. Marsupials as a scientist who also has to CSIRO Publishing: Melbourne, 2005. deal with public opinion, public policy and 464 pp., full colour illustrations, answer media enquiries. This is a parallel ISBN: 0643091998 (PB), $69.95, universe to the more academic atmosphere 0643062572 (HB), $99.95. of CSIRO, where Tyndale-Biscoe worked. Life of Marsupials is a remarkable book. It However, both reflect the major historical is a brilliant act of individual scholarship shifts in the attitudes to Australia’s marsu- and a crowning achievement of a research pial fauna over the last 50 years –– the career on this fabulous group of animals. period in which the conservation paradigm Hugh Tyndale-Biscoe has been a long- grew from obscurity to a major public term supporter of telling the story of Aus- policy matter in contemporary Australia. tralia’s marsupials and a regular and active Tyndale-Biscoe has not written an argu- participant at the annual meetings of the mentative text in Life of Marsupials, but Australian Mammal Society. It was in that has concentrated on producing an encyclo- non-hierarchical environment in the mid paedic work of excellence. Tyndale-Biscoe 1970s that I first met him. He was one of grew up in an era of the ascendancy of the many generous members of senior encyclopaedists, where a careful filtering CSIRO staff that took a keen interest in of knowledge and new ideas was the those taking their first toe-hold in the disci- cornerstone of good scholarship. He may pline. Such thoughtful mentoring remains be the last of his kind in Australian mamm- vividly with those who have been helped, alogy. At the July 2003 meeting of the and Tyndale-Biscoe’s book reflects the care Australian Mammal Society, I asked him and thoughtfulness in its interpretation of why he was approaching this great task as the works of others. His contribution is a single author, rather than editing a worthy of a text on its own, but such volume with others in related disciplines. historically skilled biographies of Austral- He replied that he was attracted to the idea ian scientists are rare. of one mind sifting through all the material The intent in this review is to look at the to come up with a unified text. book in contexts other than that of a mar- There is a tacit assumption in Life of supial biologist, even though zoology is Marsupials that the reader can identify a how I earn my living, endeavouring to marsupial. The opening etching (p. 1) of an manage our marsupial fauna. I therefore American opossum by Buffon in 1749 is also inhabit the research science world, in captivating, although it does look like a rat which I have known Tyndale-Biscoe for with a pouch. The first figure, Fig. 1.1 30 years, mainly in the constructive (p. 6), is a diagram of the uterus and environment of the annual scientific meet- genital ducts. We rely on the photos on the ings of the Australian Mammal Society. front cover of the book to give the The approach here is to look at Life of non-specialist reader a clue as to what a © Australian Academy of Science 200610.1071/HR06009 0727-3061/06/020283 284 Historical Records of Australian Science, Volume 17 Number 2 marsupial looks like until we reach the fierce battle of ideas. However, his occa- useful set of plates in the middle of the sional lapses are most revealing. Under the book. The author’s enthusiasm for the heading of ‘Remaking the thylacine?’, the inner workings of marsupials appears in author deals with the technical obstacles of chapter 1 and remains the dominant theme ‘the idea that a thylacine might be resur- for the book. Tyndale-Biscoe’s condensa- rected from the DNA stored in museum tion of this material is masterful, nearly specimens’. Already, in the word ‘resur- free of the frustrations and blind alleys, rected’, one sees the writer’s answer to the and the often idiosyncratic style of the question posed by the sub-heading. In his original researchers’ papers. The process penultimate sentence to this segment, he of science is more interesting than the final concludes that thylacine resurrection is answers, as the yet-to-be-written history of ‘squandering limited resources that would Australian mammalogy will show. How- be far better used to ensure that other ever, one version of such a history will not species of marsupial, still alive today, do be enough. The personalities of the players not go the way of the thylacine’ are too diverse to be captured by one (pp. 161–2). scholar. The same could be said for the Let us suppose that in another 32 years politics of the way science has been con- this current edition of Life of Marsupials ducted in Australia, within the CSIRO, the will be the benchmark of our knowledge of universities, and state and federal govern- the beginning of this century. Only the ment departments with their responsi- very oldest reader will know what Tyndale- bilities to manage marsupials as pests, Biscoe was talking about. This edition’s threatened species, icons or extinct segment on the thylacine did not carry species. In the 1973 edition, the author left even one academic reference to any the subject to the last chapter, 18 of the specific program to ‘reconstitute’ the total 228 pages. In the 2005 edition, it was thylacine, unlike the rest of the book, also a final chapter, now 17 of 384 pages, which is academically thorough. This i.e. proportionally smaller, although ele- ments of the text elsewhere hold opinions looks like a segment that is pure specula- on problems and solutions. If Tyndale- tion, but in fact the lack of reference is a Biscoe’s book is successful at encouraging coy omission. He must be referring to further scholarship, then in another Michael Archer’s thylacine program, espe- 32 years, a single book will not be able to cially when Archer was Director of the cope with the volume, complexity and Australian Museum. (See, for example, diversity of the subject. Some of the diver- M. Archer, ‘Confronting crises in conser- sity did escape from him in this edition, vation’, in D. Lunney and C. Dickman particularly in the areas of wildlife (eds) A Zoological Revolution, Mosman, management, the ethics of research on RZSNSW, 2002, pp. 12–52.) Archer marsupials, and marsupials as pests himself uses the term ‘resurrect’, and [although the brushtail possum in New added that ‘it is clearly not an alternative to Zealand gains a detailed mention (p. 264), traditional conservation strategies –– if and he does not shrink from endorsing anything, quite the reverse’. In the ultimate culling of overabundant koala populations sentence in the thylacine segment where (pp. 237–8)]. Tyndale-Biscoe notes: ‘But dreams are Life of Marsupials is as unbiased as one more powerful than less spectacular and could hope for in any text. This sets far more achievable goals’, it seems that Tyndale-Biscoe apart from many current both Tyndale-Biscoe and Archer are really researchers and writers who enjoy the saying the same thing. Review Section 285 Such dreams are a catalyst for change, biologists who share much with Tyndale- and Tyndale-Biscoe is equally a dreamer, Biscoe in their fascination with marsupial with this book being a modern dream biology. Both Dickman and Close focus on following a period of widespread marsu- the 1973 edition of the book and both pial extinction. On the last page of Life of acknowledge their deep debt to this timely Marsupials, the author points to the value first edition. Their praise remains undimin- of knowing the biology of marsupials as a ished for this new edition, and both note means for assisting with their conserva- that the great increase in the intervening tion: ‘if we knew better how marsupials 32 years reflects the growth in the subject. survived for so long and why they died out Tyndale-Biscoe’s 1973 edition helped so rapidly, we might know better how to propel that growth. This new edition will live in this country for the long term’ do the same. (p. 384). No scholar has any argument with Daniel Lunney that proposition, but the history of the Department of Environment and Conservation timetable of change to our environment Sydney Editor, Australian Zoologist does not allow for scholarship to be the sole source of conservation policy. If the book had been written by most other biolo- R. W. Home, A. M. Lucas, Sara Maroske, gists, it would more likely have been D. M. Sinkora, J. H. Voigt and Monika entitled Extinction of Marsupials. Tyndale- Wells (eds): Regardfully Yours, Selected Biscoe’s ambition of a scholarship-led Correspondence of Ferdinand von Mueller, recovery of our marsupial fauna took a Volume III: 1876–1896. Peter Lang: Bern, heavy blow with the recent demise of the 2006. 909 pp., illus., ISBN: 3906757102 CSIRO Division that nurtured him for so (HB). many decades. At the annual scientific meetings of the Australian Mammal …the Right honourable the Secretary of Society in the 1970s, 1980s, and some of State will kindly consider, that I have made the study of plants of all Australia an object the 1990s, the contingent from CSIRO of life, that I have sacrificed for it nearly all Division of Wildlife and Ecology was most that is dear to us in the world, and that it is formidable.

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