Carl L. Hubbs (1894-1979): Collection Builder Extraordinaire

Made in United States of America Reprinted from COLLECTION BUILDING IN ICHTHYOLOGY AND HERPETOLOGY 19 C Copyright, 1997, by The American Society of Ichthyologists and Herpetologists

ROBERT RUSH MILLER AND ELIZABETH N. SHOR

INTRODUCTION veniences, from that time on Hubbs had a lifelong interest Carl Leavitt Hubbs (1894-1979) became a world-recognized in the relict fishes of the intermontane western United authority on the systematics and ecology of fishes, and was States. a 20th-century example of the complete naturalist (Norris, After graduating from Stanford (B.A., 1916; M.A., 1917), 1974; Shor et al., 1987; Figure 1). Born in Arizona, he was Hubbs became assistant curator in charge of fishes, amphib- raised in California, with family moves from San Diego to ians, and reptiles at the Field Museum of Natural History in the Los Angeles area to the Central Valley. According to his Chicago from 1917 to 1919; the next year he became curator own reminiscences, he became an enthusiast of natural his- of the Division of Fishes at the University of Michigan Mu- tory at a very young age, in the usual manner of his day; seum of Zoology (UMMZ). His Ph.D. was awarded by that that is, by exploring the open countryside and learning the university in 1927, on the basis of his publication record, local fauna by happenstance.' His maternal grandmother let from which one of his manuscripts in press was selected as him share in her moderately large private shell collection, his dissertation.' He advanced to full professor in 1940. At which may have been his introduction to the joy of collect- Michigan he increased the collection of fishes tremendously ing. A high-school teacher urged him to become a chemist, and created a system for cataloging them. His more impor- but at Los Angeles Junior College George Bliss Culver (once tant researches there were on hybridization of fishes in na- a field assistant to the pre-eminent ichthyologist David Starr ture and on the effect of water temperature on morphological Jordan) gave Hubbs one preserved minnow from nearby variation in fishes. He did considerable work on systematics, Malibu Creek, from which no freshwater fishes had been distribution, and habits, with the greatest emphasis on a large previously recorded. On the pretense of failing eyesight, he order of small fishes, the freshwater cyprinodontiforms. requested that Hubbs make the scale counts needed to iden- Hubbs published a great many papers and supervised many tify the fish. Hubbs and Culver went on to study the fishes students. of the Los Angeles basin, and Culver encouraged his student In 1944, Hubbs accepted an appointment as professor at to go to Stanford University and work under Jordan (Norris, the Scripps Institution of Oceanography, University of Cal- 1974:587). Thus was Hubbs's future in ichthyology deter- ifornia, in La Jolla, California. There he expanded his stud- mined. ies of fishes much more extensively to marine species, in- Hubbs did attend Stanford, where his mentor was primar- creased the institution's collection tremendously, went on ily Charles Henry Gilbert, while Jordan, President of the publishing (to a total of 707 titles), and continued to teach University, was away much of the time on missions of world and supervise students. A major new study area for him peace. During his college years, Hubbs collected salaman- was Baja California and its offshore islands, which led him ders for a biological supply house, accompanied by fellow into researches on past climates, paleoecology, archeology, student Frances Clark; her sister, a mathematics major at and marine mammals Hubbs stayed at Scripps Institution Stanford, joined in one of those forays and so Carl got ac- until his death; even after reaching emeritus status he con- quainted with Laura Clark, who in 1918 became his wife tinued his researches and publications. He was an active and partner for the next 61 years. participant in natural-history organizations in the San Di- Also, while at Stanford, he accompanied John Otterbein ego area and provided appropriate specimens to their col- Snyder in the summer of 1915 on a 70-day, 3,500-mile lections. automobile trip to survey the fishes of the Bonneville Basin Carl Hubbs was an intense person when collecting was to in Utah. In a lively talk to the Zoology Club at Stanford be done. Outdoors he was oblivious to time, hunger, his own on 9 February 1916, he described that trip as going from physical limits, the weariness of colleagues, and the stench "Heaven to Hell"—Heaven being "the unsurpassed view of stranded and decaying marine mammals. Some colleagues . . . [of] the blue-black waters of Lake Tahoe" when they saw him doze in scientific meetings, but they also heard him crossed the Sierra Nevada, and "Blue Hell- being the ask penetrating questions many times—and any of them "miles of that fine white alkaline lake deposit" on the road would have been hard pressed to keep up with him in the beyond Elko, Nevada.2 Whatever the discomforts or incon- field. 367

368 COLLECTION BUILDING IN ICHTHYOLOGY AND HERPETOLOGY

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THE UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN pep • t — When Carl Hubbs was appointed to the staff of the Univer- Remarhm sity of Michigan in 1920, the Museum of Zoology (UMMZ) Catalogued by• (. VIII Au was housed in the ancient Romance Languages Building. Farm 2120 11-33 51,1 (over) The entire fish collection, obtained from early state biological surveys, the United States Fish Commission, Museum Figure 2. An example of Carl L. Hubbs's index cards, front and back. expeditions, and local donors, comprised about 5,000 spec- Photograph courtesy of the Museums Library, University of Michigan, Ann imens stored on a table some 20 feet long. His only ichthy- Arbor. ological associates were Professor Jacob Reighard, Chair- man of the Zoology Department, and Walter Koelz who was studying the whitefishes of the Great Lakes region. Working In addition, the cataloged collection was cross-referenced by closely with Museum Director Alexander Ruthven, who sub- geographic regions (states of the U.S., foreign countries, sequently served as chairman of his doctoral committee, Oceania, etc.) with each catalog number entered on the ap- Hubbs immediately began vigorous collecting in Michigan propriate card. Thus it was easy to compile a list of fishes and eastern United States, putting up with inadequate storage from a specific region. The major uncataloged accessions space in various buildings until the University Museums were also cross-referenced for ready access, and all collec- Building that now houses the Museum of Zoology was com- tions received (including loans, etc.) were indexed alpha- pleted in 1928. His careful and aggressive planning assured betically by sender (individual names or institutions). Iden- adequate space in this building for the development of a tified specimens not retained at UMMZ were also indexed major collection in the Division of Fishes. by group numbers and species. Hubbs was always deeply Early on, Hubbs devised an innovative and highly effec- concerned about the care, maintenance, and utility of collec- tive cataloging system utilizing 65 group numbers arranged tions, and vigorously sought and obtained reliable specimen phylogenetically, with individual numbers that included containers in which the fishes were stored in approximately from a family to an order, depending on the size of the 70% ethanol. group. Species index cards (Figure 2) were prepared for ev- Expeditions (Figure 3), gifts, exchanges, purchases, and ery cataloged lot, and a sturdy label with basic data was simple begging contributed to the rapid build-up of the col- placed inside each jar (along with a stamped tin tag bearing lection. Hubbs also frequently offered to identify fishes for the catalog number), with this information also entered in colleagues and federal and state organizations, with retention catalog books. These records were maintained by a full-time of adequate numbers at UMMZ for this service. An addi- cataloger. Each species was housed in a separate box on the tional approach used by Hubbs was to leave jars with for- storage shelves. These methods made material easy to find. malin at hatcheries, with ranchers or interested friends met MILLER AND SHOR: CARL L. HUBBS: COLLECTION BUILDER EXTRAORDINAIRE 369

Figure 3. The expedition leader poses with the truck donated by Genera Figure 4. Hubbs (seated in center) enjoys a laboratory visit on his trip Motors Corporation for a trip from Michigan to the Pacific coast, 1926 to Japan, 1929. On his left may be his assistant, Kiyomatsu Sakamoto, who Photograph courtesy of the Museums Library, University of Michigan, Ann changed his surname to Matsubara and became a leading ichthyologist in Arbor. Asia. Photograph courtesy of the Scripps Institution of Oceanography Ar- chives. in the field, along with instructions to preserve anything unusual. Thus were the first specimens of a new species of of Washington and the University of Michigan, Hubbs spent trout (Salmo apache [= Oncorhynchus apache]) obtained three months in Guatemala, concentrating on the remote from northern Arizona. tropical lowland region of Petal, the largely unexplored During the summer of 1928, he spent two months in Cam- northern third of the country. Much of the exploration was bridge, Massachusetts, going over the fish collection at the by dugout canoe powered by an outboard motor (Figure 5). Museum of Comparative Zoology. Through the cooperation Travel was arduous, especially when dragging the canoe up- of Director Thomas Barbour, he was able to obtain the valu- stream over numerous rapids, with the attendant loss of time able gift of 3,856 specimens, including types of 60 species. bringing the food supply close to exhaustion. The rigors of He was also gratified to acquire some books and reprints such hardy field work, with constant exposure to afflictions from Barbour for his personal library. common to the tropics, never slowed Hubbs down—his en- Hubbs's first major field trip outside of the United States ergy and stamina seemed boundless. He returned from Gua- was in connection with the IVth meeting of the Pacific Sci- temala with nearly 30,000 specimens taken in 138 stations, ence Congress in 1929 in Java. Following the meeting he with two field books crammed with observations entered on collected in that area and went on to Japan. During five 421 pages. These notes give detailed descriptions of life col- months he accumulated five tons of specimens, totaling ors, sexual dimorphism, niche requirements, abundance, about 45,000 fishes in 8,000 lots. The Japanese collection is general habitat, behavior, and numerous ecological parame- outstanding in both marine and freshwater fishes, some of ters. In later years, on trips in the United States, and when which are now known to be rare, endangered, or extinct. During this trip Carl visited many fishery stations and ichthyological laboratories (Figure 4), repeatedly admiring par- ticular species, an act that by Japanese tradition required that the specimens be donated to the admirer! In 1930, he originated and served as first director (1930- 1935) of the Institute for Fisheries Research (IFR) of the Michigan Conservation Department, then housed in the Mu- seums Building. The subsequent long-term program of biological inventories of the lakes and streams by the IFR provided abundant material and needed information on the distribution and ecology of the Michigan fish fauna. During the same period as his directorship of the IFR, he was also Ichthyological Editor of Copeia, the quarterly journal of the American Society of Ichthyologists and Herpetol- ogists. Hubbs's capacity for work was extraordinary, for his work was his hobby. For years he routinely was at the office on weekends. His day at the office typically started by 7:30 a.m. and often lasted until well after midnight. Figure 5. Traveling on Lake Petenzil, Guatemala, 1935. Photograph cour- In 1935, on a joint expedition by the Carnegie Institution tesy of the Scripps Institution of Oceanography Archives. 370 COLLECTION BUILDING IN ICHTHYOLOGY AND HERPETOLOGY

Figure 7. Carl with his trusty .22 near Lehman Caves, Nevada, 1938. Figure 6. Laura and Carl dragging the net in Nevada, 1934 (where were Photograph courtesy of the Scripps Institution of Oceanography Archives. the kids?). Photograph courtesy of the Scripps Institution of Oceanography Archives. high stakes in those times. Fortunately for them he was a at Scripps Institution of Oceanography, his notes were fre- taxonomic splitter! quently recorded in meticulous detail by his wife Laura. Fifteen of the 115 collections made during the 1938 sur- In 1936, the Museum of Zoology entered into a cooper- vey were devoted exclusively to lizards, snakes, frogs, toads, ative agreement with the United States Government's Ten- snails, and insects. The lizards and snakes were captured by nessee Valley Authority (TVA) to identify the fishes taken using dust shot in a .22 rifle. The habit of saving every by TVA personnel during their biological surveys (chiefly organism caught by net and of observing and collecting her- from 1936-1943) in the Tennessee River basin. Nearly petological and archeological material greatly enhanced the 50,000 specimens were thus added to the cataloged collec- biological value of the field work. Recently it helped to solve tion at UMMZ. the question, in some youthful minds, whether a frog dis- Hubbs's interest in desert fishes that began on his trip to covered in the 1980s in Railroad Valley, Nevada, was pos- the Bonneville Basin of Utah with John Otterbein Snyder in sibly a new species. When the Hubbs party collected there 1915 continued after his arrival at the University of Michi- in 1934 and 1938, no frogs were seen: clear-cut evidence gan. With his family and others, he made collecting trips to that the recent find was suspect. Subsequent to its discovery, the intermontane basins during the summers of 1934 (Figure allozyme analysis of specimens demonstrated that this frog 6), 1938, and 1942. Those collections amassed over 118,000 could not be distinguished from a frog from the Sierra Ne- specimens from 305 stations in the Great Basin and adjoin- vada, California, from where the Nevada stock had most ing deserts. likely been introduced (Miller et al., 1992). In 1937, when I (RRM) was a junior at Berkeley, I re- Aquatic habitats in the Nevada desert were often so few ceived a letter from Carl Hubbs, who had learned of my and far between that Carl stopped frequently to shoot series interest in desert fishes from a colleague in California. We of herpetological specimens (Figure 7), in order to ease his began a correspondence that led to my joining Carl and his frustration at having to go so long between fishing stations. family during July and August on their 1938 Great Basin Although breakfast almost invariably came at the same expedition. time each day (namely, at first light in the desert), Carl What an eye-opener that summer was! I quickly learned thought nothing of collecting until after midnight. Thus that collecting had priority over all else, that the excitement "dinner" sometimes came after that hour, frequently not un- of exploring unknown waters left little time for eating or til well after dark, with lunch commonly eaten between 2 sleeping (5-6 hours was typical), that nothing in the natural and 4 p.m. scene escaped Carl's remarkable eye, and that Laura Hubbs Even as early as 1937, the collection at UMMZ had al- (as tireless as her husband) was absolutely essential to the ready grown so rapidly, with a huge backlog of yet-to-be success of the entire operation. In order to avoid loss of identified material, that Hubbs wrote in his annual report to daylight hours for field work, Carl would get up as early as the Director of the Museum: "The time is surely approach- 0415 hours to wrap fish collections for shipment back to ing when it will be necessary either to put on the brakes, or UMMZ. to be relieved by increases in staff, current budget, office To keep his three children (Frances, Clark, and Earl) hap- and laboratory rooms, and range space." As we were to py under often trying field conditions, Carl had established learn later, "putting on the brakes" was not a method fa- an "allowance" for them in 1934: five cents apiece for each vored by Hubbs! species collected, one dollar for a new species or subspecies, Nurtured at Stanford in the David Starr Jordan school of and five dollars for new genera or subgenera. Those were ichthyology (see Brittan, 1997), which held that hybridiza- MILLER AND SHOR: CARL L. HUBBS: COLLECTION BUILDER EXTRAORDINAIRE 371 tion between fish species was rare or nonexistent, Hubbs, with his remarkable taxonomic eye, determined that hybridization among north temperate freshwater fishes was not unusual. Working at Michigan on experimental hybridization with sunfishes, Carl and Laura were able to produce hybrids that had been collected in the field and thus to untangle taxonomic confusion in that family. Several nominal species were shown to be based on such hybrids. The University of Michigan has the world's largest collection of natural fish hybrids. There are 19,750 specimens in 1,470 lots, representing 157 crosses in 17 families, that were identified largely by Hubbs, his students, and colleagues. These were sum- marized by Hubbs (1955) in his classic paper on hybridization. During his Michigan years from 1920 to 1944, Carl Hubbs, with his family, students, friends, and colleagues collected 530,599 specimens in 19,046 lots. When he left for California in August 1944, the UMMZ fish collection had grown from 5,000 to 1,705,197 specimens in 90,100 lots. An additional estimated 250,000 unidentified specimens in the backlog yielded a total approaching two million His tremendous publication record (Miller, 1981) put added pres- sure on administrators for increased storage space for collections and better facilities at Michigan and at Scripps In- stitution.

SCRIPPS INSTITUTION OF OCEANOGRAPHY In 1944, at age 50, Carl Hubbs accepted an appointment as Professor of Biology at Scripps Institution of Oceanography. He immediately began planning for his new collections. On 17 August 1944, he wrote to Harald U. Sverdrup,4 then Di- rector of Scripps, while both of them were awaiting approval by the Regents of the University of California for the appointment: It is premature to seek your advice and decision on certain Figure 8. The new professor at work in his already cluttered office at administrative points, but time has advanced so far. . . . I Scripps Institution, October 1944. Photograph courtesy of the Scripps Insti am assuming that facilities would not be available either tution of Oceanography Archives. at Scripps or Berkeley, at least for a considerable time, for the storage of large series of specimens, and that I would need to make some arrangements for cooperation for storage of large series of specimens but a post-war with institutions that do have these facilities. I have reason building program is under development and there is rea- to think that such cooperation could be worked out with son to hope that we may obtain such facilities shortly after Stanford, with the California Academy, with the Univer- the end of the war. I am rather certain that facilities are sity of Michigan, and with the National Museum. The not available at UCLA but possibly at Berkeley. I wish, cooperation would involve the storage of new material therefore, to suggest that you, as soon as possible, ex- collected, with the privilege of borrowing segments at a amine the possibilities at Berkeley and if these are not time for study at Scripps; or of going to the stored col- adequate contact the California Academy of Sciences; but lections for temporary periods of study. I would like rea- any other arrangements will also be satisfactory. sonably soon to be making preliminary overtures on such Sverdrup stayed at Scripps Institution long enough to es- cooperation, and would therefore need advice as to wheth- tablish the new building program before returning to Norway er the University of California or Scripps would have any in 1947, but not long enough to recognize the outcome of special preferences or prejudices regarding such cooper- his promise to Carl Hubbs. As soon as the new Professor of ative arrangements, either in general or with any of the Biology began work at Scripps Institution in October of institutions mentioned. 1944 (Figure 8), he began collecting specimens, which he Sverdrup replied on 21 August 1944:5 kept at Scripps. Six months later he commented in a seminar that, even while collecting had been curtailed by wartime You are right in your assumption that we have no facilities gasoline rationing, he and Laura had collected 107 species 372 COLLECTION BUILDING IN ICHTHYOLOGY AND HERPETOLOGY

Figure 9. An early collecting trip at Scripps Institution of Oceanography Laura (always carrying the notebooks) on left, Carl pointing, Elizabeth Kam- pa on right (and an unidentified pipe smoker behind Laura). Photograph Figure 10. Watching the midwater trawl come aboard the Scripps ship courtesy of the Scripps Institution of Oceanography Archives. HORIZON, April 1951. From left: A. A. Allanson, Wheeler North, Hubbs, and Gordon Tucker. Photograph courtesy of the Scripps Institution of Oceanog- raphy Archives. of fishes (Figure 9), several of them rare and a few new ones 6 to be named. The collection of fishes at Scripps Institution when Hubbs Took a Macropinna-like fish at 1100 meters in 2400 fath- arrived there was a small one accumulated by the curator of oms / Small fins and entirely flat belly with forward pro- the Aquarium, Percy S. Barnhart. According to Sam Hinton jecting foot suggesting attachment a-la remora / Shall I (personal communication, 1988), who succeeded Barnhart, keep him? / He is not very large / Hauls medium to ex- specimens in bottles were part of the display for visitors in cellent (Shor, 1978:61). the museum portion of the combined Library-Museum Hubbs answered: "Bring fish back or don't come back your- Building. Hubbs began storing specimens in the area near self" (Shor, 1978: 61). Without having seen the specimen, his office in the campus's first building, Scripps Building. he radioed again to Isaacs a few days later: As part of that "postwar building program," a new Aquar- ium-Museum was built in 1950, into which Barnhart's col- Macropinna-like fish apparently Opisthoproctus I New for lection was moved. Pacific / One of rarest and strangest types / Two species By 1948, Hubbs was running out of space; in his divi- in Atlantic / Other captures obviously unusual and excit- sional report that year he noted as one of the outstanding ing / Wish I could see them come in / Good luck (Shor, needs: "More space and better facilities for the study col- 1978:61). lection of fishes."7 In that year the Marine Life Research The midwater trawl became a standard oceanographic Program had come into existence, and its monthly expedi- tool, and Hubbs himself frequently used it on expeditions tions on a grid of stations throughout 670,000 square miles (Figure 10). He also urged its use at sea for opportunistic within the California Current region were bringing in great collecting on the many oceanographic expeditions by quantities of data, invertebrates, and fishes. Much of the ma- Scripps scientists. terial had to be stored away from the Scripps campus, on Fish collecting was carried out by many at Scripps, at Navy property at Point Loma in San Diego where the Hubbs's urging. His own graduate students gathered speci- Scripps ships were also berthed. Hubbs began advocating mens, and the increasing group of scuba divers at Scripps "that provisions be made for a curator of fishes and a curator "8 brought in more. Fishermen, both sport and commercial, oc- of invertebrates, each preferably with an assistant. . . . casionally presented unusual specimens to him. Hubbs him- The Marine Life Research Program was responsible for self collected on some sea trips, especially near the islands creating a great deal of new oceanic equipment, including a off Baja California. He also continued his collecting of des- high-speed plankton sampler, a trap for catching floating ert fishes on occasional trips after his move to Scripps In- fish-larvae, and the Isaacs-Kidd Midwater Trawl. Hubbs an- stitution, but those specimens went mostly to the University nounced with delight that the trawl opened a whole new of Michigan. region of the ocean to collecting. Actually, the trawl, created Of the graduate students and associates who joined Hubbs by Scripps engineers John D. Isaacs and Lewis W. Kidd, in collecting in the field, Ken Norris (1974:582) described provided a larger net that could be towed at depth at slow "collection-sorting time": speeds, more effectively than other deep-collecting devices of the time. Isaacs operated it on Northern Holiday Expe- . . . out came the trays, the notebooks, the scalpels, the dition in the northern Pacific in August 1951, and radioed calipers and the magnifying head loups. . . Hubbs and to Hubbs: his equally indefatigable wife Laura—and the gaggle of MILLER AND SHOR: CARL L. HUBBS: COLLECTION BUILDER EXTRAORDINAIRE 373

students still capable of self-discipline—started sorting. portant criteria of collections to him. So, in the field he pre- While Mrs. Hubbs carried out the time-honored recording served even the succulent halibut and bass that his assistants methods that they had developed over the years, the pro- would have enjoyed eating. In the office he wrote memo- fessor counted, slit, sorted, measured and argued over ev- randa pleading for more space:" ery last fish down to the tiniest liparid or clinid that could We have never found it possible to properly organize the be found clinging to the kelp fragments . . . he also re- collection, so as to make the material decently available. quired that every fish caught be pickled. We students, . . . The material is so jammed in the basement of the knowing the succulence of halibut and bass, watched rue- Aquarium-Museum that keeping it in order is extremely fully as large series passed into formalin (more, we difficult. Time and time again we have wasted a great deal thought, than was at all necessary for science). of time locating material we needed, and often failed to In his later research years, Hubbs was keenly interested locate it at all in the time available. in trying to resolve the taxonomy of the hagfishes. He urged He won a larger battle. Hubbs's efforts resulted in storage colleagues around the world to collect specimens for him space for several Scripps Institution collections: fishes, in- from their area or from expeditions in which they were par- vertebrates, and seafloor cores. Positions as curators for these ticipating. He amassed a tremendous number of hagfishes were created in the late 1950s, with Richard H. Rosenblatt and fully intended to describe many new species; some of appointed as curator of the Vertebrate Collection at Scripps that material is being used today in papers by Robert L. in 1958. He brought together all the scattered material, in- Wisner and colleagues. cluding the specimens that had been collected by Barnhart, Soon after arriving at Scripps Institution, Hubbs put grad- and all of the vast materials that had been accumulated by uate students to work on maintaining the growing collection. Hubbs. Space was provided for the vertebrate collection in The first was Boyd W. Walker, who transferred to Scripps a new wing of Ritter Hall, completed in 1960. Because of from the University of Michigan when Hubbs moved; the Hubbs's acquisitiveness, the appointment of a curator, and second was Kenneth S. Norris. Students under Hubbs's tu- the success of the institution's expeditions, the fish collection telage put in long hours. at Scripps has become one of the largest in the world, con- Norris outlined the space problem on 15 December 1952 taining well over 1,200,000 specimens. Of these, Hubbs is in a memo to Hubbs, who was spending several months at 9 estimated to have collected approximately 350,000 speci- the University of Michigan: mens. Even with the new shelves (considerable space is sup- Throughout his years at Scripps, before visiting any other posed to be allotted to Invertebrate Zoology and they have museum, Hubbs prepared a list of the specimens there that samples from 40+ cruises to be stored amounting to about he intended to see, for his own studies and for those of his 6,000 quart jars+ for the MLR cruises plus materials from current students. Accompanied by Laura, he settled in at the the mid-water trawl, and [Elbert Halvor] Ahlstrom is hav- collection to count and measure every specimen of the ing trouble with the Fire Marshall at Pt. Loma for bottles groups on his list. No wonder a colleague commented that stored in the hall, and Dr. [Martin W] Johnson's office is "his visits to scientific institutions have left behind him now full of jars) the problem will be only briefly solved. many an exhausted colleague" (Shor et al., 1987: 237). Each new bit of work that is done will bring us closer to Besides fishes, Hubbs gathered another significant collec- the point of "no space." Every collection labeled and tion while at Scripps Institution: the evidence and remains sorted expands several times in space requirements. . . . I of aboriginal cultures in southern California and Baja Cali- see no probability nor do I suggest a reduction in col- fornia, Mexico. Among his lifelong interests were long-term lecting effort. . . . The size of the collection is now such changes in climate and the distribution of fishes that had that checking alcohol levels is a major job. survived in isolated desert locations after the much wetter Pleistocene Epoch. He frequently visited the arid regions of Norris suggested that specimens of the commoner species the western United States, from which he often gathered ev- could be discarded: "I can't see what we can do with 25 idences of human habitation, especially in the area of the gallons of Chromis from Scripps Canyon, for example. . . . Salton Sea in California. In 1948, he began studies in Baja Perhaps it would be possible to discard a large quantity of California, where he recorded ocean temperatures monthly duplicate material, such as the vast series of Top Smelt and at 61 locations along 225 miles (Figure 11). Whenever he Grunion and Alizarin-stained anchovies." Norris (1974: found evidence of aboriginal culture, such as shell middens, 584) later recalled this incident, in reference to the topsmelt he excavated the site in detail. Back at his laboratory, the (Atherinops affinis), and said that Hubbs "gruffly dismissed material was sorted to species of mollusks, bone fragments, the idea with the comment that his series wasn't yet com- fish remains, manos, and other tool fragments, etc. Many of plete. Later I measured off 48 running meters of shelves these collections were dated by radiocarbon analysis, and the devoted to that single species." results appeared in a series of reports from the La Jolla Ra- This exemplifies Hubbs's attitude toward collections. As diocarbon Laboratory (Hubbs et al., 1965, and earlier ref- he had asked Sverdrup in 1944 about "the storage of large erences). In 1972, he gave all the collections of aboriginal series of specimens," his point of view as a taxonomist was material—several truckloads of bags and boxes—to the Mu- to have available many specimens in order to define the spe- seum of Man in San Diego, with his detailed field notes. He cies clearly.'° Completeness and accessibility were the im- was gratified to know that the museum promptly indexed 374 COLLECTION BUILDING IN ICHTHYOLOGY AND HERPETOLOGY

Smithsonian Institution, told one of us (RRM) that the beaked whales (Hubbs, 1946) sent by Hubbs to the United States National Museum were the finest prepared and best packed specimens ever received. This typified the thorough- ness with which Hubbs undertook everything in natural history. He and Laura, with some assistants, labored until after midnight for several days preparing the whales. In characteristic fashion, Carl submitted expenses only for the work of his assistants. A collection that was dear to his heart was his own personal library, which he began while a student at Stanford University. As was his attitude toward all collections, this one was to be used—by himself, by his students, and by his colleagues. He considered reprints very useful, even when he received the journal from which it came (reprints could be kept with the project in process). When one of his men- tors, Carl H. Eigenmann, died, Hubbs bought from his library the most significant works on fishes, some of which Eigenmann had bought from Albert C. L. G. Gunther in 1910. Hubbs served as review editor for American Naturalist from 1941 to 1947, and he entered all books received into his own library. At the time he moved from the University of Michigan to Scripps Institution in 1944, he wrote to Di- rector Sverdrup that his library contained 40,000 books and reprints, plus a large set of journals. In his later years, as his own collecting of fishes was reduced and the curatorship of the collection had passed to a younger colleague, and after the aboriginal collections had been transferred, his personal library became increasingly important to Hubbs. It was cataloged in an almost unique fashion: each item was given a Figure 11. The experienced team of Carl and Laura Hubbs on a temper- serial number; the card entry was to author, and was cross- ature run in Baja California, December 1954. Photograph courtesy of the indexed to co-author(s); full publication information was Scripps Institution of Oceanography Archives. given on each card entry. He may have adopted the serial numbering system from the ichthyologist whom he most re- and cross-referenced the material to make it available to re- vered: David Starr Jordan (Hubbs, 1964: 199), although Lau- searchers. ra Hubbs once told the junior author that she had set up the On what he called his "temperature runs" to Baja Cali- library filing system when Carl was on his long visit to Japan fornia, and on his trips at sea to offshore islands, Hubbs in 1929. Hubbs originally intended to create a subject file invited as many researchers to accompany him and Laura as for each entry, but he never managed to find the time—partly there was space available. Often included were scientists because the multitude of subjects in any publication was too from the San Diego Natural History Museum, because he much for his breadth of interests. Hubbs was delighted when served on its board for many years and always encouraged his office assistant (the junior author) told him that his cat- its research programs. At times he invited colleagues in var- aloged entries had passed 80,000; that was about a year be- ious fields from facilities other than Scripps Institution who fore he died. Carl and Laura Hubbs gave his library collec- had a special interest in the locale. In his opinion, whatever tion to Scripps Institution, where it is retained as a special collections were taken by those researchers belonged to collection. them. He also donated non-fish specimens—birds, reptiles, plants, rocks—regularly to appropriate museums. Colleagues appreciated his generosity, and often acknowledged that by POSTSCRIPT naming various fishes after him, as well as lichens, algae, mollusks, cave arthropods, insects, a crab, a bird, a whale, The following "Tribute to Carl L. Hubbs" was presented by and a dry lake. Robert Rush Miller at the Annual Meeting of the American Hubbs took a keen interest in marine mammals while at Society of Ichthyologists and Herpetologists, Orono, Maine, Scripps, and published significant papers on them, but he 30 July 1979. yielded to the problem of space involved in storing the skel- etal remains of stranded cetaceans. Those he measured in It is an honor and a privilege to be asked to say a few words detail, and then he interred the larger specimens (at defined about a man who became a legend in his own lifetime. Carl sites), or he gave the smaller specimens to other museums. Hubbs would not want this to be a sad occasion, for his life In 1945, Dr. Remington Kellogg, Curator of Mammals at the was filled with the joy of doing what excited him most- MILLER AND SHOR: CARL L. HUBBS: COLLECTION BUILDER EXTRAORDINAIRE 375

the study of natural history and especially of fishes. He was and his criticisms, severe but honest, often took the form of in love with his work and his life-work was his hobby. a long discourse or letter that left no stones unturned. But In 1937, I received a letter from Carl Hubbs who had he would not write anything in a letter that he would not heard from a colleague in California about a young man say to your face. interested in desert fishes. I was then a junior at Berkeley An important factor in his enormous productivity is the and had no real experience with collecting or with fishes role played by his wife. Laura Hubbs, a trained mathemati- other than Death Valley cyprinodonts. Eventually we ar- cian, not only assisted him in his research with formal col- ranged to meet in the Nevada desert in July 1936, and thus laboration on more than a dozen papers, but, more impor- was my future in ichthyology decided. tantly, she organized his life to relieve him of much of the When I arrived in Ann Arbor in August 1939, I found daily routine that so saps one's time and energy. This re- there were 18 other graduate students already working under markable team worked effectively together for some 60 Dr. Hubbs. Fourteen of these were working on their Ph.D.s. years. At first I was worried that he could not possibly have time In an appropriate, simple ceremony, Carl Hubbs was bur- to direct my research. Not so. His door was always open ied at sea off La Jolla on 6 July 1979. Even then, he had and he readily tolerated innumerable interruptions to counsel the last word, for the urn containing his ashes at first refused his students on a variety of problems from alpha taxonomy to sink. As my daughter said to me later, "I could not help to fishery management. but think how Grandpa must have chuckled to himself, say- Very few graduate students were married in those years ing 'even after death I am unsinkable!" and each Thanksgiving it was the tradition that all unmarried Although his passing leaves an enormous void it also cre- students be invited to the Hubbs's home for Thanksgiving ates a tremendous challenge for those who remain, to re- turkey. These affairs were always marked by great infor- double their efforts and continue the tradition of thorough mality and jovial friendliness. It was also traditional that we scientific inquiry that was so characteristic of this man. all, Hubbs included, play football in the vacant lot after this As a friend once said, Carl Hubbs is not really gone, he huge repast! is just away. And even then, not very far. Despite a prodigious outpouring of publications over a span of 65 years, Carl Hubbs was never able to even come close to a realistic estimate of the length of time it takes to get a job done. This, coupled with an insatiable interest in ACKNOWLEDGMENTS all aspects of natural history, resulted in the accumulation of great files of data representing stages in the preparation We thank the following for information and suggestions on the collecting and life of Carl L. Hubbs: Reeve M. Bailey, Clark Hubbs, and completion of innumerable manuscripts. This mortal Douglas W. Nelson, Richard H. Rosenblatt, Gerald R. Smith, and tendency, though perhaps developed to an extreme in Carl, H. J. Walker. We also thank Sam Hinton for permission to use his is what made him such a broad scientist. Thus his advice drawing. and help were sought by a vast host of people. He gave great encouragement to countless young workers and colleagues and his diversified publications inspired many. His correspondence was extensive, magnified by the habit NOTES of sending carbon copies to a wide circle of people interested in the same subject. His friends were legion. Carl and Lau- I Several manuscripts by Hubbs, of autobiographical talks that he gave in his late years, are in the Carl Leavitt Hubbs papers, Scripps Institution of ra's Christmas-card mailing list alone included more than Oceanography Archives, University of California at San Diego, La Jolla, 600 names and he always thoroughly enjoyed designing his (Hubbs Biographic). own cards. = Hubbs, "Zoology Club," unpublished manuscript, Carl Leavitt Hubbs He was always receptive to new ideas and utilized modern papers, Scripps Institution of Oceanography Archives (Western North Amer- tools and methods, but he deplored the fact that some work- ica freshwater: Great Basin: [Lake] Bonneville). ers were so intrigued with the newer tools that they over- ' Hubbs said in later years that, when asked about getting a Ph.D., he just waved his hand at his shelf of published papers and said, "Which one?" looked the fact that it is the whole living organism that we (Shor etal., 1987:221-222). The publication selected (Hubbs, 1926) had been classify, not just the data derived from specimens. submitted to American Naturalist at the time. He had an extraordinary taxonomic eye, discerning dif- ° Hubbs to Sverdrup, 17 August 1944, Carl Leavitt Hubbs papers, Scripps ferences far too subtle for many to see. This is the reason Institution of Oceanography Archives (Hubbs Biographic). why the collection of natural fish hybrids at Michigan is the 'Sverdrup to Hubbs, 21 August 1944, Carl Leavitt Hubbs papers, Scripps Institution of Oceanography Archives (Hubbs Biographic). largest anywhere—although his mentor, David Starr Jordan, "Ichthyological discoveries since coming to Scripps," presented at a disclaimed the existence of such hybrids! seminar at Scripps Institution, March 1945, manuscript in Carl Leavitt Hubbs Carl was an indefatigable collector. When he came to Ann papers, Scripps Institution of Oceanography Archives (Talks). Arbor in 1920 the entire fish collection was housed on a 4 Various reports and administrative letters outlining the needs of his di- x 30 foot table in the old museum building. From this mea- vision are in the Carl Leavitt Hubbs papers, Scripps Institution of Ocean- ography Archives (Scripps Institution: Marine Vertebrates Division). ger beginning of about 5,000 specimens he virtually single- s Ibid., undated memorandum. handedly built the collections up to nearly two million spec- 9 See note 7, above. imens by 1944. 1 0 See note 4, above. He did not tolerate shoddy work, in students or colleagues, 1 See note 7, above. 376 COLLECTION BUILDING IN ICHTHYOLOGY AND HERPETOLOGY

REFERENCES Hums, C. L., G. S. BIEN, and H. E. SUESS. 1965. La Jolla natural radiocarbon measurements IV. Radiocarbon, 7:66-117. BRITTAN, M. B. 1997. The Stanford school of ichthyology: Eighty MILLER, E H. 1981. The Scientific Publications of Carl Leavitt years from Jordan (1851-1931) to Myers (1905-1985). pp. 233- Hubbs: Bibliography and Index, 1915-1981. Hubbs-Sea World 263, In: T W. Pietsch and W. D. Anderson, Jr. (editors), Collec- Res. Inst., Spec. Publ., 1. tion Building in Ichthyology and Herpetology. Amer. Soc. Ichthy. MILLER, R. R., C. Hums, and E H. MILLER. 1992. Ichthyological Herp., Spec. Pub., 3. exploration of the American West: the Hubbs-Miller era, 1915- Hums, C. L. 1926. The structural consequences of modifications 1950. pp. 19-40, In: W. L. Minckley and J. E. Deacon (editors), of the developmental rate in fishes, considered in reference to Battle Against Extinction: Native Fish Management in the Amer- certain problems of evolution. Amer. Nat., 60:57-81. ican West. University of Arizona Press, Tucson, Arizona. NORRIS, K. S. 1974. To Carl Leavitt Hubbs, a modern pioneer nat- HUBBS, C. L. 1946. First records of two beaked whales, Mesoplo- uralist on the occasion of his eightieth year. Copeia, 1974 (3): don bowdoini and Ziphius cavirostris, from the Pacific coast of 581-594. the United States. J. Mamm., 27:242-255. SHOR, E. N. 1978. Scripps Institution of Oceanography: Probing Hums, C. L. 1955. Hybridization between fish species in nature. the Oceans, 1936-1976. Tofua Press, San Diego, California. Syst. ZooL, 4 (1):1-20. SHOR, E. N., R. H. ROSENBLATT, and J. D. ISAACS. 1987. Carl Leav- HUBBS, C. L. 1964. David Starr Jordan. Syst. Zoo!., 13 (4):195- itt Hubbs, 1894-1979. Biogra. Mem., Nat. Acad. Sci., 56:214— 200. 249.