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Book Reviews The Condor 89:446-4X 0 The Cooper Ornithological Society 1987 BOOK REVIEWS MARCY F. LAWTON, EDITOR Connie Hagar: The life history of a Texas birdwatch- Harry C. Oberholser, then gathering information for er.-Karen Harden McCracken. Texas A&M. Univer- his posthumously published The Bird Life of Texas, sity Press, College Station. xvi + 296 p. $18.95. Ludlow Griscom, leading authority on field identifi- This is the biography of a remarkable woman, an cation, and other experts were understandably skep- amateur who contributed substantiallyto ornithology tical of her many reports of birds far from their re- and conservation. Martha Conger Neblett, who later corded ranges, but nearly always she managed to became Connie Hagar, was born on 14 June 1886, in convince them of the accuracyof her identifications, Corsicana, Texas. From her father, an attorney and often by showing them the very birds whose presence mayor of the small town, she learned the names of in her part of Texas they doubted. native trees,shrubs, and wild flowers.Her mother iden- Mrs. Hagar published only articles in local news- tified the butterflies that frequented her flower garden. papersand periodicalsand short notesin ornithological At night she pointed out the constellations,not as first journals. The Checklistof Birds of the Central Coastof lessons in astronomy, but to teach her daughters to Texas, by Hagar and Packard, was written by Fred M. appreciatereferences to them in poetry and mythology. Packard, using Connie’s Nature Calendar. She is fre- Despite this early introduction to nature, music was quently mentioned in Peterson’s A Field Guide to the Connie’s chief interest. She early learned to play the Birds of Texns, especially in the list of accidentals. piano, and from Forest Park Collegein Saint Louis she Connie probably contributed more to ornithology and received a diploma in voice. Until an advanced age, conservationdirectly through her contactswith people she sangand played for churches. than through her writings. Until the infirmities of age After the dissolution of her first marriage, Connie overtook her, she continued to give frequent talks to returned to Corsicana and, with her younger sister, schools, local Audubon Societies, and other groups. became more interested in nature. They decided to She promoted conservationin Rockport, where a wild- learn the names ofconstellations,butterflies, wild flow- life sanctuarywas named for her. She received many ers, and all the birds in Navarro County. In 1923 the honors,including a plaquefrom the National Audubon sisters helped to organize a nature club which they Society. After a lingering illness, she died on 24 No- affiliated with the National Audubon Society. After vember 1973. marrying her secondhusband, Jack Hagar, when nearly Karen McCracken, herself a birdwatcher of wide ex- 40. Connie startedto band birds for the U.S. Biological perience, was long intimate with Connie Hagar. To Suivey. In 1928 she began, in a blank ledger that she gather information for this Boswellian biography of a found in the family library, a “Nature Calendar” which, woman as unique in her own way as Dr. Johnson was in a successionofmiscellaneous notebooks, often pock- in his, she spent two hours daily, five days a week for et-sized engagementbooklets, she would continue for a number of years, interviewing her subject,impressed more than 35 years, jotting down her daily observa- by Connie’s extraordinary memory. She also consulted tions, chiefly of birds; she kept no other records.Hand- the 25 volumes of the Nature Calendar, letters, news- icapped by lack of contactswith more advanced bird- paper clippings, and photographs.The result is a well- watchers, she did not use a binocular until given one written, leisurely story that endears an exceptionally by her husband when she was 48 years of age. dedicated birdwatcher. At times the year-by-year list- In the summer of 1933, Connie and her sister, both ing of the multitudes of migrants that passedthrough of whom sufferedfrom arthritis, went on their doctor’s Rockport or remained to nest tends to tire the reader advice to spend a month at Rockport, a resort village who has no prospect of seeing them; some of this in- on the Texas Coastal Bend. After a second visit the formation might have been condensed. Intimate following summer, Connie, enchanted by the abun- glimpsesof prominent ornithologistsand amusingep- dance of birds, wished to live there permanently and isodes enliven the narrative. A photographer, sent by study them. Readily agreeing, Jack Hagar bought Life magazineto take picturesfor a story about famous Rockport cottages-eight cabins with simple accom- amateur naturalists, was dismayed when Connie ap- modations for visitors. Thus, late in life, begana happy peared,ready to accompanyhim afield, attired asthough partnership of birdwatching wife and cabin-managing for a fashionabletea party. He thought that she should husband that was to continue until he died 27 years be roughly clad for the outdoors, but she assuredhim later. that shealways watched birds in conventional feminine As Connie’s competence in field identification in- dresses.After seeinga snapshotof herself in boots and creased and Rockport became famous as a spot for baggy denim trousers, she decided that birdwatching watching migrating birds and finding rarities, birders did not require “such desperatemeasures.” came in increasingnumbers. Among guestsat the Cot- Despite the lack of mathematics other than simple tages were many leaders in ornithology and conser- counting of birds, I recommend this book to orni- vation. Always generousof her time and eagerto learn thologists and birdwatchers. It shows how, without as well as to teach, Connie, on almost daily trips afield, shooting a single specimen but giving conscientious guided a successionof amateurs and professionals. attentionto field marks,and freely communicatingone ’s WI BOOK REVIEWS 441 knowledgeand enthusiasmto others, one can contrib- idea provides biology with its central theme, and bi- ute to a science that has been enriched by men and ologistswith their strongestreason for hoping that their women of diverse temperaments and approaches.- subject will eventually be comprehended among the ALEXANDER F. SKUTCH, Quizarra, 8000 San Isi- exact sciences. Especially after Fisher (1930) recon- dro de El General, Costa Rica. structed Darwin’s theory in terms of Mendelian ge- netics and showed that it was eminently reasonable, evolutionary theorists were anxious to test it further, Unfinished synthesis.-Niles Eldredge. 1985. Ox- and to explore its implications. Why does Eldredge ford University Press, New York. vii + 237 p. ISBN wish to displaceadaptation from the centerof the stage? o-19-503633-6. Eldredge believes (p. 184) that the origin of adap- In this book, Eldredge out!ines what he believes to tation is relatively well understood, and traces exclu- be the content of the “neoDarwinian synthesis”of evo- sively to natural selection within populations. As pa- lutionary theory, explains why he thinks it is incom- leontology deals with changesin higher levels of his plete, and suggestsremedies. To avoid setting up a hierarchies,the replacement of one phylad by another “straw man,” he begins bv discussinnthe four books and the like, Eldredge appears to conclude that pa- which, in his opinion, establishedthe synthesis,to wit, leontology cannot reveal anything about the origin of Dobzhansky (1937, 1941) Mayr (1942) and Simpson adaptation, so that a paleontologicaltheory of evolu- (1944). He outlines the further development of the tion must center on a different theme. Of all the slurs synthesis,describing its growing emphaiis on natural I have ever heard on paleontology,and they have been selectionwithin populationsas the only significantcause many and odious, this one takes the cake. To begin of evolutionary change,which he rightly feels unduly with, it is news to me that the origin of adaptation is narrowed the scope of evolutionary-thought. He sees a solved problem. Considering all the chaos of selfish the climax of this trend in Dawkins’s (1976) The Selfish genes,molecular drives, multiplication of transposable Gene, and quite reasonablywonders how evolutionary elements, and the like, it remains to discoverjust how theorists could possibly treat genesas the only signif- selectionwithin populationsmanages to produce such icant units of selection, or discussevolution as if pa- marvels of organismic adaptation. This question re- leontology were an irrelevance. Finally, Eldredge tains its urgency regardlessof whether these marvels sketchesa hierarchicalview of evolution. He envisions are “optimal.” It also remains to learn what role this a hierarchy of replicators (genes, organisms, species, molecular chaos plays in creating suitable “raw ma- monophyletic lineagesof species),and a hierarchy of terial” for natural selection.It surprisesme rather more interactors (cells, organisms, populations, communi- to hear that paleontologyhas nothing to contribute to ties); relationshipsbetween interactors causedifferen- understandingthe origin of adaptation. I believe that tial replication of replicators. Eldrednehimself remarked on the essentialrole of biot- Eldredgewas perhapsmistaken to base this book on ic crises,those widespread extinctions which punctuate a critique of the neoDarwinian synthesis.A critique of the great eras of the fossil record, in facilitating evo- an articulate and coherentbody of thought can be very lutionary progress.On a more theoretical
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