Publishing

Historical Records of Australian Science

Volume 14, 2002–03 © Australian Academy of Science 2002

All enquiries and manuscripts should be directed to: Professor R. W. Home Department of History and Philosophy of Science The University of Melbourne, Parkville, Vic. 3010, Australia

Telephone: +61 3 8344 6556 Fax: +61 3 8344 7959 Email: [email protected]

Published by CSIRO PUBLISHING for the Australian Academy of Science www.publish.csiro.au/journals/hras Historical Records of Australian Science, 2002, 14, 209–249

Book Review Section

Compiled by Libby Robin with assistance from John Jenkin

Centre for Resource and Environmental Studies (CRES), Australian National University, Canberra, ACT, 0200, Australia. Email: [email protected]

Roger Cross: Fallout: Hedley Marston detachment and adds to our knowledge of and the British Bomb Tests in Australia. the politics and personalities involved in Wakefield Press: Kent Town, 2001. Australia’s atomic adventures. xii + 226 pp., illus., ISBN: 1 862 54523 5 Hedley Marston, Chief of CSIRO’s (PB), $24.95. Division of Biochemistry and General Nutrition, was approached by British authorities in 1955 to assist in studying the effects of radiation on animals. After initial firings in 1952–3, the British atomic testing program was about to recommence in the Monte Bello Islands, and at the newly-established mainland test site known as Maralinga. Marston decided to examine the take-up of radioactive fallout in grazing animals by measuring the concentration of radioactive iodine in their thyroid glands. His research indicated that fallout was being deposited over a much wider area than the physicists on the Atomic Weapons Test Safety Committee (AWTSC) had publicly admitted. Either they were fools or charlatans, and Marston became increasingly determined to bring In the 1950s CSIRO biochemist Hedley them down. Marston became embroiled in what Roger Roger Cross provides a detailed account Cross describes as ‘the single most impor- of Marston’s anger and frustration as he tant crisis’ of his professional life. tried to force the AWTSC, led by Leslie Research into fallout from the British Martin and Ernest Titterton, to admit their atomic tests in Australia brought Marston errors. Attempts at mediation by Fred into bitter conflict with the government- White, CSIRO’s Chief Executive Officer, appointed Safety Committee. It was a and Mark Oliphant, Marston’s close friend, dispute that involved many of the major failed. Rancour and recrimination esca- players in the Australian scientific commu- lated as Marston strove to publish his nity, and one that culminated in ‘perhaps findings, only to meet obstruction and the most unseemly episode in twentieth- delay. Even when his work was finally century Australian science’. This is a fasci- made public, the controversy continued, as nating story of ‘jealousy, hate and power’ the AWTSC sought to have a rebuttal that takes us behind the facade of scientific accepted for publication. Oliphant finally

© Australian Academy of Science 2002 0727-3061/02/02020910.1071/HR02011 210 Historical Records of Australian Science, Volume 14 Number 2

brought an unpleasant battle over who fortable with the public role assigned him would have the last word to a halt. In the as first chairman of the AWTC. What end, Marston’s revelations seem to have doubts and torments might Marston’s prov- had little immediate impact, but as Cross ocations have engendered? Oliphant, as demonstrates, public opinion was already always, is difficult to pin down. At times he on the turn as opposition to atmospheric tries to soothe Marston, but on other occa- nuclear testing, both in Australia and over- sions he carelessly fuels his friend’s burning seas, mounted. rage. Might he have done more to help? It is Marston imagined himself a champion a measure of the book’s success that such of science and a defender of truth, but questions emerge. There can be no easy Cross reveals a much more complex figure. answers once we try to explore the human Marston was egotistical and belligerent, dimensions of scientific controversy. ready to take the credit for his colleagues’ The book provides a good read, even research into coast disease, and prepared to though the complex chronology of events bully anyone who stood in the way of his makes it difficult to keep track of who said ambitions. His high standing within the what to whom and when. It makes excel- agricultural community, and his carefully lent use of oral and archival sources and is cultivated circle of influential friends, gave thoroughly documented. Of course, you him a sense of power that he clearly end up wishing for a full biography of relished. He was no anxious whistleblower. Marston, but that hardly detracts from the As Cross shows, most clearly in Marston’s current volume. If only other attempts at correspondence with Oliphant, his attacks scientific biographies showed the same on the AWTSC were driven as much by willingness to deal with their subject’s anger and revenge, as by a desire to protect flaws and complexities. the public and defend the standards of Was this the most unseemly episode in science. twentieth century Australian science? Who Roger Cross has given us a picture of a knows? So little has been written about the flawed man, a would-be hero barely able to feuds and conflicts. So much lies hidden rise above his own pettiness and insecuri- behind euphemisms such as ‘a difficult ties. Our understanding of Marston and his man’, or ‘a controversial figure’. Roger bitter crusade is greatly enriched by Cross’ Cross hopes that his story will aid our efforts to examine the personality of the understanding of ‘the tensions that lurk man and not just the persona of the scien- behind the bland face of ‘science rhetoric’ tist. Unfortunately, we don’t gain as much here in Australia’. Here’s hoping that insight into his opponents. Titterton clearly others will follow his lead. had an ego to match Marston’s, but Les Tim Sherratt Martin seems a much more enigmatic History Program, figure. From Cross’ account, and other Research School of Social Sciences sources, it appears that Martin was uncom- Australian National University Book Review Section 211

Brad Collis: Fields of Discovery: Fields of Discovery does important Australia’s CSIRO. Allen & Unwin: Crows work by putting a human face on the nexus Nest, NSW, 2002. 540 pp., illus., between Australian nationhood and indu- ISBN: 1 865 08602 9 (HB), $49.95. stry. CSIRO as Australia’s flagship research science organisation does (inter)national science for the (inter)national economy. Whether it is food technologies, or in the mapping of the ocean floor, even beyond the earth to moon missions and outer space, Australia’s understandings of itself and its place in the world have been mediated by science. Are there too few national stories with scientists as heroes? Yes, particularly for the twentieth century. Australian historians have, perhaps, been put off by the techni- calities of recent science. But they have also been reluctant to write histories of big bureaucracy. There have been important exceptions: for example, Ken Inglis’ pioneering work, This is the ABC, and Brad In 1926, the Commonwealth government Collis’ own book Snowy — the Making of established the Council for Scientific and Modern Australia are examples of the very Industrial Research, now CSIRO. This was few stories of industrial Australia. Like the a very significant step, taken at a time ABC and the Snowy Mountains Hydro- when financial conditions were difficult. Electric Scheme, CSIRO is ‘an Australian Science was very much tied up with Aus- icon’ (This is the phrase used on the front tralia’s interwar views of its emerging flap of the book). Iconic status brings nationhood. In his address to the 1939 problems and expectations as well as a (jubilee) meeting of ANZAAS, Australian niche market. The challenge is to write history Professor Ernest Scott of the Uni- interestingly and on a human scale about versity of Melbourne, prophesied that the twentieth century ‘Big Science’, which is ‘future of Australia was bound up with the typically dominated by large teams of progress of science’. workers and labyrinthine administrative The twentieth century has borne out structures. Scott’s prophesy. Australia has been Collis, with his journalist’s eye, has shaped by science in an extraordinary grasped the nettle of the ‘human-sized number of ways. Historians, however, have narrative’ with extraordinary success. largely neglected these stories in their tales Fields of Discovery offers a rich pastiche of the nation. In 1988 Roy MacLeod in The of individual stories that unfold in the Commonwealth of Science, commented dramatic style of an adventure or travel that ‘despite their importance in our every- narrative. Collis begins with the scientific day lives, scientists and science have been war on ‘alien invaders’, the acclimatised posted to the periphery of our history’ plants and animals that have thrived (p. 1). Despite a growing number of excessively in Australia’s distinctive eco- studies of Australian identity and culture, systems, and this war is full of individual the idea that science is integral to that and unlikely heroes. Scientist Wendy identity has still seldom been explored. Forno appears in her fisherman’s waders, 212 Historical Records of Australian Science, Volume 14 Number 2

scouring Brazil for a natural enemy to the Collis has a real gift for explaining floating aquatic weed, Salvinia molesta. science in plain English — and for making Forno was building on a long history of personal connections that enliven his nar- finding biological controls for pest species. rative. In 1940s, the mission to recover The early CSIR had built its reputation on wool from sheepskins demanded funda- the success of the Cactoblastus moth in mental protein biochemistry. In the 1970s, combating the noxious garden escapee, with wool industry funding declining, the prickly pear. Collis treats this contextual Division of Protein Chemistry recognised material lightly, however, and brings his that their biochemical knowledge would be focus on the lone woman on ‘a search for applicable to human medicine. We all the proverbial needle in the haystack’ understand influenza, if not X-ray diffrac- (p. 29). First she had to locate the Salvinia tion technology. Collis takes us through itself in its native habitat. In a piranha- just enough biochemistry to lead to Peter infested swamp, less than 100 kilometres Colman’s Relenza flu drug. The idea of a from where she was stationed, she had neuraminidase inhibitor was not new: it ‘sheer luck’, and pressed a specimen. Once had been tried before, and abandoned. this was confirmed to be the right species, Colman (with Jose Varghese, and ANU it took four more years to find a suitable biochemist Graeme Laver) established the beetle, and confirm that it could indeed 3-D structure of the neuraminidase protein destroy the weed. on the flu virus and observed the changes The sixteen chapters compress work that occurred when the virus mutated. from the many sections and divisions of ‘There was one small part on the surface of CSIRO that have waxed and waned over its the neuraminidase that didn’t change’! history. But all are enlivened by individuals, (p. 194). A local entrepreneur established a thinking creatively and laterally to solve company, Biota, to back this and two other Australia’s perceived problems. George projects to manufacturing stage: a Bornemissza, an observant entomologist $100 million enterprise. Only when the working in Western Australia in 1951, was drug was clearly proven active did the big ‘struck by the quantity of old cow pats’ global companies, in this case Glaxo, (p. 47). In his native Hungary, dung beetles venture capital in trials and marketing. could clean up a fresh cow pat in three The CSIRO’s publicly-funded national hours. As a result of his observation, dung science has been directed towards per- beetles arrived to join the cow pats, first ceived ‘useful’ ends in all eras. Fields of north-western Australia, and later many of Discovery offers the reader a rich set of the southern districts. Bornemissza found responses to the question: ‘What is Aus- suitable species in Hawaii and South tralia about?’; CSIRO stories reply loudly: Africa. Doug Waterhouse, Chief of the ‘the agricultural economy’. The land, its Entomology Division, regarded the dung- pests, and its productivity have been the beetle program as ‘one of the riskiest ven- overwhelming focus of national scientific tures’ he had sanctioned. The second intro- effort for most of the twentieth century. duction (the dung beetle) dealt with a This was, of course, the wish of the origi- problem arising from the first (the cattle nal Empire Marketing Board in London, dung), which had provided Australia’s whose matching funds tempted the Aus- native bushfly with excessive breeding tralian government to invest in science in grounds. In a wry aside, Collis notes that the 1920s. But this influence persisted well the rise of the café society is predicated on beyond this period. Thus, in the 1930s, the steady reduction in bushflies since the Australia was told not to do textiles 1980s. research since this was the ‘prerogative of Book Review Section 213

the Wool Industries Research Association institutions such as CSIRO are also biased at Leeds’ (p. 152). The war brought some to published output. changes to this, with CSIR’s Division of The stories of the scientists and their Industrial Chemistry taking over some quests for discovery are mostly drawn textile development, but the ‘primary from the memories of present and retired industries in the colonies, secondary CSIRO staff. Collis is a good listener, and industries in the Old Country’ adage died clearly many of the scientists themselves hard. In 1949 Trevor Pearcey and others, are great story-tellers. Fields of Discovery concerned about the time taken to do has also benefited from CSIRO’s rich crop mathematically-complex research, designed of divisional histories. In 1949, when the CSIRAC, one of the world’s first CSIR acquired its O, there was a radical computers, which was commissioned in reorganisation and new sections and divi- 1951. Soon after, the CSIRO Executive sions such as Wildlife (now Sustainable abandoned computer research, still appar- Ecosystems), Wool Technology and Mineral ently influenced by British advisors ‘who Chemistry emerged, and there was a corre- recommended Australia concentrate on sponding rush of jubilee histories in the late agriculture’ (p. 413). 1990s. There have also been a handful of But what happens when the sheep’s biographies and a detailed history by Boris back is no longer available for a ride? Schedvin of the CSIR period. Historical Colman’s story indicates just some of the Records of Australian Science has been a many complexities of big science in the significant and important resource, and ‘commercial-in-confidence’ era. Colman, one of the few that is genuinely indepen- with CSIRO’s agreement, became a dent of CSIRO. Research Director of the company Biota Collis has combed this literature intelli- — but found that this meant giving free gently in his search for a new 75-year scientific advice. ‘When they get legal or synthesis. His style is chronologically accounting advice they pay for it’, Colman eclectic, but focuses mostly on the last fifty commented, ‘but for scientific advice, years. This is a welcome change from the which is even more fundamental, they histories of Australian science that start at weren’t accustomed to paying’ (p. 195). the beginning and pretty much stay there. ‘Strategic research’ sits uncomfortably Collis has referred to very few documen- at the intersection between basic research tary primary sources such as letters and and commercial patents. Basic research memoranda, which is a pity, as they have outcomes are intellectual property avai- the potential to correct the inevitable lable to all through the peer-reviewed liter- biases of memory. ature. Product patents, particularly for In a climate where CSIRO must find human pharmaceuticals, are only afford- 30% of its funding from industry, Collis able for a handful of global players, and has manifested a definite (and understand- therefore secret — or ‘commercial-in- able) bias to stories of success. Marketing confidence’. There is a definite national the good products is an essential skill. But interest in being in the game, but it is a science itself needs to know its ‘bad’ long run, even for the ‘success’ stories stories — failure or negative results may (just over two decades for Relenza). The be as important for future developments in other two products backed by Biota were a different context, and this is where not proven commercial successes in that archives have the potential to play an time-frame. Meanwhile, scientists’ careers essential part. are measured by their publication outputs, The story of the polymer banknotes and organisational success criteria for (pp. 461–3) has an interesting historical 214 Historical Records of Australian Science, Volume 14 Number 2

dimension, not noted by Collis. The work than four pages is less than one percent of done in 1967 on polymers, which was the book. The final word is David Rivett’s essential to the 1988 product that is a plea for intellectual honesty in the pursuit familiar item in our wallets today, could of knowledge, something that undid him in easily have been lost. At a time when the 1949. History, like Rivett’s science, needs needs of basic research and the creation of to travel that road to knowledge ‘with production technology led to conflict unrestricted, passionate and fearless enthu- between partners on the project, CSIRO siasm’ (p. 481). It cannot be conflated with became aware of the critical role played by communication and marketing. Nor can it the records and archives of science as be just a story of the victors. evidence of achievement. They called in If you are looking for a rattling good the Australian Science Archives Project yarn of national success that is neither (now Austehc) to locate and document the military nor sporting, Fields of Discovery original scientific records. These records is your book. Rich with Eureka moments, were not in the central filing systems but in Brad Collis has created a great read. But the desks and laboratories of the scientists there is a nervousness in the analysis that and technologists. The banknote project suggests that we are still not comfortable also ensured that CSIRO records were kept about the role of science in the nation, and rather than discarded and these are now that scientists are still anxious about their preserved in the National Archives of Aus- tralia. Archives management is essential to future. The challenge is, as Collis says, ‘to history and to future science, and in this determine how to invest rather than squan- case, to the financial rewards for science. der this legacy’ (p. 481). There is still The words ‘commissioned history’ are another crossroad ahead. studiously avoided. This book is published Libby Robin by an independent commercial publisher, CRES yet the copyright rests neither with the Australian National University creator nor the publisher, but with CSIRO. Gavan McCarthy The reflective moments in this book are Austehc brief, and inhibited. The Epilogue of less University of Melbourne. Book Review Section 215

Warwick Anderson: The Cultivation of The Cultivation of Whiteness brings Whiteness: Science, Health and Racial together aspects of Australian life and Destiny in Australia. Melbourne University history that are now more often separated Press: Carlton, 2002. 364 pp., illus., — race and environment, blood and soil, ISBN: 0 522 84989 X (PB), $34.95. medicine and geography, tropical science and urban health, biological thought and national policy, Aboriginality and immi- gration, the body and the mind. The result is a rich and subtle history of ideas that is both intellectual and organic, and that vividly evokes past states of mind and their lingering, haunting power. In its explora- tion of the perceived threat to the European race from within the continent and from without, The Cultivation of Whiteness sits beside two other landmark books in Aus- tralian history, Anxious Nation by David Walker (University of Queensland Press, 1999) and Imagined Destinies by Russell McGregor (Melbourne University Press, 1997). If you have seen the film Rabbit-Proof ‘Whiteness’ did not just stand for skin Fence you will recall the chilling moment colour. Warwick Anderson shows how the when A. O. Neville, the Chief Protector of term could generalise many physical and Aborigines in Western Australia, peers cultural attributes — British ancestry; under the clothes of his new Aboriginal membership of a Caucasian race; a certain charges and closely examines their skin bodily constitution or temperament; a colour. What was the ‘whiteness’ he and others were looking for? cultural legacy and thought style; a head In the wake of an election where the circumference and brain capacity; a pre- Australian Prime Minister tapped into disposition or resistance to certain popular concerns about race and border diseases; a blood group; or an emerging protection, here is an important book that national type. helps us make sense of the tenacity of The book vividly evokes the geographi- visions of a white Australia. The author, cal viewpoint of much colonial medical Warwick Anderson, is a medical doctor practice, and reminds us that medicine was and an historian of science, and he wants a discourse of settlement. Transferring us to recognise the clinic and the labora- British bodies to the Antipodes jeopardised tory as sites where a nation may be imag- their constitutional balance. In the nine- ined. Science and medicine, he shows, teenth century, bodies appeared more once helped to set Australia’s racial attuned and vulnerable to place, and they agenda, and those ‘deeper contours of old were analysed in terms of their equilibrium biological thought’ remain. ‘White Aus- with the environment. Medical treatises tralia’, which was inscribed on the birth could read like meteorological reports. The certificate of the federated nation, may displaced British lived with a fear of bodily have been officially declared dead about imbalance, exhaustion, and degeneration, 1970, but it persists in our psyche and and their constitution — their whiteness — politics. could be threatened by hot winds, sudden 216 Historical Records of Australian Science, Volume 14 Number 2

shifts in temperature, bright sunlight, and quarantine sensibility meant that the white by the dark history of their adopted land. Australia policy, once a physiological By the 1880s, however, with the rise of impossibility, by 1920 had come to appear contagionist doctrines and germ theory, it a microbiological necessity’. Biology and was the social rather than environmental the nation were united. milieu that came to matter more to health. One of the most interesting and percep- The identified sources of disease were tive chapters of the book concerns the increasingly people rather than places, and attempts by some white scientists, particu- citizens were urged to regulate their per- larly from the 1920s, to incorporate sonal contacts rather than their environ- Aboriginal Australians into an expanded mental exposure. The threats to the body understanding of ‘whiteness’. In this were no longer sensual and geographical, period, scientists subjected Aborigines to but instead were invisible, minute and far more biological and medical scrutiny mobile — and detectable only by science than ever before; they endlessly measured, and its burgeoning laboratories. As germs probed and bled tolerant outback peoples. took over from climate as the perceived The scientists concluded that the original determinant of disease, it was other human Australians were distant relatives of bodies — especially the bodies of the poor Europeans because they were ‘archaic and other races — that became the subject Caucasians’. Aborigines might look differ- of civic discipline. ent, but they were white at heart; they were The moral geography of disease per- biological and even perhaps spiritual kin; sisted longest in the tropics, where the they could be admired as an alternative to environmental threats to European inhabi- modernity; and they might indeed be suc- tation seemed most severe. Whether a cessfully absorbed into the white popu- working white race could ever be estab- lation. A scientific rationale had emerged lished above the Tropic of Capricorn was a for the policies of ‘breeding out the colour’ subject of popular and learned debate well that especially targeted half-castes, a pro- into the twentieth century. But the con- liferating and disturbing group that was cerns that whiteness would wither or regarded as neither white nor authentic brown in the tropics soon gave way to a black. sense that there were no environmental Two of the scientific lives featured in limits to white colonisation. This was the book illustrate the alternative possible partly a result of changing scientific ideas trajectories of ideas about racial destiny in about the power and imperviousness of twentieth-century Australia. Raphael heredity, and a growing confidence in the Cilento, Director of the Australian Institute robustness of racial biology and identity. of Tropical Medicine in Townsville in the The spectre of degeneration that had 1920s, was a brilliant promoter of white haunted Europeans in an alien land was settlement in the north. He was co-author gradually transformed into a triumphant of a history of Queensland entitled celebration of new, limitless territories for Triumph in the Tropics (1959). Anderson the self-possessed white man. But if the describes how, in the 1970s, Cilento was racial inheritance of whites was a more still urging his fellow Australians to resilient and transportable commodity than ‘examine the purity and dilution of our colonists had first feared, then for the same racial blood’. The abandonment of the reasons, coloured races were condemned white Australia policy, argued Cilento, was as reservoirs of disease. European contact dangerous. National health required con- with them must be minimised. Anderson tinued immigration restriction, the selec- writes that ‘this medical endorsement of a tive breeding of our existing white Book Review Section 217

population, and the eradication of multi- Richard Johnson: The Search for the culturalism. Inland Sea: John Oxley, Explorer, Joseph B. Birdsell, a Harvard graduate 1783–1828. Melbourne University Press: student in physical anthropology, studied Carlton, 2001. 305 pp., illus., ‘race crossing’ in Australia. Together with ISBN: 0 522 84959 8 (HB), $49.95. Adelaide entomologist and anthropologist Norman B. Tindale, Birdsell measured and tested ‘black-white crosses’ in South Aus- tralia, New South Wales and Bass Strait in the late 1930s, recording their ‘daily catch’ of physical characteristics, blood groups and genealogies. Birdsell was impressed by the Australian hybrids: it looked almost as if ‘two kinds of whites had mixed’. Their tests revealed no half-caste degeneration, and they recommended absorption, not isolation, as the solution to the half-caste problem. Aborigines were found to be not sufficiently different, biologically, to threaten Australia’s whiteness. Birdsell’s war service delayed his analy- sis of his measurements and when he Richard Johnson comes to his topic with a returned to the task in the late 1940s, he background similar to John Oxley’s. As a had come to distrust racial typologies. He Research Surveyor with the Central found himself unable to define any clear Mapping Authority in NSW he became racial boundaries. Hybridity was every- interested in the work of the early Austral- where. He had set out to find a solution to ian inland explorers, many of whom came the ‘problem’ of half-castes, and had found from the Survey Department. According to that ‘race crossing’ was not so much bad, as the jacket cover he spent ten years meaningless. By the 1980s, he and Tindale researching Oxley’s life and there can be had become supporters of Aboriginal self- little doubt of this level of devotion in his determination and land rights, and their investigation of his subject. The book is a genealogical data were helping to recon- mine of facts, not only about Oxley’s three struct the black families their science had expeditions, but also about his land grants promised to dissipate. and property management and his involve- This is an outstanding history, very well ment in a wide range of public affairs from written, and full of thoughtful analyses of the Auxiliary Bible Society and the Agri- frames of mind that persist today. cultural Society to the Philosophical A. O. Neville appears in it briefly, still Society and the Bank of Australia. The peering at coloured skins and faces and accounts of the major inland journeys are bodies, searching for a residual blackness illustrated by two clear maps, prepared by and a redeemable whiteness. Johnson and showing both the names Oxley bestowed on geographical features Tom Griffiths History Program, and the present-day names, and by seven Research School of Social Sciences black-and-white reproductions of contem- Australian National University porary engravings. Yet, despite all this wealth of factual material, we do not get to ‘know’ Oxley in 218 Historical Records of Australian Science, Volume 14 Number 2

any way that is memorable. There is no failings of Oxley’s brothers but with no discussion, for example, of his apparent evidence as to what they might have been. insistence on preserving social distinctions Even so, Johnson’s subtitle, John Oxley, even when Governor Macquarie sought to Explorer, is more apposite as a description relax them. More seriously, we are not given of the contents than is the title. The search any context for Oxley’s aspirations to dis- for an inland sea was a major fixation, even cover an Inland Sea, no examination of why an obsession, for more than thirty years of this issue was important in Macquarie’s Australian colonial history, beginning with time, or why it was to dominate inland Matthew Flinders’ speculation that a hypo- exploration for decades afterwards. thetical great river emerging on the north- Oxley’s Journals of Two Expeditions west of the continent, as envisaged by into the Interior of New South Wales are Dampier in 1699, might lead to a Mediter- among the most interesting and elegantly ranean sea. It is highly probable that Oxley written of Australian exploration narra- would have read Flinders’ A Voy ag e to tives. It is therefore ironic that, although Terra Australis before setting out on his the bulk of the information contained in 1818 expedition, and almost certainly, he this book is paraphrased from Oxley, it would have read it before writing his own lacks the vivacity and style of the originals. account where he discusses the concept of In the (sadly few) instances where Oxley’s an inland sea. Yet none of this fascination own words are quoted, the liveliness of his with the prevailing myth (and the alter- native version of a great river flowing prose and his heart-felt response to the across the continent) surfaces in this book, landscape, his disappointments at failing to not even when Charles Sturt, the most find evidence of an inland sea alternating obsessed of all the explorers with finding with his persistent hopes of future success, it, makes an appearance in the last few transform the pedestrian account. Oxley’s pages. In a footnote to the Epilogue, there Journals abound with strong human emo- is a reference to Tim Flannery and Paula tions that give us a vivid sense of his Kendall’s Australia’s Inland Sea, but there elation or despair: ‘it was with infinite is no such context in this narrative. We are regret and pain that I was forced to come to told merely that ‘Oxley volunteered his the conclusion that the interior of this vast services for any further expeditions country is a marsh and uninhabitable’; ‘the Macquarie might consider sending to the river presented a most singular phenome- interior … and they briefly discussed the non to our astonished view’; ‘Nothing can mysteries of the inland’. It is later sug- be more melancholy and irksome than gested that Macquarie asks Oxley to lead travelling over wilds, which nature seems the expedition to follow the Lachlan River, to have condemned to perpetual loneliness even though he personally has more faith and desolation. We seemed indeed the sole in George Evans, Assistant-Surveyor in living creatures in those vast deserts’. Van Diemen’s Land, only because Lord More extracts from the Journals could Bathurst considered Evans to be lacking have given us a much more immediate the required level of education. In these sense of Oxley, the man. Instead, we are post-colonial times, some discussion of left with a battery of questions. Why was this conflict is surely appropriate. Oxley interested in the Auxiliary Bible One of the many appealing aspects of Society? Was he a religious man? There is Oxley’s Journals was the inclusion of no other evidence of this. What were his engravings based on George Evans’ views about the Aborigines? There are also sketches illustrating events in the narrative. mysterious innuendoes about the moral Three of these are reproduced in this Book Review Section 219

volume, but a strange omission is that T. G. Vallance, D. T. Moore and based on Evans’ fascinating drawing ‘The E. W. Groves (compilers): Nature’s Grave of a Native of Australia’, which Investigator: The Diary of Robert Brown in directly illustrates a passage in the text. Australia, 1801–1805. Australian Readers of history today justifiably Biological Resources Study: Canberra, require meticulous research into details, but 2001. xii + 666 pp., illus., they also expect a social context, a degree ISBN: 0 642 56817 0 (HB), $75. of philosophical and sociological discus- sion, and a sense of the personality of the protagonist. It is these last requirements that are unfortunately absent in this volume. There are also some strange lacunae in explanatory material. Oxley recorded that a particular hill reversed the needle of his compass, even though the rock contained no iron. Puzzled, but recalling that he had read of a similar anomaly at Loadstone Rock in the Hebrides, he called the feature Loadstone Hill. Yet there is no geological discussion of such a phenomenon. The book is a solid and impressive piece of research into the archival back- ground of Oxley’s Journals and other selected aspects of his life, but it rarely The year 2001 was the first of five years of becomes more than this. bicentennial celebrations of Robert Brown’s visit to Australia. He arrived in Roslynn Haynes School of English 1801 as naturalist on Matthew Flinders’ University of New South Wales voyage of exploration, which circum- navigated the continent before its conclu- sion in 1803, then stayed a further two years in New South Wales, Tasmania and Victoria. As the bicentenary passes for Brown and Flinders’ contact with various localities in Australia, it is marked by a variety of exhibitions, talks, and press notices. Nature’s Investigator, which reproduces Robert Brown’s Australian diary, was launched at a conference in Western Australia in December 2001, and will be one of the more enduring forms of commemoration. Brown is famous internationally for his discovery of molecular agitation, or ‘Brownian motion’, and his expansion of the so-called ‘natural system’ of botanical classification. In Australia he has been called the ‘father of Australian botany’ because he was the author of the first, 220 Historical Records of Australian Science, Volume 14 Number 2

albeit incomplete, flora of Australia, died in 1993, eight years before the diary’s Prodromus Florae Novae Hollandiae et publication. Eric Groves, a botanist, is now Insulae Van-Diemen (Preliminary Flora of retired, and David Moore, a botanist and New Holland and Van Diemen’s Land) geologist, thanks his wife for ‘virtually which was published in 1810. A planned financing the UK end of the project second volume never eventuated, appar- between 1993 and 2000’ (p. ix). ently because Brown was disappointed It is clear that long hours were spent with sales of the first. preparing Nature’s Investigator. The atten- The story of Brown in Australia has tion to detail in the publication is remark- been told from various documents emanat- able, with the contribution of many experts ing from the Flinders’ expedition, but his acknowledged. The editors and some of diary has been largely overlooked. As these experts have published a number of David Mabberley commented in Jupiter other papers on Brown, and more are in Botanicus (1985), the most definitive bio- preparation, which are mentioned in the text graphy of Brown: or in the references. Patrick McCarthy of Most entries are mere notes on plants and the Australian Biological Resources Study so carelessly written, with no eye on poster- (ABRS) is responsible for the excellent ity, with no ‘t’s crossed nor ‘i’s dotted, and maps redrawn from Vallance originals. A penned in such cramped and hot conditions, general map appears in the endpapers and the scripts from one side of the leaf soaked more detailed ones are appropriately located through to the other, that they are frankly of little value in giving us an idea of life on the throughout the text. The 31 colour plates expedition, so that it is necessary to use include scenes and organisms photographed Flinders’ accounts and to a lesser extent the by J. R. Clarkson, M. Fagg and D. T. Moore. diary of Peter Good (p. 87). The diary is prefaced by a general intro- While the editors of Nature’s Investi- duction in which the editors sketch the gator acknowledge Mabberley’s comments, background of the voyage and its main they also assert that ‘with some effort, the participants, Australian natural history and execrable handwriting could be read’ Brown’s contribution to it, and the relevant (p. 11). Moreover, they claim that it is surviving papers and artwork. This survey worth doing so because the diary helps to reveals the complexity of task undertaken to fill certain gaps in the story of Brown’s transcribe and edit the diary. There are many contribution to the natural history of Aus- Brown manuscripts and specimens in a tralia, from a scientific point of view. These number of repositories in Britain and Aus- gaps relate to precise information about tralia. Such material includes Brown’s ‘slip Brown’s movements in Australia, especially catalogue’ of manuscript plant descriptions, after he separated from Flinders, and also to plant specimens in the Natural History information about what specimens Brown Museum London and his correspondence to collected, and how many of these were Joseph Banks. The editors tried to view all eventually referred to in publications. of the material relevant to Brown’s diary, It took the three editors (who modestly and to incorporate it, or at least references call themselves ‘compilers’) nearly twenty to it, in Nature’s Investigator. years, and enough vicissitudes to make a While it is convenient in some ways to good story in itself, to transcribe, compile, have this information presented in a book edit and annotate the diary manuscript. The form, web sites now present possibilities editors are all scientists by profession, with for the compilers of multiple sources not a shared interest in the history of science, available to the editors of Nature’s Investi- especially in Australian natural history gator when they started their work. A good exploration. Thomas Vallance, a geologist, example of what can be done is the James Book Review Section 221

Fairfax Matthew Flinders Electronic 2 PM Land in sight. The South West coast Archive of the State Library of New South of New Holland’. There are longer entries Wales (http://www.slnsw.gov.au/flinders/). for various land excursions such as an It allows readers to compare transcriptions ascent of Mt Brown in South Australia on with photographs of manuscripts in colour 10 March 1892, but with little reference to and in black-and-white. It is easy to access the effort involved. He resorted to memo- different kinds of information in this site, randa for what he considered to be more without any sense of clutter, and without momentous events such as the encounter the space constraints of a book. with Baudin, who failed to impress him, In Nature’s Investigator, Brown’s diary especially because of the ‘extreme badness itself is presented in the form of 27 chap- of his English’. ters. Some of these are prefaced with a Explanatory notes on the diary are short introduction. Chapters one to three located at the end of each day’s entry, and cover Brown’s preparations for the expedi- these constitute the main editorial contri- tion and its voyage to Australia. Chapters bution to the publication. They are often four to nine cover the voyage from Western longer than the entries themselves, espe- Australia to Sydney, including an encoun- cially when Brown made none, and trans- ter with the French exploring expedition form the otherwise terse and enigmatic led by Nicholas Baudin. Chapters 10 to 17 text into a coherent and informative narra- cover the circumnavigation, including an tive. The notes include modern identifi- encounter with Malay fishers; chapters 18 cations of plants, animals, rocks and to 26 cover Brown’s final two years in minerals, and localities, and corrections or Australia; and chapter 27 covers ‘The alternatives to Brown’s account. The most return voyage and homecoming’. detailed commentary is on Brown’s Within the chapters, each day is given as geological observations, which reflects the a separate entry, with the date in bold and expertise of the editors but not Brown’s the subject in italics. The relevant diary main interest, which was botany. The notes fragments are then transcribed faithfully, also refer to other manuscripts and publi- except for the addition of some punctuation cations that relate to the diary text. ‘for clarity’ (p. 12). The diaries of Matthew Nature’s Investigator is not a book Flinders and Peter Good, the expeditions’ intended to be read from cover to cover. Its gardener, are used to flesh out Brown’s publication by ABRS emphasises its usually minimal text for the period of the importance as a reference work for scien- voyage out and the circumnavigation. tists, but historians of science are also Good died in 1804, and for Tasmania, interested in the same kinds of informa- Brown’s account is augmented by the tion. Thomas Vallance came up with the diaries of A. W. H. Humphrey, a mineralo- idea of the title Nature’s Investigator with gist, and the Rev. R. Knopwood, a colonial ‘Investigator’ being a word to describe chaplain. On the days on which Brown Brown as well as the name of the ship on himself had nothing to say, the diaries of which he sailed. Future ‘Brown Investi- other people are the main source of infor- gators’ will need the diary to hand if they mation on his whereabouts and activities. intend to write with confidence about Brown certainly seems to have been where he was in Australia on any given day taciturn. He makes little reference to what and what he saw. What he thought about he thought or felt on his remarkable what he saw, however, remains obscure. voyage of scientific discovery. For example Sara Maroske on 6 December 1801 his response to sight- Department of History and Philosophy of Science ing Australia for the first time was: ‘At University of Melbourne 222 Historical Records of Australian Science, Volume 14 Number 2

Field Naturalists Club of Victoria: The Field Naturalists Club of Victoria (FNCV) Victorian Naturalist: McCoy Special Issues has devoted two special issues of its Parts 1 and 2, vol. 118(5) October 2001, journal to McCoy’s life and work, pre- pp. 145–236 and vol. 118(6), December sented in some twenty-eight separate short 2001, pp. 237–332. papers. There are several little-known por- traits of McCoy in his younger years, numerous other black and white photos and figures, while the second part (through funding from the Global Change Research Group, Deakin University) contains seven fine colour reproductions of lithographs of McCoy’s work, mainly from the Prodromus of the Zoology of Victoria, with McCoy colourfully arrayed in all his glory on the cover. Part one deals largely with the broader aspects of McCoy’s life, including his early years, work in Ireland and England, Mel- bourne University and the National Museum of Victoria (including McCoy’s ‘Living Museum’, a specialised botanic garden). His dealings with John Gould (as a supplier of birds, and who was often unpaid) and his controversy with the Rev. W. B. Clarke about the age of eastern Australian coals are significant parts of these. Perhaps his most important palae- ontological work, the study of the brachio- pods, is discussed by Neil Archbold. Part two consists largely of papers dealing with specific aspects of McCoy’s wide-ranging research on Australian zoology, and his dealings with scientific and other societies. Part of the neglect of McCoy since 1900 as an important figure in Australian science is hinted at by several authors. Barry Butcher in his discussion of McCoy’s anti-evolutionism points out the complexity of both McCoy’s and other scientists’ stands against Darwinism. A complexity of which modern students of the history of science are well aware, and which researchers such as John Brooke In view of his stature in the last years of the have explored in recent years. As Butcher 19th century, Sir Frederick McCoy has writes about McCoy: ‘anti-Darwinism was been strangely neglected in the history of not an eccentric excrescence on an other- Australian science. Now, just a year or two wise scientific career’. Nevertheless, many after the centenary of McCoy’s death, the earlier historians of science were often Book Review Section 223

inclined to paint things in black and white, Museum holus bolus from the Government so that McCoy and his kin tended to be Assay office to the University)? This event dismissed, not only for their anti- was recorded in a famous Melbourne Darwinism, but for their work as a whole. Punch cartoon, together with a poem that Even shortly after his death, McCoy was goes in part: earning few bouquets. J. W. Gregory, the There was a little man, energetic, ever restless, geologist and and he had a little plan, geographer, on taking up his post as Pro- the public of their specimens fessor of Geology at Melbourne, was quick to rob, rob, rob ... yet it don’t become professors, to mention the almost complete absence of when they become possessors, specimens for his students at the Univer- of property by methods sity left by his predecessor. Gregory was contraband, band, band. soon rushing off to collect, and inciden- Malcolm Carkeek, supported by Ian tally capsize his canoe in the Murray River, Wilkinson and Carolyn Rasmussen, does a foretaste of his death in a South Ameri- much to clear up, and essentially exoner- can River thirty years later. Even McCoy’s ate, McCoy from this oft repeated claim. obituarist, Henry Woodward (quoted by As Carkeek writes: Doug McCann), felt that McCoy really McCoy was ‘not a brigand commandeering belonged ‘to the first half of the present that to which he had no right, but rather the century, but … survived almost to its orderly transfer of the collection, as agreed close’. McCann discusses this topic in his and arranged between the government and paper on the Naturalist Tradition and feels the Council of the University. that ‘McCoy remained an amateur in spirit A difficulty with McCoy has always even though he became a professional at a been his early years in Ireland, of which very early age’. some elements still remain essentially While it was probably not intentional, the unknown. Tom Darragh’s paper on the opinions of Woodward, Gregory and others Irish Years sets out clearly what is known, did little to continue a strong memory of but McCoy seems to emerge relatively McCoy’s scientific work. Furthermore at the fully equipped as a palaeontologist. How University, despite the range of his lectures, much did he learn from Dr Scouler? Were he did not build up a strong student follow- there other teachers? There is more ing, unlike the next generation of professors digging required in Ireland, but it might be such as Baldwin Spencer, Thomas Lyle and difficult, I suspect. However it would be Orme Masson. The later professors nice to know for sure just when he was undoubtedly had an advantage in the estab- born. lishment of professional faculties, as Ian It is not possible in this review to discuss Wilkinson mentions in his paper on McCoy all the brief papers about McCoy’s contri- and the University of Melbourne. Was he a butions to the study of various fossil phyla, good teacher? He was certainly, I think, and similar papers on a variety of zoologi- outshone by the later comers, and by then, cal matters. Part of this vast range of McCoy was more interested in his museum matters is summarised in the multi- and related research. authored paper, with accompanying exten- Nevertheless McCoy has remained not sive table, on McCoy’s magnum opus, the entirely forgotten among Australian scien- unfinished Prodromus of the Zoology of tists, as one of those Victorian Knights Victoria. The range is truly astonishing and who must have done something, but is few present-day scientists would be hardly worth chasing up. (Wasn’t he the prepared to ‘stick their necks out’ to bloke who unlawfully moved the Colony’s identify and name brachiopods, graptolites, 224 Historical Records of Australian Science, Volume 14 Number 2

bryozoa, ostracods, snakes, thylacines and Perhaps the relationship with Alfred ichthyosaurs. Although McCoy didn’t Selwyn before the latter’s departure to always get it right, as with the ichthyosaur, Canada at the end of 1868 deserved a look. there remains a corpus of work of consider- McCoy’s position as Chairman of the Royal able quality that has stood the test of time. Commission on gold mining, which Philip Bock follows up the tabulations in receives a brief mention by Carkeek, was the Prodromus paper by tabulating clearly an aberration as he had little or no McCoy’s work on the bryozoa, but this interest in the matter, and his geological would be even more useful with a reference expertise was a long way from the practical list for the authors (e.g. Busk, 1852; knowledge required to assess the evidence MacGillivray, 1869) named in the list. Noel provided. Selwyn and others were certainly Schleiger’s paper on the graptolites con- not pleased with McCoy’s prognostications. tains much of interest and shows the extent In hindsight, however, perhaps the of McCoy’s work on this fascinating fossil greatest bungle by McCoy, aided and group. However, the stratigraphic ranges abetted by others, was the encouragement could have been more easily understood by of the Acclimatization Society of Victoria. the uninformed with a table setting out the McCoy delighted in the introduction of the order of the Australian zones: Bendigonian, Indian mynah, the sparrow, and other more Darriwilian etc., and how they accord with exotic creatures. There is a much fuller the international zones (e.g. Llandovery, story to be made of these activities, as which now includes the Darriwilian). Also, Linden Gillbank indicates. despite George Thureau’s claim for a first Sheila Houghton suggests McCoy was a find in 1856 in Victoria, Selwyn beat him to little condescending about the FNCV when it by a year or more. it began, clearly thinking of it as an amateur Bernard Mace provides an interesting body, but he seems to have quickly realised paper on McCoy and the Thylacoleonid, it had possibilities for enhancing his although I found Fig. 2 a little confusing. beloved museum collections. McCoy’s A. J. Hell’s paper on the ichthyosaur sug- battles with Thomas Lucas on society gests, I believe, that McCoy rather rushed matters are interesting, but the careful into affirming a definite Cretaceous suc- reader might be a little puzzled by the cession occurring in Australia in his 1865 listing of A. H. S. Lucas’ relatively unin- paper prior to having a really good look at formative autobiography in the reference the fossils. But he wasn’t the only one to list on some of these matters, rather than put the cart before the horse in the strati- A. H. S. Thomas, the brother of Dr Thomas, graphic stakes. who was also an active member of the The relations between the ‘top scien- Society. Thomas edited the Society’s tists’ of McCoy’s time in Melbourne journal between 1884–1892, before depart- perhaps might have received more atten- ing for the more salubrious climes of tion. Sara Maroske tells us a little about Sydney. Talking of Societies, did McCoy McCoy’s relations with von Mueller in ignore the Royal Society of Victoria, its their controversy about the fate of the predecessors, and the Australasian Associ- Cranbourne Meteorites, from which their ation for the Advancement of Science? He friendship survived. Incidentally the Cran- certainly had only limited contact with the bourne story might have been taken a bit latter organisation. Is there a story there? further, as bits of one or the other ended up There are some interesting insights into in Museums in Liège and Harvard, and McCoy’s activities. In the old tradition of possibly elsewhere, a few years after the Australian journalism, dating back at least 1860s. to C. P. N. Wilton and John Lhotsky around Book Review Section 225

1830, the Microzoon articles show some- Victoria. He nurtured this institution, if not thing of McCoy’s sense of humour, and from birth, at least from infancy, and even, perhaps surprisingly, an interest in despite poor funding and inadequate staff- field geology. Doug McCann’s digging has ing, built an institution that, in his time, also produced information about McCoy’s achieved international status. It was a solid ‘country estate’ at Mt Macedon, including foundation that has enabled the Museum to evidence of remnants of his drainage work overcome many vicissitudes, and which, and exotic plantings. on its new site, is now celebrating its 150th McCann, the instigator of this McCoy birthday. If for nothing else, this should publication project, has contributed a have ensured the memory of McCoy as a number of biographical papers. His partic- prime contributor to the history of Austra- ularly useful Timeline shows, in tabular lian science. form, McCoy’s contributions to both Euro- The papers are all interesting with few pean and Australian science and notes the typographical errors. For anyone reading it gradual recognition of McCoy’s work in right through, there is some repetition of awards from various bodies, including the basic information, but this is necessary for Royal Society of London, and an honorary readers ‘dipping’ into only one or two doctorate from Cambridge, not to mention papers. There is also clearly a little more to a KCMG in 1891. be said about McCoy’s home life. His His paper on McCoy’s contribution to family gets a brief mention, but the loss of stratigraphical palaeontology is an inter- wife and children within five years must esting review of McCoy’s work in Ireland have had quite an effect. Perhaps these and England, and particularly his relations matters and other suggested trails men- with Sedgwick and Murchison. He makes tioned above will be covered in later work. a good case for McCoy’s contribution to This fine effort of the FNCV, some recognising in the field the unconformity 180 pages in all, will serve as a reminder between the Cambrian and Silurian rocks of a multi-skilled person, his wide-ranging in Wales, although Figure 4 (p. 172) might interests and his sense of humour, but like have benefited from a little more explana- all scientists, flawed to some degree. tion in the caption. Figure 5 (p. 173) Downgraded in the past for what he did not suffers from a typographical error in do, and for a few inevitable errors, this assigning Lapworth’s work to 1866, rather publication reminds of what he did do, and, than 1879 as stated in the text on p. 172. if perhaps a little too positive about his McCann works hard to give McCoy achievements, serves to correct the bal- credit for being the first to confirm in 1867, after his early Australian work, that the ance. It will serve as an excellent base for a ‘geological column was a global pheno- biographer. I am sure it will be widely read menon’, McCoy claiming there was an and appreciated, and if it does not cause almost complete correspondence between McCoy’s resurrection, will at least bring northern hemisphere and southern hemi- him to mind when we think of the pioneers sphere stratigraphy. However, as the coal of the natural sciences in Australia. Hope- controversy paper by Roger Pierson shows, fully it will prove a prelude to what one there were some aspects of Australian hopes will be a full-blown biography of stratigraphy that were not clear-cut, even McCoy which Doug McCann is well years after this. equipped to write. I look forward to it. For almost 45 years McCoy’s name was David Branagan synonymous with the National Museum of University of Sydney 226 Historical Records of Australian Science, Volume 14 Number 2

Deborah Morris (text) and Greg Elms the main text stops on one page and (photographs): The Royal Botanic resumes unannounced two or three pages Gardens, Melbourne. Allen & Unwin: later. Page numbers may in any case dis- Crows Nest, NSW, 2001. 160 pp., full appear with up to a ten page gap. colour, ISBN: 1 865 08551 0 (HB), $55. Quotations are periodically featured, almost in the way an illustration might be, in bold type and large font, but are not necessarily ‘grabs’ for text on that page. So a quotation about plant labels appears on page 14, but the text relating to this does not occur until page 43! These quotes are not referenced on the page and may not be referenced at all. References are not num- bered but appear on a single ‘end note’ page towards the back of the book, where they are located by means of the page number. Efforts to find the references are not helped by the small font and somewhat faint print used for this end note page, by some limitations in indexing and by the erratic use of page numbering. This book illustrates the dilemma faced by Morris (or Allen and Unwin) might many a historian of presenting material in argue that the ‘average reader’ would a style that will be accessible to the disdain footnotes — might indeed lie on the average reader while observing the tradi- floor and go into a tantrum at the sight of tions of scholarly research. Here the them. But the ‘average reader’ who wants to emphasis is on the popular rather than the know more about William Guilfoyle should research tradition. The success of this be guided to R. T. M. Pescott’s eminently volume owes much to a set of about readable W. R. Guilfoyle 1840–1912: seventy photographs take by Elms. They Master of Landscaping. Pescott is referred are, as described on the dust jacket, ‘stun- to as Guilfoyle’s biographer in the chapter ning’ and the combination of superb and the book is mentioned under ‘sources’, photography and fine production tech- in tiny font, but it would be more effective niques by Allen and Unwin makes the to refer to it directly. Pescott’s The Royal ‘photo essay’ a delight to behold. Botanic Gardens Melbourne: A History In attempting to cater for a popular remains an important research resource and audience, the style of writing is popular certainly is not superseded by this new and readable with occasional light-hearted volume. asides. The material is organised in a style Turning to more recent research, we that is a little quirky and at times slightly have two pages on research in the Herb- confusing. Sections on ‘People in the Gar- arium, prepared by the Herbarium staff. dens’ have been inserted in most chapters There is no real recognition of the remark- and in addition the second chapter has an able project under the leadership of extra section on the Old Melbourne Professor R. W. Home to locate, and where Observatory. These extra sections are possible reproduce, the massive corre- marked by the use of a greyish colour as spondence of Baron Sir Ferdinand von background to the text instead of white and Mueller, the largest project of its kind in oddly enough have no page numbers. So the Australian history of science field. Book Review Section 227

Regrettably Rod Home appears in the comparison is even more relevant, since sources as ‘Hume’ while Richard Aitken Schomburgk was a compatriot from the becomes ‘Aiken’. Germanic states. While lacking von Muel- Some comments on the milieu in which ler’s academic brilliance, Schomburgk had Australian botanic gardens were founded greater success in extracting money from would have been useful. Melbourne’s his government in the cause of science, Botanic Garden did not emerge in a developing an agricultural and horti- vacuum. Nearly all the Australian capital cultural research institution of note and cites have botanic gardens that were devel- gaining significant funding for projects. oped, and publicly funded, within ten to Putting the botanic gardens story in twenty years of European settlement context in this way could have provided beginning. This was a very different more depth. However, while this is not a pattern to that of Canada or the United scholarly book in the traditional sense, The States. Royal Botanic Gardens, Melbourne can be Comparisons with other Australian regarded as a successful popular book. You botanic gardens, even if brief, would have may be mildly irritated by the way the been valuable. For example, Adelaide with a much smaller site, and one lacking the material is organised, but it is a very natural advantages of the botanic gardens handsome volume. It certainly would make of Melbourne, Sydney and Hobart, made a fine gift for someone dear to you — and use of avenues of trees which, unlike those if you buy a copy, the pleasure you would of Melbourne, have survived. Its second get from the stunning photographs will director, Dr Richard Schomburgk, devel- probably make up for the occasional dis- oped important structures such as the crepancies in the text. Museum of Economic Botany, Palm Pauline Payne House, and more recently the bicentennial Department of History conservatory has been built. The Adelaide Adelaide University 228 Historical Records of Australian Science, Volume 14 Number 2

Georgina Whitehead (ed.): Planting the [Queensland] Subtropics’, David Jones’ Nation. Australian Garden History Society: ‘Grottoes, Rockeries and Ferneries: The Melbourne, 2001. xii + 196 pp., illus., Creations of Charles Robinette’ and ISBN: 1 876 47344 4 (HB), $42.90. Robert Freestone’s ‘Imagining the City Beautiful’. Planting the Nation offers a broad spec- trum of authorial perspective and ranges widely across Australian geography and garden type. The perceptions of landscape architects and social, garden, architectural and urban (but not science) historians dance across the Australian landscape from Brisbane to Perth, pirouetting several times through Melbourne. Their horticul- tural focus moves through public and private gardens and into the decorative arts, to show how gardens were shaped by a wide range of peri-federation ideas about cities, architecture, education and health. But what about science? What about botanical ideas? In her detailed description of WA parks, Initiated during planning for the Australian Oline Richards discusses species planted Garden History Society’s 22nd annual and some of the people who influenced national conference in 2001, this book is a their selection. WA’s first Conservator of response to the absence of gardens in the Forests, John Ednie Brown, who was deter- Centenary of Federation’s proposed events, mined to encourage tree planting, estab- and received a Federation grant to support lished the Woods and Forests Department its publication. Planting the Nation is a nursery at Hamel, south of Perth. Its sup- great title, but it deserves an explicitly plies included Bunya Bunya, Norfolk horticultural subtitle to indicate the book’s Island and Remarkable Pine, cypress, basic theme: Australian gardens and horti- Lombardy and Upright Poplar, Golden cultural landscapes in the peri-federation Willow, catalpas, Red and White Cedar, years, 1890–1914. Kurrajong, tamarisks, Sugar and Desert Many of the nine essays are based on Gum, Marri, Tuart, Silky Oak, Port talks delivered at the Society’s 2001 con- Jackson and Moreton Bay Fig and various ference: John Rickard’s historical overview acacias. Meanwhile bananas, pineapples, ‘The Federal Era 1890–1914’, Suzanne coconuts, date palms, macadamias, Hunt’s ‘State School Gardens in Victoria mangos, pandanus, poincianas, jacarandas 1901–1914’, Oline Richards’ ‘Public and figs came from Brisbane’s Botanic Parks and Recreation Reserves in Western Gardens. Richards mentions other sources Australia’, Susan Reidy’s ‘How Recreation of plants and records some of the indige- and Sport [in Melbourne] Bowled into the nous and exotic species planted at Kings Australian Garden’, Nina Crone’s ‘Aus- Park, Rottnest Island and other parks. tralia’s Flora in the Decorative Arts Kings Park was reserved for the public by 1890–1914’, Harriet Edquist’s ‘Arts and John Forrest. Comments by the designer of Crafts Gardens in Melbourne’, Jeannie Melbourne’s beautiful Botanic Gardens, Sim’s ‘A Golden Age of Gardening in the William Guilfoyle, to prevent further Book Review Section 229

destruction of native plants in Kings Park Freestone mentions his suburban influence may have influenced future developments. and his involvement in the Wattle Day They certainly echoed Forrest’s earlier League and the Town Planning Association instructions to retain ‘good scrub’, ‘good of New South Wales. Maiden’s botanical flowering shrubs’ and ‘all well-grown trees successor at Sydney’s Technological of whatever kind’. Museum was Richard T. Baker. Nina By the late nineteenth century, much Crone discusses Baker’s prominent was known about the horticultural poten- support for the Waratah as Australia’s tial of temperate Australia, but a horti- national flower, while others sought to cultural understanding of tropical and have the Wattle selected instead. She men- subtropical Australia lagged far behind. tions that in Victoria Archibald Campbell Jeannie Sim claims that ‘the 1890s were founded a Wattle Club to promote an arguably the pinnacle of Queensland’s annual Wattle Day, and his subsequent horticultural development — a Golden lecture ‘Wattle Times: or Golden Haired Age of subtropical gardening’ and explains September’ (but not its publication in The how nurserymen and curators of Queens- Victorian Naturalist). land’s botanic and acclimatisation gardens While director of Melbourne’s Botanic contributed to this horticultural climax. Gardens, William Guilfoyle (mentioned Queensland’s first botanic garden was above) commissioned and planted a established even before Queensland — in triangular grotto in the Gardens [Jones], Brisbane in 1855. By 1875, plants could redesigned Melbourne’s Parliament House also be trialed in many parts of Queensland gardens [Reidy], was a member of Mel- — in government botanic gardens in bourne’s Kalizoic Society, which aimed to Ipswich, Rockhampton, Maryborough, encourage the cultivation and protection of Townsville, Cooktown, Cains, Mackay, plants in cities [Freestone], wrote Austra- Toowoomba and Warwick. The Queens- lian Plants Suitable for Gardens, Parks land Acclimatization Society also had and Timber Reserves (1911) [Edquist] and experimental gardens at Bowen Park in preferred naturalistic rather than formal Brisbane. In discussing the horticultural garden design [Edquist]. work at Bowen Park under William The Principal (not Director) of the Soutter, and at Brisbane’s Botanic Gardens Burnley School of Horticulture, Charles under Philip MacMahon and then John Bogue Luffman, who also preferred natu- Frederick Bailey, Sim shows how botanical ralistic planting, wrote The Principles of knowledge was generated and dissem- Gardening for Australia (1903) [Edquist] inated. Soutter edited the Queensland and contributed to the 1901 congress on Horticulturalist and Fruit-Growers’ the federal capital [Freestone]. Luffman’s Journal and MacMahon wrote articles for 1902 Education Gazette supplement the Queensland Agricultural Journal. ‘Gardening for Victoria’s State Schools’ There was also Queensland’s Royal provided practical advice on soil, planning Society, which provided a forum for drainage, plant selection, germination and Bailey’s ‘Introduction of Economic Plants transplanting. into Queensland’. Suzanne Hunt mentions Luffman’s Planting the Nation includes the voices gardening supplement in her essay on Vic- of some of Bailey’s brother botanists (yes, torian State School Gardens, in which she all male). While director of Sydney’s explains how Victoria’s first Director Botanic Gardens, Joseph Henry Maiden General of Education, Frank Tate, made was interested in promoting gardens as an the school garden an integral part of the integral part of civic improvement. Robert ‘new’ education which he was introducing 230 Historical Records of Australian Science, Volume 14 Number 2

into the state system. In the school garden that they were formal architect-designed students could learn by experience about gardens, which often included an informal nature, horticulture, botany, and other wild or wilderness area. Edquist describes aspects of the curriculum. School garden (sometimes with plans) some of these produce was exhibited at the impressive extensive gardens that beautified Mel- and crowd-attracting State Schools Exhibi- bourne mansions. An area of Australian tion in Melbourne in 1906 that showcased trees and shrubs often replaced the English the subjects taught under the new educa- wilderness or wild garden section. At his tion philosophy. Perhaps it included some Toorak residence, ‘Miegunyah’, Russell grown under the enthusiastic eye of ‘the Grimwade transformed a tennis court into resourceful Mr Williamson’, whose prize- a plantation of Australian trees, and later winning school garden Hunt discusses wrote Anthography of the Eucalypt (1920). (without mentioning that he was the Ever since humans began to grow plants botanist, Herbert B. Williamson). for food, people have transferred plants Hunt includes splendid photos of and botanical ideas around the globe and bygone school gardens, and describes thereby changed landscapes inside and Tate’s multifarious efforts to encourage outside gardens. I am interested in the school gardens. Arbor Day (also mentioned origins of plants and botanical ideas that, by Crone and Sim) provided a timely across time, have shaped landscapes across incentive to plant trees in the often-treeless Australia, and also how those landscapes school grounds. This USA concept was have in turn shaped botanical ideas. Plant- first implemented in Victoria as part of the schools beautification program in 1901. ing the Nation provides interesting Hunt discusses Tate’s establishment of the glimpses of plants and botanical ideas that State Schools Horticultural Society and its influenced some Australian gardens plant nursery, and mentions early assist- around the time of federation, and how ance from ‘R. T. M. Pescott, Principal of some of these gardens influenced botanical Burnley School of Horticulture’. However thinking. The contributors, editor and Aus- E. E. (not R. T. M.) Pescott was Luffman’s tralian Garden History Society deserve successor. The Society encouraged better congratulations for providing fascinating planned and planted grounds — just as the stepping-stones towards a comprehensive ‘Playground Movement’ (also from USA) botanical analysis of Australia’s garden was advocating provision of playing space history. for town and city children. Linden Gillbank In her essay on Melbourne’s ‘Arts and Department of History and Philosophy of Science Crafts Gardens’ Harriet Edquist explains University of Melbourne Book Review Section 231

Tom Griffiths: Forests of Ash: An Griffiths correctly asserts the place of Environmental History. Cambridge history in any study of our environment. University Press: Melbourne, 2002. [A] forest is not just any forest, but a unique viii + 227 pp., illus., ISBN: 0 521 01234 1 community of trees, and a fire is not just any (PB), $34.95. fire, but one of a particular frequency, a particular intensity, a particular range. The forest will have a history ... (p. 9). Griffiths noticed that ecological science has become more attuned to ‘disturbance rather than equilibrium’ and this concern with ‘instability in nature’ allows consider- ation of history in a way that older equilibrium-centred views did not. History is back. Griffiths is always concerned with these complex cultural and natural pro- cesses of historical change in the forest, particularly those since European settle- ment began. In reflecting on these pro- cesses, he poses some important dilemmas for policy and public debate. Ten of the chapters survive from the Tom Griffiths is arguably Australia’s most original, and a fair proportion of the text distinguished environmental historian. In follows that book word for word. Yet Forests of Ash he has revised and extended Forests of Ash is a new and impressive Secrets of the Forest (1992), the work that study. How so? Everywhere Griffiths regis- first announced his emergence as a pres- ters the contributions of recent scholars, as ence in Australian historiography. A com- for example in the work of Tim Bonyhady parison of the two works can illuminate on the aesthetic appreciation of forests. shifts in the intellectual climate of Austra- The section on improving and clearing the lian environmental history. land amplifies the history of acclimatisa- Forests of Ash charts the ecological tion, drawing on the work of Alfred Crosby history of the Eucalyptus regnans forests and others on ‘ecological imperialism’ in the Great Dividing Range north and east while it recognises that in the early days, as of Melbourne. Integrating human and Warwick Frost has shown, native animals natural history deftly, Griffiths tells of the were more worrisome to farmers than central role of fire in the creation and imported species. Mostly these references destruction of the forests of Mountain Ash; to the field merely reinforce suggestive he explains clearly and concisely how and leads already offered by Griffiths. Yet there why the forests regenerate through fire, is more to the changes in this work. and the complex pressures that human To Secrets of the Forest there have been development in and around the forests added three chapters. The first is ‘Conti- have placed upon this very special fire nent of Fire’ on the very ‘longue durée’, a regime. The story of Black Friday testifies brief meditation on the geo-history of Aus- to the impact of fire and is the subject of a tralia and its forests since their formation. fine chapter, as in the original edition. The In ‘Crossing the Blacks’ Spur’, Griffiths stories of tourism, mining, farming, timber acknowledges the importance of Abori- getting and saw milling as well as water ginal history, a theme contained within management are all told. separate chapters in the original book. 232 Historical Records of Australian Science, Volume 14 Number 2

Another chapter, aptly named ‘The Theatre the fledgling public history movement and of Nature’ deals with the history of natu- cultural landscape interests that informed ralists’ encounters with the fauna of the the original work. Thus today’s volume forests and raises at its end questions about includes thumbnail sketches by a variety of the survival or extinction of the lyrebird in contributors reflecting materials in the the Sherbrooke area and the dangers of Victoria Museum on lyrebirds, butterflies, encroaching suburbia. As elsewhere, Leadbeater’s possum and other vignettes. Griffiths displays here an acute awareness Clearly this book does not replace the of the complexity of cultural impacts on earlier one. Libraries will want to have and perceptions of nature. both precisely because the studies of par- Each of these changed chapters regis- ticular landscapes and ecosystems are not ters developments in environmental included in the new volume. Much more historiography, in Australia and abroad. lavishly illustrated with colour photo- The geo-history appears to be informed by graphs and handsomely produced by Cam- such works as those of Mary White and, bridge University Press, this book is a among other studies, Stephen Pyne’s pleasure to read. Its carefully chosen words Burning Bush (1992). The study in ‘Cross- reflect theoretical insight and wide reading. ing the Blacks’ Spur’ of Aboriginal efforts Nevertheless, it is difficult to see what to develop settled agriculture in ‘accom- special conceptual advance this book has modating’ to ‘European ways’ in Coran- over the older one which remains striking as derrk (p. 49) draws on Diane Barwick’s an example of how public history themes Rebellion at Coranderrk (1998). ‘Theatre meet environmental ones in the story of of Nature’ may reflect intellectual collabo- human/natural heritage issues. Though ration through now-published work on Griffiths registers new research, he does so ornithology by Libby Robin. not as a pioneer in that research which is in Fire history and the fauna of the forests some cases of scientific work outside the (and Aboriginal impacts) were all treated competence of historians, but as a popular- in the original, but mostly scattered through the text, and in some cases dealt iser and synthesiser of the themes of this with in the capsule accounts in Part II, research. Perhaps this is history’s distinctive ‘Selected Historic Sites’ and written by contribution. The way Griffiths meditates other authors. Now these ideas are drawn on scientific research is most clearly seen in together under Griffiths’ single authorship the long section added on the practices of and treated as part of an integrated and clearfelling. Do they mimic the natural quite interdisciplinary history. processes of fire? Here Griffiths draws upon This new book is subtitled ‘An Environ- the work of David Lindenmayer which mental History’ and that is the essence of ‘profoundly challenges the ecological justi- what it is. Secrets of the Forest focused on fication for clearfelling as it is currently the human heritage of the forests and practiced’ (p. 166). detailed its places — their secrets. That The blurb proclaims that the book ‘illu- book could function partly as a handbook minates the story of the continent as a to enable visitors to understand and make whole’. But Griffiths makes clear that not use of the cultural landscapes that humans all forests are alike and that the ecological and nature had created. The new book and social history of the Eucalyptus reflects much more ‘science’ as under- regnans is indeed unique, with character- stood in the Anglo-American world. It istics that cannot simply be applied else- suggests a more interdisciplinary environ- where. That would be ahistorical. It is more mental history rather than the influence of the case that the wider environmental Book Review Section 233

history of Australia contextualises and Ronald L. Numbers and John Stenhouse informs this study. (eds): Disseminating Darwinism: The Role While historians and advocates of of Place, Race, Religion, and Gender. public history will still turn to the earlier Cambridge University Press: Cambridge & volume as a model, path-breaking work, Melbourne; Australian edition, 2002; this new volume is full of provocative and British edition, 1999. ISBN: 0 521 01105 1 yet gently framed ruminations on Aus- (PB), $49.95. tralia’s ecological history and the complex cultural and natural forces that go to make up that history. Ian Tyrrell School of History University of New South Wales

This richly detailed and diverse collection of essays centres on a fascinating question: how did issues of locality, race, gender, and religious affiliation affect the reception — in particular the acceptance or rejection — of Darwinism? All of the essays take case studies in the English-speaking world in the period between the publication of The Origin of Species in 1859 and the 1930s. Many of the essays are confined to the first generation or two after Origin and leave off the story at around the turn of the twentieth century with Darwinism per- vasive and socially powerful, if somewhat scientifically eclipsed. The collection had its origins in a con- ference and was first published in 1999, although here it is reprinted in a substantial paperback form. Not a handsome book, but rather an earnest and solemn one, the tone is set by the inset portrait engraving of the elderly Darwin on the front cover. For all its solemnity, this collection of essays promises a significant and fresh interpretation of the dissemination of 234 Historical Records of Australian Science, Volume 14 Number 2

Darwinian ideas. It is indeed very strong in were allied in a complacent hostility to ‘filling in the gaps’ of scholarship. There Darwin, he also highlights the importance has been considerable work on the recep- of free-thought societies and other infor- tion of Darwinism by, for example, Protes- mal channels in the dissemination of tant churches, and this collection is careful Darwinian theory. Butcher writes very to also include less well-understood evocatively of the ardent well-educated responses. The case studies include the amateurs, who were disappointed by the responses of African-Americans (not just conservatism of the intellectual and reli- by whites using Darwin as a basis for gious elite. His essay is a timely reminder racism); educated women reformers of the that intellectual change is more likely to be late nineteenth century; Australian, New wrought at the edges of established knowl- Zealand and Canadian societies; American edge institutions than at their core. Jews and so on. Some of the most original work in this Like many conference-based collec- volume is to be found in the last chapters tions, this book suffers somewhat from a of the book, particularly the two that deal lack of coherent vision. Yet this is also a explicitly with race and gender. Eric product of its subject matter. These widely Anderson’s essay on ‘Black responses to differing essays collectively argue that the Darwinism’ is frank and compelling. dissemination of Darwinism was an Anderson argues that ‘Darwinism’ is too extremely heterogenous, unpredictable and readily used as a simplistic synonym for highly differentiated process. Although scientific racism. Far from being simply this is no doubt true, nonetheless it seemed hostile to Darwinian thinking, black to me that an opportunity to create a sense writers and social theorists took up a of shared threads and overall tendencies variety of positions — many of them quite may have been missed here. With very neutral — on the question of natural selec- little in the way of synthesis, the reader is tion, and some used Darwinian principles left with a sense that there was no partic- to argue for the vitality of the black race. ular pattern to the reception and dissemi- Much more threatening to the underlying nation of Darwinism; a rather dull and unity of the human races were polygenist perhaps insufficiently bold conclusion to theories of human origins — of which draw about an enormously influential and Louis Agassiz, Darwin’s great American explanatorily powerful theory of life’s opponent, was a champion. Black activists history and processes of change. could use either Darwin or Genesis to Nonetheless there are some very fine support their claims for a single origin for essays in the collection. Of particular all of the races of humankind. This rather interest to Australian readers will be those surprising conclusion points to some of the on Australia (Barry Butcher) and New most interesting themes to emerge from Zealand (a very fine summary by John this collection. Stenhouse). Although both writers have There were many ‘Darwinisms’. This published on these topics elsewhere, they collection takes a very broad view, some- bring some new arguments and evidence times too vague in my view, of what consti- here to their underlying concerns that tutes Darwinism. In part this reflects the enliven the book considerably. Butcher incredibly pervasive and complex nature of revisits the question of the conservatism of theories of natural selection and the ‘strug- the Australian scientific establishment gle for existence’ especially in the last between Origin and the 1890s. While he decades of the nineteenth century. How- agrees with the well-established view that ever, it also seems to render the notion of a establishment scientists and churchmen ‘Darwinism’ that can be ‘disseminated’ Book Review Section 235

rather problematic, and makes compari- humanism, to the most hard-line of heredi- sons across essays quite difficult. For tarian eugenicists. example in an otherwise fascinating essay Although this collection is a very fine on women as readers, opponents, and reference tool in drawing out the nuances appropriators of Darwin, Sally Gregory of these many responses, its key failing is Kohlstedt and Mark Jorgensen seem to see that, in eschewing a discussion of the ‘Darwinism’ as simply a view of the bio- theories themselves, the essays fail to logical determination of sex differences, a capture something of the dynamic inter- principle neither exclusive to, nor defining change between scientific theory and its of, Darwinian theory. Many of the essays transformation into ideas in the popular in this collection are as much about the and/or social realm. Darwinism, if we are impact of Spencerism as Darwinism in any to include its multifaceted social manifes- strict sense. tations, was not so much a theory to be Just as there were many ‘Darwinisms’ disseminated, as a complex and kaleido- there were almost infinite variations on the scopically changing collection of ideas, all reception of them. Darwinian Natural of which are loosely linked to Darwin’s Selection was an extraordinarily plastic identification of competition for scarce theory. In its purist form it was indeed a resources as the engine room of nature’s powerful tool in the hands of those who evolutionary processes. These were not so would ‘disenchant’ the world by removing much ‘disseminated’, as continually supernatural explanations from the under- remade, according to new cultural, racial standing of the biological world. In its and social contexts, as they continue to be muddled, complicated, ambiguous, and today. often Lamarckian popular forms, however, Brigid Hains it could be the servant of anything from Department of History and Philosophy of Science radical co-operative evolutionary University of Melbourne 236 Historical Records of Australian Science, Volume 14 Number 2

Roy MacLeod (ed.): Nature and Empire: Science’ (by Harriet Deacon on South Science and the Colonial Enterprise. Africa). The concluding section, ‘Colonial Osiris Second Series 15, 2000. 328 pp., Science and the New World System’ has illus., ISSN 0369 7827, US$33. Australian, Indian and South African case studies, as well as ideas about intellectual property rights in Bioprospecting (a subject that includes Australia and New Zealand amongst the cases put forward by John Merson). Roy MacLeod’s introduction sets out three themes: 1. the changing perspectives of historians of science in the past forty years in relation to colonialism; 2. the realisation that colonial science was a distinct entity and worthy of study in its own right; and 3. the notion that science ‘became, in turn, both a colonising ideology and an agency of colonial self-identity’ (p. 11). MacLeod laments that the coverage is not global, with a significant absence of This volume deals with the changing papers on the Dutch and German colonial perceptions of colonialism and science in empires, little on French activities and, events spread over five hundred years, surprisingly, nothing on the United States from 1500 almost to the end of the in its connections with the Philippines, twentieth century. This is a vast canvas Cuba, Puerto Rico or Panama. Neverthe- indeed. Although the majority focus on less, he has attracted contributions from 18th and 19th century events, not many of eleven different countries. Non-English the papers focus specifically on the speaking researchers have made important Australasian region, but the rich compara- contributions to this volume, providing a tive insights in the collection are of rich listing of references and footnotes for regional importance. those whose reading is dominated by The material is presented in four sec- sources in English. Editing has been par- tions of almost equal length, roughly ticularly good in relation to English gram- chronologically ordered. The first three, mar, and there are few typographical ‘Imperial Legacies’, ‘Milieux and Meta- errors. phor’ and ‘Science, Culture, and the Colo- Despite the fashion that often dictates nial Project’, deal with themes of interest that only recent literature is cited, many to the Australasian region — but as they authors here, in addition to dealing with have occurred in other places, including original sources, have acknowledged the the Iberian peninsula, Latin America, work of historians of the early and mid- Southern Africa and India. Themes with twentieth century, so papers offer rich liter- regional resonance include ‘Ordering the ature reviews of their regions, as well as World for Europe’ (by Sverker Sölin, comparative dimensions. Some papers working in Sweden), ‘Acclimatizing the have suffered by spending too long on World’ (by Michael A. Osborne on Africa introductory matters and leaving their and Australasia), and ‘Racism and Medical ‘main’ topics, or empirical matters, treated Book Review Section 237

only briefly. A few others suffer in the Tim Flannery (text) and Peter Schouten opposite direction. (illustrator): A Gap in Nature: Discovering A minor disappointment is the quality the World’s Extinct Animals. Text of reproduction of some of the interesting Publishing: Melbourne, 2001. xxiv +184 figures, partly due to the quality of paper pp., illus., ISBN: 1 876 48577 9 (HB), $50. used. While historians largely depend on the printed word, their messages could Sarah Thomas (ed.): The Encounter, often be more effectively given through 1802: Art of the Flinders and Baudin good figures, especially maps. In some Voyages. Art Gallery of South Australia: cases, the figures reproduced might have Adelaide, 2002. 228 pp., illus., been more effectively wedded to the texts. ISBN: 0 730 83005 5 (HB), $70. Despite many difficulties in the aca- demic world, this volume shows that the history of science is alive and surprisingly well. The theoretical aspects of the book are of particular value to the Australasian and Pacific historian of science, although many of the case studies are elsewhere. There is a strong general indication of moving on from George Basalla’s notions of metropolitan versus peripheral science, to a dynamic interchange between the two. The book shows there is still plurality of approaches to the study of the history and philosophy of science. The emphasis in this volume is very much on biological, geological and medical topics, matters of practical interest to both colonisers and colonials every- where, but particularly in our region. This marks an important move away from the dominance of physics and chemistry as ‘main topics’ of the history of science. The focus on such sciences draws in compari- sons with indigenous knowledge systems. In the case of Wade Chambers’ and Richard Gillespie’s chapter, the idea of locality as being important to scientific theory is articulated, a concept that makes particular sense for biology, geology and These two richly illustrated works, in their medical science. distinctive ways, graphically reveal and celebrate the marriage of science and art David Branagan University of Sydney and its importance in the history of science. Libby Robin The year 1802 marked the year in which CRES Australian National University two great voyages of maritime exploration, the British Admiralty’s HMS Investigator (under the command of Matthew Flinders) 238 Historical Records of Australian Science, Volume 14 Number 2

and France’s Le Géographe and Le Natural- the Linnaean classificatory system towards iste (commanded by Nicholas Baudin), met Jussieu’s natural system, founded on the off the coast of South Australia at Encoun- anatomy and physiology of parts. In all, ter Bay. Impelled variously towards Terra around the continent from 1801–4, he col- Australis (or Terre Napoleon) by national lected some 4000 Australian species over imperial ambitions and a driving interest in 1700 of which were new to science. His scientific enquiry, the two expeditions, publication, Prodromus Florae Novae carried out while their countries were at Hollandiae et Insulae Van-Diemen (1810), war, were to bring back to the Old World covered 464 genera and 2000 species. the first major documentary records and This, and his ‘General Remarks, paintings of Australia’s wildlife and flora. Geographical and Systemic on the Botany In the growing tradition of the period, of Terra Australis’ published as an appen- both expeditions were equipped with the dix to Flinders’ Voy ag e to Terra Australis personnel and instruments for the pursuit (1814), opened up botanical classification, of physical and natural science. Backed by launched the study of plant geography and the powerful Sir Joseph Banks, the British set Brown on the way to becoming Admiralty appointed not only the youthful Britain’s leading botanist of the century. Flinders, already experienced in Australian Bauer, already versed in accurate scien- waters, but the botanist Robert Brown, the tific illustrations from his training and natural history illustrator Ferdinand Bauer, earlier work, proved a gifted collaborator. topographical artist and draughtsman His brilliant depictions of seed and struc- William Westall, a mineralogist, and a ture, stamen, roots, foliage and fruiting gardener, Peter Goode. In turn, the French bodies in his plant sketches and water- expedition, sanctioned by Napoleon and colours reveal the influence of Brown’s under instructions from France’s most knowledge and approach. Working indefat- prestigious scientists at the Institut de igably across the four years he spent in France, sailed with a contingent of twenty- Australia, he also addressed the fauna, and two civilian scientists that included five in both his floral work and his zoological zoologists and a mélange of anthro- drawings, he attained a technical mastery, pologists, botanists, natural history artists scientific veracity and an aesthetic sense and others. that has not been surpassed. Bauer’s contri- Both parties were generously laden bution was to convert the rich evidence of with scientific equipment and an array of scientific observation into spectacular artists’ materials including camera visual form. obscura, brushes, quills, pencils, reams of The French experience also produced paper and tablets of colour that enabled the compelling outcomes. While illness, death, ships to serve as floating laboratories and disaffection and desertion reduced the artists’ studios. In both expeditions, scientific corps to a fraction of its original scientists and artists worked in close strength before the ships reached Austra- accord. lian waters, the close working relationship Robert Brown aboard the Investigator established between the remaining zoo- was the first interpretative European bota- logist, François Péron, and the young nist to reach Australia. There, faced with apprentice illustrator, Charles-Alexandre flora that was singularly new, he applied Lesueur, ensured a striking record of the both knife and microscope in studying and Australian fauna and the gauzy, brilliantly- describing the structure, anatomy and hued invertebrates of the sea. All the fauna physiology of the plants in their stages of were the subject of rapid sketches and development. His work moved away from some dissections in the field where Book Review Section 239

Lesueur’s scientific accuracy flourished French artist, Nicholas-Martin Petit. All under Péron’s tutelage. By journey’s end works are carefully provenanced, and the they had together assembled 100000 book is further enriched with maps. species of animals large and small and, as While Bauer was clearly a more sophis- Cuvier declared jubilantly on their return, ticated and accomplished artist than ‘made known more new creatures than all Lesueur, Thomas discerns their separate the travelling naturalists of recent times contributions to the natural history record put together’. in these terms: Significantly, it was not the specimens, Bauer’s animals generally have a great but the visual imagery of science that sense of vitality, sometimes even personality. endured from the two nations’ voyages of In some instances they could be described discovery. While few of either Bauer’s or as portraits, seated or standing in profile, Lesueur’s watercolours and pencil draw- their head turned towards the viewer with quiet dignity. Lesueur on the other hand ings saw the light of print in the immediate was more often interested in capturing his aftermath of the voyages and in the critical animals in motion, sometimes going to post-war economic climate of the times, greater length to portray them scampering the artists’ representations of the flora and over rocks, foraging for food or swinging fauna have found their visual flowering in a from trees [and sometimes] the inherent violence of nature is revealed. number of published works and exhibitions of the late 20th century. It is no coincidence that Péron believed In The Encounter, 1802 these illustra- in the modification of species by climate tions are brought together for the first time. and environment, and that Lesueur often Conceived for an exhibition at the Art went to some trouble to render his animals Gallery of South Australia to mark the within their environmental contexts. 100th anniversary of the meeting at Bauer’s luminous flora, however, stand Encounter Bay, this handsome work is far alone. Far more than any photographs more than an Exhibition Catalogue and could convey, these illustrations, flowing contains seven contributed chapters on dif- with vitality and executed from sightings ferent aspects of the expeditions and their on the spot, supply us with imperishable scientific and artistic accomplishments. records that tell us not only of the dedi- Introduced with an essay by curator Sarah cation and fervour of the artists and ‘scien- Thomas, it offers a rich showcase of tific gentlemen’ on the voyages of Bauer’s Australian animal and floral water- discovery, but of the signal nexus between colours. Together with these are the repro- science and art. ductions (some graphically enlarged and Flannery and Schouten’s book, A Gap often more visually dramatic in detail than in Nature, combines art and biological the originals) are Lesueur’s marine knowledge and introduces the reader to a creatures (sea stars, sea dragons, starfish, related, but different genre. Contemplating sea snakes, jellyfish, squirts, turtles and the long and continuing extinction of elephant seals) along with frogs, dingoes, species over evolutionary time, Tim marsupials, birds, platypus and echidna. To Flannery, evolutionist and museum direc- these are added William Westall’s topo- tor, argues that there are periods of history graphical drawings and coastal views, pen, when the rate of extinction is so rapid ‘that pastel and watercolour drawings of whole ecosystems are destabilised and Aborigines, and the first depiction by a swept away’. European of an Aboriginal cave painting, Homo sapiens, spanning out over conti- along with a selection of Aboriginal por- nents for at least 50000 years has been a traits and coastal views by the second prime destroyer, causing exterminations 240 Historical Records of Australian Science, Volume 14 Number 2

that gained momentum from the from the original life-size portraits, and 15th century through maritime exploration shaped by zoological knowledge, imagina- and invasion of the remote reaches of the tive insights and the shared research world. ‘We live’, as Alfred Russel Wallace deductions of the authors. reflected, ‘in a zoologically impoverished Known for his drawings of Australian world from which all the hugest and wildlife, Schouten is also highly reputed fiercest and strangest fauna have recently for his visual representations of ancient disappeared’. faunal worlds in which he has provided In A Gap in Nature, Flannery and wild- palaeontological reconstructions from a life artist Peter Schouten, have chosen to tooth here, a bone or jawbone there, of focus on 103 species of birds, mammals extinct Australian fauna. No background and reptiles that have disappeared from could have been more fitting for his ambi- continents, coasts, islands and archi- tious plunge into a largely undocumented, pelagos of the Pacific, Indian, and Atlantic but more recent, faunal past. If not ‘the Oceans over the last five hundred years. hugest and fiercest’, here in the Moa and Often many of these species were last the monumental Seller’s Sea Cow, are sighted in the nineteenth and early some of the most bizarre creatures of a twentieth century when travelling natural departed world. historians documented the flora and fauna No animal has a greater hold on our of distant lands. notions of extinction than the sad-eyed Here, then, is a contemporary manifes- Dodo that adorns the book’s cover. ‘As tation of the long-honoured marriage of dead as a dodo’ is a byword for something science and art. But here the scientist/artist truly defunct. Already a strange relic in collaboration in constructing and repre- Mauritius decimated by the native inhabi- senting the vanished species has distinctive tants when the Dutch settled on the island traits. Denied sight of the animals in the in 1590, ‘within a century’, writes field, the methodology was to visit together Flannery, ‘the Dodo was gone’. On the the museums that held relevant materials authors’ visit to the Ashmolean Museum at — the faded specimens of skins and Oxford, a Dodo’s head, the last surviving feathers, skull-bones, horns or an occa- remains of the famous flightless bird, was sional ‘distorted mounted specimen’, placed reverently in Flannery’s hands. along with written accounts, a rare photo- The extinction of species followed sea- graph and some sketches from life — to farers of all races as they spilled out from assemble the reference material for their the surrounding mainlands to islands task. The work on paintings and text, apparently offering larders of food. Aus- Flannery explains, ‘began when both of us tralia too experienced ‘a cascade of extinc- felt confident that we understood what the tion’ in the last 6000 years as changing species must really have been like’. patterns of burning and the advent of sheep While Flannery adroitly relates what is and cattle literally decimated its marsu- known of the history and habitat of the pials of all sizes, including the splendid animals, their specialist evolution in Thylacine, all illustrated here. remote outposts; their prehistoric and last Although little detail is given of the act recorded provenance; and the fragmentary, of painting this ‘paper ark’, Schouten’s sometimes unprovenanced records, record of lost species is an outstanding glimpsing as he proceeds ‘a tiny flicker of artistic accomplishment. The tiny Pacific the wonder of this lost world’, the book’s and Caribbean birds and other larger impact lies in Schouten’s powerful assem- species glitter like jewels set against the blage of paintings, reduced for publication foliage of their lands; the marsupials and Book Review Section 241

bats combine a vibrant beauty of fur, eye Libby Robin: The Flight of the Emu: and skin. The Lagarto Skink, the largest A Hundred Years of Australian Ornithology skink to have ever lived and hunted to 1901–2001. Melbourne University Press: extinction during famine on the Cape Carlton, 2001. 432 pp. + 32 pp., illus. Verde Islands, gleams from the pages (colour and b/w), ISBN: 0 522 84987 3 richly brown. The two studies of the Thyla- (HB), $69.95. cine that closed its eyes for the last time in 1936 in the Beaumaris Zoo near Hobart, is a brilliant portrait of one of Australia’s most lamented species losses. A Gap in Nature with its important biological and environmental detail of each animal is a unique addition to the discourse on extinction and biodiversity and, with its beautiful zoological recreations that transcend the art of pho- tography in conveying scientific knowl- edge, furnishes an extension to the established relationship between science and art and a new genre in the history of science. The Emu is a flightless Australian bird, and Ann Moyal Independent Scholars Association of Australia also the name of the journal of the Royal Canberra. Australasian Ornithologists’ Union (RAOU), which celebrated its centenary in the year 2001. The Emu has been the face of Australian ornithology for one hundred years and is now fledged to roam the southern hemisphere from the Indian Ocean to the mid-Pacific with the new subtitle of Austral Ornithology. The Flight of the Emu is a thoroughly researched and most objectively written history of Australian ornithology, com- memorating the centenary of the Union, now also called ‘Birds Australia’. The environmental historian Libby Robin undertook the task with the able assistance of Rosanne Walker, who helped to unearth much unpublished material and compiled records for the appendices. The author took the attitude that ‘a history of ornith- ology is about field science and the experi- ences of being in the bush with birds’. Robin herself had hands-on experience working with volunteers at Roebuck Bay, north-western Australia, cannon-netting migratory waders. She also interviewed 242 Historical Records of Australian Science, Volume 14 Number 2

many ornithologists and jogged their mem- Australian birds than birds themselves, as ories to fill in gaps in the early history and exemplified by numerous illustrations that to provide anecdotes. As a result, the book contain more pictures of people than of is not only informative and readable, but birds. However, the beautiful colour plates, also extremely interesting. of which there are twenty-four, are mostly The main part of the book, consisting of paintings and photographs of native birds twelve chapters, is threaded with stories of and some of their habitats. the struggles of the Union to balance the The author gives an international per- popular and authoritative approaches and spective to each new major undertaking of the influences of amateurs and profess- the RAOU and its members, such as the ionals. Both groups are described vividly production of modern field guides; the as they have engaged intricately with each establishment of observatories and sanctu- other and in different ways in the under- aries; the development of the bird banding standing of the peculiar forms and habits and nest record schemes; formation of the of Australian birds. Nomenclature, system- bird atlas project;, and the staging of the atics and distribution were the primary international congress. Each of these activ- concerns of the founders of Australian ities is described in detail. ornithology. This period, leading to the The 1968 AGM of the RAOU, which publication of the 1926 Checklist, was the author calls ‘the 1968 Revolution’, is characterised by intensive collecting. The seen as the modernising turning point of Gould League of Bird Lovers, which arose the Union, which also gave Emu a firm to discourage egg collecting by children foundation of science. New diversifi- and plume collecting by traders, con- cations of ornithological science were fronted the members of the RAOU, who in apparent in the work of younger genera- early days collected birds and eggs even at tions, who challenged the traditional con- their official campouts. Serious scientific cepts of classification, descriptive field collecting, despite strict government ecology, ethological studies and conser- restrictions and public pressure against it, vation, as they took up positions in univer- continued throughout the history of ornith- sities, CSIRO, museums and State fauna ology, but photography and sound record- authorities. New ornithology professionals ing largely replaced collecting for emerged. Unfortunately, the book in this amateurs in the second half of the century. section is more concerned with who said or For this latter period, the book describes did what, than with investigating what the growing partnership between amateurs drove ornithologists. Consequently, the and professionals in their effort to band opportunity is lost to record the theories birds, protect threatened species, conserve developed by Australian ornithologists their habitats, compile the bird atlas through original work on characteristically (twice), and most recently produce the Australian phenomena, such as coopera- definitive Handbook of Australian, tive breeding and aseasonal nesting. One New Zealand and Antarctic Birds in seven whole chapter is devoted to the saga of volumes. organising the International Ornithological Libby Robin treats the history of Aus- Congress in Canberra and the contri- tralian ornithology since the foundation of butions made by Australians in the twelve the RAOU by conscientious Australians in symposia of the Congress. Again, issues Melbourne and Adelaide, making the pion- taken up are parochial rather than eering work of John Gould and Baldwin fundamental. Spencer seem almost like prehistory. The There are three short interludes break- book is more about people who studied ing up the history into four periods. These Book Review Section 243

are stories of the elusive Night Parrot, the ornithological periodicals of the past and elegant Lyrebird and the once-extinct present; and, in addition to the Notes, the Noisy Scrub-bird. Each is a uniquely Bibliography lists some 500 publications Australian episode, involving early explor- right up to 2001. This is presumably a list ers, poetic or mystic description and extra- of published work used in writing the ordinary encounters. Each forms a high- book, with or without reference in the light in Australian ornithological history, Notes. If so, there are some important and the saga is still continuing. omissions, such as the RAOU Checklist of Exciting challenges and continuing 1926 and Herbert Condon’s 1975 Check- controversies depicted in this history are list (non-passerines), the publications of put in proper context by the author and are which are treated in the book as important easy to follow. Robin has avoided the style events in Australian ornithology. of reference-studded scientific literature in Today, ornithology seems to represent her writing; instead, she gives authenti- many aspects of human endeavour. It can cation and sources of information in thirty- be a hard-core biology, a subject in fine five pages of Notes at the end of the book. arts, music and literature, or a symbol of The accuracy and thoroughness of the peace and a clean environment. Birds have information are impressive, and very few assumed an important part of our social people today would feel uncomfortable life. The Flight of the Emu is a human reading this book as its history encroaches history of how this subject has been devel- upon them. Some 108 ornithologists out of oped and cherished during the past century 190 profiled in an appendix for their con- in Australia. Its scientific content could be tribution to the RAOU are deceased, and expanded to form another volume, com- another appendix also lists officers of the panion to this one, to give a new foun- RAOU 1901–2000, staff 1976–2000 dation for the promising twenty-first (mostly in the past fifteen years), sites of century in Australian ornithology. each congress and campout held since Jiro Kikkawa 1901, and the WW1 RAOU Honour Roll. Professor Emeritus Another very useful list given in an appen- School of Life Sciences dix consists of over 200 Australian University of Queensland 244 Historical Records of Australian Science, Volume 14 Number 2

Paul Sinclair: The Murray: A River and its Murray-Darling Basin Commission and People. Melbourne University Press: Land and Water Australia. That is clearly Carlton, 2001. 320 pp. + 41 pp., illus. the ‘sensible’ approach. Sinclair, however, (b/w), ISBN: 0 522 84940 7 (PB), $32.95. sees that coupling coming at a high cost. If we start the discussion by accepting that we have to be in the black before we can be green there is overwhelming pres- sure to give primacy to the needs of pro- duction at all levels of the debate. This requires people to develop arguments that are effective within a framework of values that put productivity first. It then becomes much harder to assert the value of things that do not provide some sort of material benefit. Sinclair wants to change the frame- work of values that shape the way we think about these issues. He is arguing that there is more to life than meeting our material needs and that the costs of ignoring that old truth, while subtle, are profound. The Murray is a book of advocacy rather This perspective is presented not as than a definitive history of a river. It does some alien philosophy that he is attempting not focus on the role of economics, river to impose. Rather, he suggests, it is an idea regulation, irrigation or the squabbles of that readers will understand because it has the States over management of the Murray, long been a persistent theme in popular although all those themes have a place in culture, subdued but not quite suppressed. the book. Fundamentally it is a plea, Sinclair thinks that the alternative view is perhaps more a demand, for a change in there, nagging in the back of most people’s the way we should think about the river minds, and that we and the river would be when we consider its future. Sinclair the better for it if we responded to those argues that cultural, aesthetic and environ- murmurings. Many people have regrets mental values should be central to our about environmental and aesthetic costs, thinking rather than just an optional extra. the weakening of the connections with the Australians need to recognise how the river experienced by earlier generations, decline of the Murray has not only eroded incurred as the price of ‘progress’. The biodiversity but also diminished our culture rhetoric of progress has been so over- (p. 21). whelming that it has cowed us from Sinclair attacks the pragmatic, material- working out for ourselves what really mat- istic priorities that have shaped settler Aus- ters, what makes living worthwhile. Sinclair tralians’ behaviour towards the river for wants readers to be more aware of an alter- more than 150 years. A major theme of native voice within, to consider seriously environmental reformist literature is the the challenge it offers. question of how to be both sustainable and Oral history, much of it collected during productive. That dual task dominates the a two-month canoe trip, is an important research agenda of organisations like source for the book. Many of the stories CSIRO. The need to achieve progress on came from people near the end of their both fronts, to take a balanced approach, is lives. Often the reader is told that the the core of much of the policy work of the informant is now dead. Accounts of loss, Book Review Section 245

impending mortality and questions about the field and it still has plenty of the point of it all recur frequently. Sinclair champions. His aim is to put the argument tells stories about encounters and reflects for culture forcefully in a way that will upon what was said and has been done. make readers respond. He is attempting to The conceptual framework is unobtrusive. break through the reasonable discourse I suspect that he set out to write a subver- about win-win solutions, which aims to sive book, to create debates within people convert without causing anger or making and communities even more than between enemies. Unless this discussion is allowed them. to engage the basic emotions it will never Sinclair’s informants ‘consider (the become intense and real, as it has to do, river’s) present degraded condition as evi- before it can cause a significant shift in the dence of destructive relationships: ecologi- thinking of communities and governments. cal degradation is seen to have cultural Stepping back from the fire of the con- costs’ (p. 222). In developing this argu- flict, it can be said that there is a place for ment, which recurs throughout the book, both the pragmatic materialist approach — Sinclair makes it clear that the loss is not there is real force in the argument that only to people. The lack of a strong cul- unless we can make sustainability pay it tural perspective has had other impacts; it will not happen — and also the deliber- is one of the fundamental causes of degra- ately ‘unreasonable’ approach of Sinclair. dation. Furthermore, ignoring the need to We should strive to find a way to reconcile foster this cultural dimension weakens the the need to be productive with the impera- environmental reform movement by failing tive that we should live and work sustain- to draw on an important potential source of ably. But behind that rather glib and energy. Unless we feel passionate about the need for change, it will not happen, formulaic response lurks a number of particularly if it involves significant unsettling questions. How much material sacrifices of time and income. production do we need? What is enough? Sinclair does not attempt to present his What should be the relationship between case by weighing the merits of the various people and their environment? In essence, approaches. Rather, he puts it energetically what is the purpose of life? Such discus- and single-mindedly, in a way that some sion makes many people uncomfortable readers will reject as provocative, unfair, but it is at the core of the debate about unrealistic, unbalanced, unconstructive whether we can implement a sustainable and unhelpful. His approach has the great society. These are the issues that Sinclair is advantage that it allows him to be much pushing us to confront. If he succeeds, his more forceful and clear than he could be if unreasonableness will be thoroughly he spent time explaining the opposing justified. view, that primacy should be accorded to Daniel Connell material production and consumption. Centre for Resource and Environmental Studies Until recently that approach has dominated Australian National University 246 Historical Records of Australian Science, Volume 14 Number 2

Tim Bonyhady and Tom Griffiths (eds): too is this ‘attempt to find words for coun- Words for Country: Landscape and try’ (p. 11) ripe for the early 21st century. Language in Australia. University of New Australians from many walks of life are South Wales Press: Sydney, NSW, 2002. seeking ways to interpret stories, read x + 253 pp., ISBN: 0 868 40628 7 (PB), landscapes, understand perceptions and $39.95. map the land to better comprehend our links with our country. The book includes chapters from four- teen contributors, who provide a range of styles from personal stories to historical accounts, from the literary to the scientific. There is a universal enthusiastic energy from the contributors for their stories. They have unearthed myths, dug below the surface to understand why and how and by whom the languages of places have evolved. Their stories reveal the vernacular histories of particular places, combining the cultural, social, economic and political with the environmental. They unearth the use of language as a means to construct place. Each chapter is appealingly titled by a Words for Country: Landscape and phrase or quote that encapsulates the Language in Australia is a recent book of essential theme of that chapter. Some of the new writings about the intersection of culture and country in Australia. This col- titles themselves are gems; for example, lection of ‘conversations with places and Nicholas Brown’s chapter entitled ‘Every- their communities’ (p. 10) is an important one Who Has Ever Done a Tree Sit Always contribution to the exploration of the Says That the Tree Talks To You’. This is vocabulary of the land. It digs deep into the very Australian vernacular. layers of history, perception and represen- Another satisfying aspect of the book is tation, in particular places to unearth the inclusion of ‘sources’ at the end of stories and perspectives. From the Kimber- each chapter. These are not just lists of ley to Mount Druitt to the Murray, these references, but discussions by the authors stories reveal vernacular landscapes of of the written and oral sources they used. Australia. These sources provide additional insights: Tim Bonyhady and Tom Griffiths, the they are stories about stories. editors, are both from the Australian There are a number of recurring themes National University. They are amongst the that are dealt with by many of the contri- most active thinkers and writers on envi- butors and drawn together by the editors in ronmental history in Australia at present. their introductory chapter. The issues of They gauged the current cultural environ- conflict over and politics of land are raised ment correctly in determining the potential repeatedly. Such conflict is usually interest in a collection of thoughts and between those who see, read and value the studies on this topic. Just as George Sed- land through ‘different cultural lenses’ don’s adoption of ‘sense of place’ was ‘ripe (Goodall, p. 35), such as Aboriginals and for the time’ (p. 9) in the early 1970s, so colonists, pastoralists and irrigators, Book Review Section 247

environmentalists and timber workers, journals reflect the way landscapes were insiders and outsiders. decoded, read and created. They allow us to Aboriginal perceptions of landscape see the visions held by colonial explorers both in the past and the present are dealt and their ‘conceptual transformation of the with by ten of the contributors. This focus land’ (Morphy and Morphy, p. 104). reflects not only the close connections Kirsty Douglas outlines two different between indigenous Australians and coun- views of ‘imagining a country scien- try, but also the broader contemporary tifically’ (p. 70). She juxtaposes the nine- social grappling with indigenous Australia. teenth century biblical-scientific accounts The difference between indigenous and of the explorer and naturalist Charles Sturt non-indigenous cultural constructions of with the twentieth century secular- landscapes and space-time is a recurrent scientific accounts of the geologist Jim theme. Bowler in an investigation of the ‘simi- The concept of place naming is dealt larities and intersections between two dif- with by a number of the contributors, and ferent ways of framing an account of the revealed as a highly political process both mechanics of landscape modification’. Her in the colonial past and in recent times. search concludes that there are many conti- Bonyhady’s account of the naming and nuities between these different paradigms, renaming of Kutikina Cave in Tasmania is despite ‘differences in the way the cloak is an entertaining exposé of this politics at worn’. She reiterates one of the universal work. Paul Carter’s The Road to Botany themes in the book, that ‘reading the land Bay (1987) raised the politics of place operates on an unconscious, or implicit naming. There is ample scope for more level, as a structuring device for inter- exploration on this topic. pretation’ (p. 74). A number of the contributors use pieces The narratives in this volume success- from Australian literature to exemplify fully ‘draw out the diversity of voices that perspectives of landscape. For example, in speak for a landscape and the ways in exploring the many voices of the south which these voices emerge from complex coast, Brown quotes from David Foster’s social processes’ (Brown, p. 87). They novel The Glade Within the Grove (1996). remind us of Bernard Cohen’s words that Similarly, P. J. Hay uses pieces from poems ‘landscapes have histories and these are and novels to draw out the vernacular contained not only in the soils and the voices of Queenstown. Tom Griffiths fauna and the traces of human life, but in draws on the writings of Henry Lawson, the history of ways of seeing the land’. Judith Wright and Eric Rolls to give We are left, however, with a somewhat further depth, breadth and illustration to disturbing exposé of the fact that landscape his essay about The Outside Country. ‘is overlain with many voices’ and that Likewise, links to visual art are ‘these voices express diverse sensibilities employed by some of the authors. and histories as they speak through land- Bonyhady is a master at linking art and scape and for it’ (Brown, p. 87). Disturb- environmental history, as he revealed in ing, not because we did not intuitively The Colonial Earth (2000). In this volume already know this, but because there is a he provides a description of a Bea degree of reverberation in revelation of Maddock’s artwork called ‘We Live In the these voices and how they fit together, Meaning We Are Able to Discern’. A very where they are going and what is our part fitting title and link for this collection. in them. They expose some of our cultural Other contributors provide critical secrets and do not necessarily provide analyses of explorers’ journals. Such answers for what we can do with this 248 Historical Records of Australian Science, Volume 14 Number 2

knowledge. But this is healthy discourse, Raymond Priestley (Ronald Ridley, ed.): of which there is arguably not enough in The Diary of a Vice-Chancellor: University Australia. of Melbourne 1935–1938. Melbourne Words for Country is a poignant publi- University Press: Carlton, Victoria, 2002. cation. Australians will be seeking a xxxvii + 555 pp., illus., second volume to unearth more stories to ISBN: 0 522 84985 7 (HB), $59.95. help us comprehend our words for country. Catherine Potter Environment Australia Canberra.

When scarcely out of his teens, Raymond Priestley, the son of an English school- master, was one of the two geologists on Shackleton’s Antarctic expedition in 1908–9, and then one of the survivors of Scott’s ill-fated expedition in 1911–12. He served in the First World War and wrote two books on aspects of it before becom- ing a Cambridge don. There in 1934 he was appointed Secretary-General of the Faculties, a post that in the days of two- year Vice-Chancellors entailed many of the duties that later fell to Vice-Chancellors. The following year he was appointed the first full-time salaried Vice-Chancellor of the University of Melbourne. During his time there he kept a voluminous diary whose extensive extracts in this hand- somely produced book provide a remark- able insight into the life of a Vice- Chancellor in the 1930s. In Priestley’s time, the University of Melbourne had some 80–90 teaching staff and something under 4000 students. On his arrival he was dismayed by the total lack of social facili- ties for those students who were not Book Review Section 249

housed in colleges, and appalled by the interactions with Sir David Rivett, the accommodation of the Chemistry depart- Walter and Eliza Hall Institute and the ment. He made the building of a students’ Melbourne Medical School. union and a new building for the Chemis- From the start, he encountered diffi- try department two of his prime objectives, culties with both his Chancellor and his both of which were accomplished before Deputy Chancellor, neither of whom found he left. it easy to adjust to the insertion of the Those were the days when the govern- office of Vice-Chancellor in the univer- ment of the University lay with the Profes- sity’s hierarchy. Two other matters particu- sorial Board (23 members in his time). He larly oppressed him, however. Despite his worked closely with a few key colleagues, frequent public addresses on the impor- especially Douglas Copland, Kenneth tance of the university, and his assiduous Bailey and Samuel Wadham, and energeti- courting of the Melbourne establishment, cally busied himself with a host of matters both as a member of the Melbourne Club concerning the internal activities of the and of Rotary, he found public attitudes university. With financial assistance from towards funding the University incorrigibly the Carnegie Corporation he spent a mem- negative. He eventually reached the end of orable two and a half months visiting his tether when in a deliberate response to leading universities in North America, his mounting pleas for an increase in gleaning from their experiences anything government funding of the university, the which could be relevant to the university Victorian government granted less than scene in Australia. Throughout his time, he half his request. Having meanwhile had made it his business to go on periodic two offers of Vice-Chancellorship in lecture tours around groups of towns British universities, he departed in 1938 to outside Melbourne, whereas on like occa- pursue a lengthy and very distinguished sions in Melbourne he regularly related his career as Vice-Chancellor of the University Antarctic experiences to the great appreci- of Birmingham. He left behind him those ation of his audience. His diary includes a major concerns about funding, which, it particularly vivid account (18–19 July seems, remain unresolved 65 years later. 1935) of a two-day tour around the Metro- D. A. Low politan Water Board’s water supply works, Research School of Social Sciences and there are a variety of entries about his Australian National University

http://www.publish.csiro.au/journals/hras