A HISTORY OF HERPETOLOGY AT THE AMERICAN MUSEUM OF NATURAL HISTORY CHARLES W. MYERS Curator Emeritus Department of Herpetology American Museum of Natural History New York, New York BULLETIN OF THE AMERICAN MUSEUM OF NATURAL HISTORY Number 252, 232 pages, 64 figures, 3 tables, 4 appendices Issued May 18, 2000 Price: $18.50 a copy Copyright ᭧ American Museum of Natural History 2000 ISSN 0003-0090 FRONTISPIECE. Mary Cynthia Dickerson (1866–1923)—first American Museum herpetologist; founder and first Curator of the present Department of Herpetology. Also first Curator in the old De- partment of Woods and Forestry, and long-time Editor of the American Museum Journal and Natural History. Possibly taken ca. 1912 and, until recently, her only known photograph (see also fig. 4). AMNH Photographic Archives 2A-5176. CONTENTS Abstract ....................................................................... 5 Introduction .................................................................... 7 Departmental Origin and Curatorial Staffing ....................................... 8 Era of Mary Cynthia Dickerson, 1909–1920 ..................................... 8 Miss Dickerson’s Tragedy, 1920–1923 ......................................... 13 Her Legacy ................................................................. 17 Her ‘‘Triumvirate’’ (Plus One) ................................................ 18 Emmett Reid Dunn ........................................................ 18 Karl Patterson Schmidt ..................................................... 19 Gladwyn Kingsley Noble ................................................... 25 Charles Lewis Camp ....................................................... 28 Her Last Vision ............................................................. 31 Era of Gladwyn Kingsley Noble, 1921–1940 .................................... 32 From Gossip to Legend: Noble and His Staff ................................... 39 The Pope Affair, 1935 ........................................................ 48 Era of Charles Mitchill Bogert, 1941–1968 ..................................... 54 R. G. Zweifel and Successors: Second Half of the 20th Century .................. 60 A Century of Exhibition, 1870s–1978 ............................................ 63 Mary Dickerson’s Habitat Groups ............................................. 71 1913: The First ‘‘Reptile Hall’’ ................................................ 79 1927: New Hall of Reptile and Amphibian Life ................................. 80 The Museum as Zoo ......................................................... 87 1977: Hall of the Biology of Reptiles and Amphibians ........................... 88 Exhibition Miscellanea ....................................................... 93 Curation and Growth of the Herpetological Collections ............................. 94 Evolution of Curatorial Procedures ............................................ 95 Collecting Leaflets and Other Propaganda ..................................... 104 Collection Growth and Diversity ............................................. 109 Expedition Sources of the Collection ............................................ 110 An Overview of American Museum Expeditionary History Relevant to Herpetology . 116 Some Early Department Fieldwork ........................................... 117 Dickerson to Arizona, 1912 ................................................ 117 Halter to Santo Domingo, 1915 ............................................ 119 Dunn to North Carolina, 1916 ............................................. 119 Halter and Mannhardt in Nicaragua, 1916–1917 .............................. 120 Schmidt to Puerto Rico, 1919 .............................................. 121 The ‘‘New Technique’’ of Night Collecting .................................. 122 Noble in the New Jersey Pine Barrens, 1919–1922 ........................... 126 The Department Infiltrates Hispaniola, 1922–1935 ............................ 129 Wreck of the Basilisk, 1930–1931 .......................................... 133 Breder in Darie´n Jungles, 1924 ............................................ 134 Burden, on the Trail of Dragons, 1926 ...................................... 135 Bassler in the Upper Amazon, 1921–1931 ................................... 139 Some Multidisciplinary Expeditions ........................................... 141 Lang and Chapin in the Belgian Congo ..................................... 141 Roosevelt, Miller, and Cherrie in Brazil ..................................... 144 Andrews and Pope in China ............................................... 146 The Whitney South Sea Expedition ......................................... 150 The New Guinea Expeditions .............................................. 152 Lost Worlds: The Guayanan Tepuis ......................................... 154 EndofanEra .............................................................. 160 3 4 BULLETIN AMERICAN MUSEUM OF NATURAL HISTORY NO. 252 Archival Sources and Acknowledgments ......................................... 164 Appendix 1: Notes on Departmental Bibliographic Projects ........................ 166 Appendix 2: Bibliography of Mary Cynthia Dickerson (1866–1923) ................ 169 Appendix 3: Bibliography of Gladwyn Kingsley Noble (1894–1940) ................ 172 Appendix 4: Bibliography of Richard G. Zweifel (1926– ) ......................... 181 References ................................................................... 187 Notes ........................................................................ 203 Index ........................................................................ 225 2000 MYERS: HISTORY OF HERPETOLOGY 5 ABSTRACT Those who use and care for collections are subtly hindered if they lack understanding of the history of their collections. The present work provides a frame of reference for the Amer- ican Museum’s accumulations of Recent amphibians and reptiles and for the department es- tablished to curate and use them. The herpetological holdings began in 1869 with purchase of the collection of Maximilian, Prince of Wied-Neuwied, and additional specimens began accumulating from other sources. But the signature and scope of the collection were most importantly determined by the explo- sion of expeditionary fever at the American Museum in the early 20th century and by estab- lishment of a department with curators charged with organizing and studying the incoming collections. A Department of Ichthyology and Herpetology was formalized in 1909 and later split in 1920. The original department had three ichthyologists and one herpetologist—Mary Cynthia Dickerson, who also served as editor of the American Museum Journal (ϭ Natural History as of 1919) and as Curator of the old Department of Woods and Forestry. Despite an incredible workload, Dickerson threw herself into both herpetological exhibition work and collection building—two parts of a calculated tripartite effort at establishing a major herpetology de- partment that could stand on its own with the older departments of the Museum. The third part of Dickerson’s evolving program was a conscientious attempt at building a library and center for herpetological research. Frustrated in finding time for her own investi- gations, she deliberately sought young scholars who could independently conduct both field- work and collection-based research. She sent Emmett Reid Dunn on his first collecting trip and, by 1916–1917, Dickerson had attracted to her cause assistants Karl Patterson Schmidt, Gladwyn Kingsley Noble, and Charles Lewis Camp. In a few years, with interruption for military service, Dickerson’s ‘‘triumvirate’’ was accomplishing work that would establish the department as the major research center that she had envisioned. Concurrent with her editorship of Natural History and her curatorship of Woods and For- estry, Dickerson established a robust program of herpetological exhibition and research in only a decade. Herpetology—her Department—was officially separated from Ichthyology in Feb- ruary 1920. But Dickerson had been losing a perilous grip on her sanity and, on Christmas Eve of that year, was committed to an asylum, where she died three years later at age 57. Assistant Curator G. K. Noble, age 27, was given formal charge of the Department begin- ning in 1921. Although K. P. Schmidt had resigned earlier, Noble arranged for Schmidt’s return to help in a difficult transition, during which Noble completed his Ph.D. dissertation and Schmidt brought Dickerson’s research to conclusion. Schmidt gave his final resignation in 1922, in order to take charge of the new Division of Reptiles and Amphibians at the Field Museum of Natural History. Noble inherited Dickerson’s departmental philosophy and continued her emphasis on ex- hibition and on building the collection and bibliographic files, although his own research expanded dramatically. Noble never abandoned interest in fieldwork, anatomy, and collection- based systematics, but he combined those pursuits with increasing attention to laboratory- based, experimental investigations using techniques of endocrinology and neurology. In 1928, he received offers for positions at Cornell University and at Columbia University, the latter to replace geneticist Thomas Hunt Morgan (who was later awarded a Nobel Prize for his work at Columbia). With support from President Henry Fairfield Osborn and trustee Douglas Bur- den, Noble’s request for new facilities was approved and he stayed at the Museum. The Department was renamed the Department