The Story of Nature: Victorian Popularizers and Scientific Narrative

Abstract

At the end of the nineteenth century, the Reverend Henry Hutchinson (1856-1927), a popularizer of geology, commented on the explosion of popular science works produced by journalists writers rather than by professional scientists. Never before was there such a profusion of books describing the various forms of inhabiting the different countries of the globe, or the rivers, lakes, seas that diversify its scenery, he de clared in the preface of his Extinct Monsters. Popular writers have done good service in making the way plain for those who wish to acquaint themselves with the structure, habits, histories of living animals. But he complained thatin their admiration for the living, popular science authors had neglected the innumerable host of creatures that once trod this earth (ix). This is where Hutchinson made his contribution, pub lishing a series of popular works during the nineties on dinosaurs other forms of ancient life, including The Autobiography of the Earth (1890), Extinct Monsters (1892), Creatures of Other Days (1894), Prehis toric Man Beast (1896), Primeval Scenes (1899). Since the ordinary public cannot learn much by merely gazing at skeletons set up in museums, Hutchinson aimed to clothe their dry bones with flesh suggest for them backgrounds such as are indicated by the discoveries of geology; in other words, to endeavour, by means of pen pencil, to bring them back to life (xi). Hutchinson revived these ancient monsters by reading for his audience the story to be found in the fossil record. Every bone has its meaning, Hutchinson asserted, and every skeleton can be made (in the hands of competent anatomists)