Charles Waterton Research Articles

Bat blunders

Bat blunders

The bellbird's horn

The bellbird's horn

In support of Pinto: Pernambuco as the type locality ofThalurania watertonii

Long-tailed Woodnymph Thalurania watertonii is known with certainty from Pernambuco, Alagoas and Sergipe, north-east Brazil, but the type specimen is still listed, albeit with reservations, as having been taken 3,000 km to the west in Guyana. The collector, Charles Waterton, gave the specimen to George Loddiges in 1844, claiming he took it 20 years earlier on the Mibiri Creek, south of what is now Georgetown. However Waterton, who had a particular interest in hummingbirds, also collected 58 birds in forest near Recife, Pernambuco, in 1816. Given these facts, the total absence of other records of the species from Guyana and its replacement there by Fork-tailed Woodnymph T. furcata, it seems far more likely that Waterton simply misremembered where he collected his specimen of T. watertonii and that the type locality is, as O. M. O. Pinto judged, Pernambuco (more specifically coastal Pernambuco).

Charles Waterton (1782–1865) and wourali

Charles Waterton was the eccentric “Lord of Walton Hall” near Wakefield in Yorkshire. His Wanderings in South America was first published in 1826; translated into French, German and Spanish, it was a best seller. He brought back wourali used by the Macoushi natives of British Guiana (now Guyana) for killing prey; there is a piece of it in the Wakefield Museum. This paper traces the history of wourali which paralyses its victims; its attempted medical use for rabies and tetanus and, though different from curare, its belated use in modern anaesthesia.

Science and eccentricity: collecting, writing and performing science for early nineteenth-century audiences

Introduction 1 Defining eccentricity 2 Performing eccentricity: William Martin and the world turned upside down 3 'Beyond the pale of ordinary criticism': Eccentric writing and the works of Thomas Hawkins 4 Eccentricity on display: Charles Waterton as collector and specimen Conclusion

The natural history of visiting: responses to Charles Waterton and Walton Hall

Natural history collections are typically studied in terms of how they were formed rather than how they were received. This gives us only half the picture. Visiting accounts can increase our historical understanding of collections because they can tell us how people in the past understood them. This essay examines the responses of visitors to Walton Hall in West Yorkshire, home of the traveller-naturalist Charles Waterton and his famous taxidermic collection. Waterton’s specimens were not interpreted in isolation. Firstly, they were experienced as components of a larger visiting experience, in which travelling to the Hall, being admitted to the grounds, viewing the park, and meeting the owner, were all just as significant as seeing the specimens themselves. Secondly, they were interpreted in conjunction with familiar stories and images relating to Waterton’s adventurous collecting activities. Visiting accounts can help us begin to recover what people thought about Waterton and his collection in the nineteenth century. Furthermore, in so far as they were responsible for a large part of his subsequent reputation, they can help us better understand our own, present-day conceptions of Charles Waterton and Walton Hall.

Curare: the flying death.

Curare: the flying death.

Taxidermy as rhetoric of self-making: Charles Waterton (1782–1865), wandering naturalist

Taxidermy as rhetoric of self-making: Charles Waterton (1782–1865), wandering naturalist

Book Review: Charles Waterton: Traveller and Conservationist

Book Review: Charles Waterton: Traveller and Conservationist

The physiology of artificial ventilation

In 1543 Vesalius demonstrated that a pig could be kept alive by tracheal intubation and rhythmical inflation of the lungs under positive pressure. A century later Robert Hooke repeated the experiment in a dog and in 1825 Charles Waterton’ used bellows ventilation to sustain life in an ass paralysed with curare. Development of artificial ventilation in man lagged behind these animal experiments but in the late 18th century the Royal Humane Society advocated the use of bellows to resuscitate those apparently drowned. The success rate was poor, in part due to pneumothoraces produced by overenthusiastic inflation. Two Americans, O’Dwyer and Fell, reintroduced positive pressure ventilation (PPV) a hundred years later and in 1912 the Prussian surgeon, Lawen, used it to reduce the amount of ether required for abdominal surgery. In the 1890s the particular demands of thoracic anaesthesia induced a greater use of PPV but its more general acceptance awaited the introduction of the muscle relaxants 20 years later. Despite all the evidence to the contrary there remained a widespread belief that prolonged PPV would lead to disastrous and irreversible physiological changes. Consequently much complex apparatus was developed that attempted to mimic normal respiratory mechanics by creating a negative pressure outside the chest wall. Some of this apparatus was elegant, much was cumbersome and on the whole it was ineffective and impractical to use on sick patients. In 1904 Sauerbruch had the patient’s head (and the anaesthetist) outside the operating theatre, but the body (together with the surgeon and assist-

Charles Waterton (1782-1865): curare and a Canadian National Park.

Charles Waterton was born on 3 June 1782 at Walton Hall, near Wakefield in the north of England. He was known as the Squire of Walton Hall and became one of England’s best-known nineteenth-century naturalists and taxidermists. At the age of 14 he was sent to the newly founded Stonyhurst College in Lancashire, which was run by Jesuit priests, with whom he kept up correspondence and visits throughout his long life. In 1804, at the age of 22, he left England to manage family estates in Demerara, in what is now Guyana. Then in 1812 he gave up the estates and set off on the first of his four Wanderings in South America, which are described in a book of that title, first published in 1825 and most recently republished in 1975 [1]. The remainder of his life was devoted to natural history, taxidermy and the establishment of the world’s first bird sanctuary at Walton Hall. He died in May 1865 and is buried in the grounds of Walton Hall, which has recently been restored and is now a most attractive country club.

Charles Waterton's Wanderings in South America, edited By Gilbert Phelps. Charles Knight, £4.

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Edward Jenner, F. R. S. and the cuckoo

In January 1973 the 150th anniversary of the death of Edward Jenner, the originator of vaccination, was modestly commemorated in the small town of Berkeley, Gloucestershire, where he was born and lived for most of his life (1). Jenner was himself the subject of controversy during and after his lifetime, on the one hand lauded as a selfless saviour of mankind, and on the other denounced as a self-seeking charlatan; his discovery likewise has virtually never ceased to be a subject of debate (2). There is no dearth of books and articles about Jenner and vaccination (3) and the subject of the present note is an unconnected and very minor discovery of Jenner’s—nevertheless one which is not only intrinsically interesting to naturalists, but also pertinent to any study of the character and integrity of its author, for the discovery was still being disputed more than a century after is was made. Edward Jenner was the first to publish, in 1788, an accurate account of what happens to the unfortunate young of the parent bird in whose nest a cuckoo deposits one of her eggs. Yet to consult the Dictionary of National Biography for details of Jenner’s life is to read, in an article published in 1892, that the ‘absurdity’ of this account had been demonstrated by the naturalist Charles Waterton. A few years earlier Charles Creighton (1847-1927), the epidemiologist and medical historian, whose intense opposition to vaccination led him to denigrate Jenner in every conceivable way, had described his paper on the cuckoo as mainly ‘a tissue of inconsistencies and absurdities’ (4).

Some Birds of the Countryside: The Art of Nature

ALL lovers of open-air Nature, and especially those of birds, will thank Mr. Massingham for putting together in one handy little volume those charming articles of which some have already been published in the Spectator, Contemporary Review, and elsewhere. Throughout the book the reader is by felicitous phrase and by the inborn sympathy of the author with Nature in all her moods transported into the “field”; yes, even when the chapter is entitled “Bird-haunted London.” With singular literary skill Mr. Massingham presents his pictures, whether of landscape or of his favourite birds, so vividly that scene, incident, and character live in the reader's mental vision. No writer of our acquaintance has succeeded better in seeing into and interpreting the behaviour of birds, and that without, undue anthropomorphism. But the reading of character extends beyond a nice and artistic sympathy with feathered life, for the chapters on “Gilbert White and Selborne” and “Charles Waterton” are masterly appreciations of two diametrically different naturalists. In each we end the chapter feeling that we know the man better than ever before, and understand why the fame of one, but not that of the other, has widely endured. If we may be allowed one critical request, it is to entreat Mr. Massingham not to use the word “intrigue” when “interest ” will do just as well—indeed, much better. The latter is English, and the former is, we devoutly trust, a mere passing affectation. The book is, however, a very notable addition to the literature of natural history, and should find a place in every library, large or small.

Charles Waterton's pamphlets

Charles Waterton's pamphlets

Charles Waterton

Journal Article Charles Waterton Get access Robert Champley Robert Champley Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Notes and Queries, Volume s5-XII, Issue 307, 15 November 1879, Page 385, https://doi.org/10.1093/nq/s5-XII.307.385b Published: 15 November 1879

Charles Waterton

Charles Waterton Get access Fredk. Hendriks Fredk. Hendriks 1Linden Gardens, W. Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Notes and Queries, Volume s5-XII, Issue 305, 1 November 1879, Pages 341–342, https://doi.org/10.1093/nq/s5-XII.305.341 Published: 01 November 1879

Waterton's Wanderings in South AmericaWanderings in South America, the North-West of the United States and the Antilles, in the Year 1812, 1816 1820 and 1824.Charles Waterton

Waterton's Wanderings in South America<i>Wanderings in South America, the North-West of the United States and the Antilles, in the Year 1812, 1816 1820 and 1824.</i>Charles Waterton