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GARFIELD, B. The Meinertzhagen mystery. The life and legend of a colossal fraud. Potomac Books, Dulles, Virginia: 2007. Pp 353; illustrated. Price US$ 17.95 (softback). ISBN 978-1-59797-160-7.

GARFIELD, B. The Meinertzhagen mystery. The life and legend of a colossal fraud. Potomac Books,... Archives of natural history 36 (1): 168–187. 2009 # The Society for the History of Natural History Book reviews GARFIELD, B. The Meinertzhagen mystery. The life and legend of a colossal fraud. Potomac Books, Dulles, Virginia: 2007. Pp 353; illustrated. Price US$ 17.95 (softback). ISBN 978-1-59797-160-7. Richard Meinertzhagen, the soldier, spy and ornithologist, has had a bad press in ornithology for 15 years. This book essentially rubbishes his work as a soldier and as a spy as well. The author has worked on the case for many years, starting, he says, from a position of hero-worship, and coming to the point where having been in such state now adds a certain scorn to his account. I found the case persuasive; but I found the book hard going. It jumps all over the place, and perhaps it had to do that, rather than follow a clear chronology since Meinertzhagen was in essence a man living four or more different lives. Garfield has done what needed to be done; he has scoured both the official archives and Meinertzhagen’s own massive collection of diaries, which Garfield finds to have been edited and re-edited long after the events they describe. This examination of the evidence parallels what many museum staff have to do when re-examining Meinertzhagen’s specimens. In doing this, Garfield has found little or no supporting evidence for the stories that built Meinertzhagen’s reputation and much that actually contradicts them. Indeed Garfield rips off the cloak to expose the fact that even within his own circles in the army and in the social circles in which he moved Meinertzhagen had been rumbled but protected. However, not only does Garfield jump about, he is also tediously repetitive. Given the ´ extent to which this expose destroys the remains of Richard Meinertzhagen’s honour, it seems to me to be much to the credit of the family that it apparently gave such extensive support to the author. There is a job still to be done: to explain what goes on in the mind of such a man; perhaps one day a psychologist will help us to understand. ENDERSBY, J. Imperial nature: Joseph Hooker and the practices of Victorian science. University of Chicago Press, Chicago & London: 2008. Pp xii, 429; illustrated. Price US$ 35 (hardback). ISBN 9780-226-20791-9. Despite Joseph Hooker’s winning of the 1907 Linnaeus Medal as “the most illustrious living exponent of botanical science”, he is arguably the most famous figure in the history of nineteenth-century natural history who did not contribute a major new idea to the progress of knowledge. As a scientist, Hooker was an important practitioner of botanical descriptions and revisions, but only one person, Linnaeus himself, has ever gained universal fame strictly on the basis of taxonomic efforts, and Hooker’s significant contributions came more in the direction of support for others’ ideas (notably Darwin’s) and influencing the evolution of science as a profession than they did in theorizing. It is therefore not surprising to find from a perusal of the bibliographic database OCLC WorldCat that of all the major nineteenth-century figures in natural history (that is, Darwin, Wallace, Huxley, Lyell, Haeckel, von Humboldt, Mendel and Hooker), his writings, though originally great in number, have been reprinted the least by far since either 1950 or 1980. Further, in that same database, one finds that only six of Hooker’s monographs are currently held by as many as one hundred libraries – by comparison, Darwin scores 215, Huxley 69, Wallace 38 and Lyell 20, with even Haeckel, von Humboldt and Mendel making considerably more despite the fact that the database is dominated by institutional holdings from non-German-speaking locations. In turn, there are only a small handful of Hooker biographies. Despite his high position within the intellectual power structure, Hooker was actually a rather unextraordinary figure as an individual, and beset with his share of human frailties, including a “peppery temper” (as Endersby quotes Darwin’s description of him), an apparent indifference to societal scale sufferings, and a rather fitful need to “be in charge”. Even his travels, which brought him to places as far removed as the Kerguelan Islands, http://www.deepdyve.com/assets/images/DeepDyve-Logo-lg.png Archives of Natural History Edinburgh University Press

GARFIELD, B. The Meinertzhagen mystery. The life and legend of a colossal fraud. Potomac Books, Dulles, Virginia: 2007. Pp 353; illustrated. Price US$ 17.95 (softback). ISBN 978-1-59797-160-7.

Archives of Natural History , Volume 36 (1): 168 – Apr 1, 2009

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Publisher
Edinburgh University Press
Copyright
© The Society for the History of Natural History
Subject
Book Reviews; Historical Studies
ISSN
0260-9541
eISSN
1755-6260
DOI
10.3366/E0260954108000740
Publisher site
See Article on Publisher Site

Abstract

Archives of natural history 36 (1): 168–187. 2009 # The Society for the History of Natural History Book reviews GARFIELD, B. The Meinertzhagen mystery. The life and legend of a colossal fraud. Potomac Books, Dulles, Virginia: 2007. Pp 353; illustrated. Price US$ 17.95 (softback). ISBN 978-1-59797-160-7. Richard Meinertzhagen, the soldier, spy and ornithologist, has had a bad press in ornithology for 15 years. This book essentially rubbishes his work as a soldier and as a spy as well. The author has worked on the case for many years, starting, he says, from a position of hero-worship, and coming to the point where having been in such state now adds a certain scorn to his account. I found the case persuasive; but I found the book hard going. It jumps all over the place, and perhaps it had to do that, rather than follow a clear chronology since Meinertzhagen was in essence a man living four or more different lives. Garfield has done what needed to be done; he has scoured both the official archives and Meinertzhagen’s own massive collection of diaries, which Garfield finds to have been edited and re-edited long after the events they describe. This examination of the evidence parallels what many museum staff have to do when re-examining Meinertzhagen’s specimens. In doing this, Garfield has found little or no supporting evidence for the stories that built Meinertzhagen’s reputation and much that actually contradicts them. Indeed Garfield rips off the cloak to expose the fact that even within his own circles in the army and in the social circles in which he moved Meinertzhagen had been rumbled but protected. However, not only does Garfield jump about, he is also tediously repetitive. Given the ´ extent to which this expose destroys the remains of Richard Meinertzhagen’s honour, it seems to me to be much to the credit of the family that it apparently gave such extensive support to the author. There is a job still to be done: to explain what goes on in the mind of such a man; perhaps one day a psychologist will help us to understand. ENDERSBY, J. Imperial nature: Joseph Hooker and the practices of Victorian science. University of Chicago Press, Chicago & London: 2008. Pp xii, 429; illustrated. Price US$ 35 (hardback). ISBN 9780-226-20791-9. Despite Joseph Hooker’s winning of the 1907 Linnaeus Medal as “the most illustrious living exponent of botanical science”, he is arguably the most famous figure in the history of nineteenth-century natural history who did not contribute a major new idea to the progress of knowledge. As a scientist, Hooker was an important practitioner of botanical descriptions and revisions, but only one person, Linnaeus himself, has ever gained universal fame strictly on the basis of taxonomic efforts, and Hooker’s significant contributions came more in the direction of support for others’ ideas (notably Darwin’s) and influencing the evolution of science as a profession than they did in theorizing. It is therefore not surprising to find from a perusal of the bibliographic database OCLC WorldCat that of all the major nineteenth-century figures in natural history (that is, Darwin, Wallace, Huxley, Lyell, Haeckel, von Humboldt, Mendel and Hooker), his writings, though originally great in number, have been reprinted the least by far since either 1950 or 1980. Further, in that same database, one finds that only six of Hooker’s monographs are currently held by as many as one hundred libraries – by comparison, Darwin scores 215, Huxley 69, Wallace 38 and Lyell 20, with even Haeckel, von Humboldt and Mendel making considerably more despite the fact that the database is dominated by institutional holdings from non-German-speaking locations. In turn, there are only a small handful of Hooker biographies. Despite his high position within the intellectual power structure, Hooker was actually a rather unextraordinary figure as an individual, and beset with his share of human frailties, including a “peppery temper” (as Endersby quotes Darwin’s description of him), an apparent indifference to societal scale sufferings, and a rather fitful need to “be in charge”. Even his travels, which brought him to places as far removed as the Kerguelan Islands,

Journal

Archives of Natural HistoryEdinburgh University Press

Published: Apr 1, 2009

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