Naturalists - Some Men Who Loved Nature - Part 1

It seems as though many of us are no longer willing to go the extra mile, when it comes to protecting nature. With so many caring people around the world giving lip service and money to their keen interests when it comes to conservation and protecting endangered species -- just how many of us are willing to give up our lives or life styles in the name of science today?

In thinking about that, it might be nice to review the stories of certain men who loved nature so much that they gave up most of their lives to studying butterflies and beavers, snakes, stones, trees and flowers. Our children will go to school learning some of their names and what they did, but sadly not much detail that will inspire them when they study famous naturalists.

Those men (and a few women) called naturalists, exactly what did they do? Some of them dug into the earth to find the fossilized bones of giant reptiles and other relics of the past. Others traveled thousands of miles to rivers and mountains where no civilized man had ever been before. Others made thrilling discoveries without going very far from where they were born.

One of the early naturalists in America was Alexander Wilson, who wrote the first great book on the birds of North America. Wilson was born in Scotland in 1766. His family was poor and Alexander became a weaver's apprentice at the age of thirteen. However, his real ambition was to be a poet. Some humorous verses he wrote caused him to be tried for libel and fined. Since he did not have money enough to pay the fine, he had to go to prison.

At the age of twenty-eight, Wilson emigrated to America with no possessions but a gun and the suit on his back. For ten years, he taught school in villages near Philadelphia. Most scientists show a love of science in their very early years, but it was not until 1803, when Wilson was thirty-seven, that he was urged by William Bartram, the botanist, to collect the birds of eastern North America.

His book, American Ornithology contains many pictures drawn by Wilson himself. The body of his work cost $120 a set, which was a great deal of money in those days. As an author, Wilson traveled up and down the United States, west to the Mississippi River and south to New Orleans, to find subscribers for his book and to see more birds.

This meant hundreds of miles of travel on horseback and on foot through swamps and meadows and through forests where the ancient trees had not yet been cut by woodsman's ax. Just how many authors and scientists today, would be willing to do so, just to promote their book?

Wilson died in Philadelphia in 1813, soon after the seventh volume of Ornithology had appeared. So inspired by his works that many species of birds still carry his name, for example:

• Wilson's Carolina Parrot
  
• Wilson's Storm Petrel

• Wilson's Plover

• Wilson's Pharlarope

• Wilson Warbler

Three years before his death, Wilson strode into a little store on the frontier village of Louisville, Kentucky, hoping to find a subscriber for his Ornithology. The handsome young storekeeper studied Wilson's drawings (although he did not by the book) and then showed Wilson a large collection of his own drawings of birds, drawings far more lifelike than Wilson's.

The storekeeper was John James Audubon, who was to become the most famous of all artists who ever studied birds. There is some mystery about Audubon's early years, but the most probably story is that he was born in Santa Domingo about 1785. As a child, he was taken to France by a French sea captain, who later adopted him.

The lad then attended a military school and studied drawing in Paris. His foster father owned some property in France, Santa Domingo, and even Pennsylvania. When Audubon came to the United States to look after his father's farm near Philadelphia, he was only seventeen years old. There he started his lifework of drawing birds. By the time he was twenty-one most of his father's property had been lost.

John James, then married soon afterward and set up a store in Louisville. However, he was not made for a business career. His ventures failed, and his wife insisted that he devote himself to his study of birds. For the next few years, Mrs. Audubon struggled to help support their children, while Audubon sold portraits drawn by himself and gave lessons in drawing, dancing, and fencing. Whenever he could, he roamed the wild new country to find unknown birds. An interview with Charles Lucien Bonaparte, nephew of Napoleon, encouraged Audubon to publish his drawings.

When Audubon's great work, the Birds of America, was finally published (over a period of eleven years from 1827 to 1838) it made a sensation among lovers of both art and science on both sides of the Atlantic. There were four hundred and thirty-five hand-colored plates, each about three feet high by two and a half feet wide, containing one thousand and sixty-five pictures of birds -- all life size. All the birds were shown in natural poses -- flying, catching insects, and so on.

Later, while he was still alive, Audubon's two sons were helping him. Victor, acting as the business man of the family, and John collecting birds and helping with the drawings. The complete work was one of the most costly publication ever issued, the price being about ten times of that of Alexander's Wilson's for example.

With the success of his work, Audubon became a famous and popular figure, whose work lives on today. Yet, in his time there were weeks while his work was under way, where Audubon paced the streets of Edinburg, London and other cities seeking subscribers -- while his conscience assailed him for carrying on such a grand venture, with his wife and children back home in dire financial need.

When Audubon died in 1851, he was at work with the father-in-law of his two sons, the Reverend John Bachman, on a publication about four-footed animals, The Quadrupeds of America. Today, the Audubon society for nature lovers, is named after him, along with parks, and many buildings across America.

One of the scientists who went beyond the norms to study nature was Baron Friedrich Heinrich Alexander von Humboldt (1769-1859). Born in Berlin, he left a promising career in government to give all of his time to science and travel.

He had hoped to be one of the group of scientists taken along when Napoleon invaded Egypt in 1798, but at the last moment there proved to be no room for Humboldt on the ship. Finally, he sailed in 1799 with the French botanist Aime Bonpland (1773-1858) for a five year expedition through Spanish America. They explored Cuba, Mexico, Venezuela, Colombia, Ecuador and Peru. Humboldt plunged into the almost uninhabited countries between the Orinoco and Amazon rivers, hacking his way over seventeen hundred miles in four months to trace out the water connection between the two river systems.

Humboldt collected many specimens of birds, fishes, and mammals previously unknown in Europe. He studied the crocodiles, jaguars, and howling monkeys firsthand, and wrote the first good description of the terrible little fish -- the piranha -- that will attack and kill large animals and humans. He let himself be shocked by the electric eel.

Humboldt returned to Europe with a partly crippled right arm, but he had collected material for thirty great volumes. Besides his work with animals, he laid the foundations for the later development of physical geography and meteorology.

At the age of sixty, Humboldt went on another great expedition, traversing nearly ten thousand miles in northern Russia and Siberia. One result was the discovery of diamonds in the Ural Mountains.

Humboldt's great published work was Kosmos. In it, the scientist explained the physical universe and the forces holding all parts of it together in a wonderful harmony.

Humboldt received great honors during his lifetime and after his death. Cities and lakes and bays have been named after him. The cool Peru Current that moves northward along the west coast of South America was even called for a time, the "Humboldt Current." Today, if you study old maps you will still see it marked as that.

Humboldt's old companion, Bonpland, was captured by Francia, the mad dictator of Paraguay, and kept prisoner for ten years. However, he was treated well and allowed to continue his study of plants.

Not all great naturalists were wide travelers. Count George Louis Leclerc de Buffon (1707-1788) never went farther from his native France than to England and Italy. Yet, his great Natural History fills forty-four volumes. The volumes were published as they were written, the last one appearing more than fifty years after the first.

A friend of the famous Madame de Pompadour and a favorite at the court of Louis XV, Buffon arose at six in the morning, dressed himself in full court costume, include ruffles, went to his writing desk and worked eight hours a day. One might say, he was dressed for success, should it pay him a surprise visit.