The passion for natural history has often had an upper class image, for better or worse. Period movies and novels treat it as a country house pursuit, with governesses helping the children net frogs in the reflecting pool and young ladies rearing butterflies in the hothouse. And many celebrated naturalists, including Joseph Banks and Charles Darwin, did in fact come from wealthy backgrounds.
Social connections made it easier to land a suitable post in the foreign service, or on a Naval expedition; money also obviously helped in a field that was never likely to prove useful or remunerative. British naturalist Edward Forbes, who struggled to get by on the dismal wages available to a marine zoologist, once remarked, “People without independence have no business to meddle with science.” The anatomist Richard Owen was more adept at currying the favor of the good and great; he got the essayist Thomas Macaulay to pass the hat on his behalf: “The greatest natural philosopher may starve while his countrymen are boasting of his discoveries.”
But many naturalist, like the Amazonian explorer Henry Walter Bates, supported themselves as freelancers, by gathering specimens for sale to collectors back home. By good fortune, Bates found a capable specimen dealer named Samuel Stevens to dispose of his duplicates on a commission basis. Stevens, whose shop was on Bedford Street around the corner from the British Museum, expected to sell a typical insect specimen for four pence, with three pence going back to the collector in the field.
With this meager funding, Bates spent eleven happy years of hard work in the Amazon. He headed out into the forest Read the rest of this entry »
strange behaviors 