Title: Life Stories
Author(s): Davit Attenborough
Release year: 2009
Publisher: BBC Worldwide Limited
Why in Database: This book is essentially a text version of the stories that the author wrote for the purposes of radio broadcasts (the greatest added value compared to simply listening to the radio version are the added pages with graphics about each topic). We found turtle elements in Chapter 19, titled “Collecting”.
The first turtle fragment is about Lord Walter Rothschild, who collected many things, including turtles_
In the nineteenth century, Lord Walter Rothschild, fuelled by his family wealth, assembled the biggest collection of natural history objects ever made by one man, paying over 400 collectors to scoop up things for him from all over the world. Giant tortoises, bird skins, birds eggs, butterflies, beetles, there seems to be no product of the natural world that he was unwilling to acquire.
The second fragment is about Darwin and the Galapagos:
It may come as a consolation to some of us that on occasion even the great Darwin was less than perfect as a scientific collector. It’s said that the idea of natural selection was sparked in his mind by the claim made by a British resident in the Galapagos Islands that he could tell which island a giant tortoise had come from by the shape of the opening in the front of the shell through which the animal’s head emerges. Those on dry islands which lacked a reasonable turf on which to graze had front openings with a peak to them so that owners could crane their exceptionally long necks upwards and browse from the branches of tall plants.
Darwin certainly brought back several shells and skeletons of these extraordinary reptiles, but he had done the unforgivable; he had neglected to note which of them came from which island. So he couldn’t use them to illustrate his theory. Instead he had to base that on the mockingbirds that is assistant, Syms Covington, had not only collected but had meticulously labelled with their place of origin.
The last two mentions are photo captions:
Lord Rothschild collected living animals as well as dead specimens. He had a herd of giant tortoises and also keep zebra and trained them to pull the carriage in which he travelled occasionally in London.
A herd of giant Galapagos tortoises. Darwin failed to note the detail, critical for his theory, of which islands his specimens came from.
Author: XYuriTT
