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FOUR Ordering Naturalists Jordan’s fellow systematists were astonished by the Sphingidae revision. “It quite takes my breath away,” wrote an entomologist, confessing that his head got “fairly ‘addled’” at the thought of how much work had been involved.1 Ernst Ehlers acknowledged his copy with the exclamation, “What an abundance of work went into it!”2 W. J. Holland believed it “the most scholarly revision of the whole subject which has yet appeared.”3 T. A. Chapman found the amount of material involved “unprecedented” and praised the accuracy and originality of the work.4 W. J. Kaye found the synonymy so thorough that he was sure the species would be kept clear for the future.5 The Belgian entomologist Guillaume Severin wrote that if only each family could be worked through in so complete and exact a manner, entomology would be much better off.6 Holland’s review in Science described the “Revision” as an opus magnificum, every page providing evidence of the “most painstaking and minute research.” As a result, Rothschild and Jordan had brought into systematic review the work of one hundred and fifty years.7 Many lepidopterists set to work rearranging their collections based on the revision, their cabinet drawers becoming, as Jordan had hoped, more accurate reflections of the relations between forms. W. L. Distant reported that after rearranging his specimens according to the revision, he could see affinities where before he “could but recognise the utmost diversity in type and structure.”8 Jordan must have been pleased with this testimony. And if J. Butterfield, who thought the manner in which they had treated the subject would have “farreaching effects upon future systematic work in entomology”9 was right, then their reform by example would lead others to follow suit. “To students of the Lepidoptera,” wrote Harry Eltringham, “the publications of Messrs. Rothschild and Jordan have furnished an example of perfection.”10 The revision proved a wonderful testament to the kind of work Rothschild’s collection and Jordan’s methods could produce. As the Edwardian days of Eng- ordering naturalists 113 land passed, entomologists wondered what Rothschild and Jordan would work on next. Would their next installment on the Papilios be finished soon? If, as rumored, they had decided to tackle the Saturnidae, would they keep their correspondents informed? Would they, despite the infringement on their valuable time, identify the butterfly enclosed?11 Those entomologists who were more philosophically inclined, listening to the increasingly strident debates over the mechanism of evolution, may have speculated whether Jordan would contribute further words on the subject along the lines of his 1896 paper. But Jordan had, as he later put it, “thrown his stone amongst the giants,” and from then on he generally kept his comments on evolution hidden within detailed accounts of species. What he ultimately decided to spend his time on reveals much about the state of entomology and systematics at the turn of the century. As others debated the implications of the rediscovery of Gregor Mendel’s work for evolution theory, the rise of a new discipline called “genetics ,” and whether “Darwinism was dead,” Jordan focused first on amassing the material required to complete good revisions and monographs. Second, he attempted to organize entomologists internationally in order to address the stark difference between the ideal role he saw for entomological systematics in biology and the reality posed by a diverse community and tradition. Both these ordering endeavors aimed at improving, as Jordan put it, the concreta upon which the abstracta depended. men of two classes Much of Jordan’s “ordering” efforts entailed either organizing insect specimens or his fellow entomologists. But, before examining his campaign to order the latter, it is worth foreshadowing here that eventually broader twentiethcentury ordering efforts would influence his seemingly more mundane campaigns . As a reformer rather than a revolutionary, Jordan’s vision for improving the naturalist tradition entailed building on prior traditions even as one gently reordered priorities and methods. By contrast, revolutionary visions of new organizations of both men and knowledge loomed on the horizon, both of which can be introduced by an examination of, at first sight at least, an ally in Tring’s endeavor to ensure a role for natural history museums in the new century. In sending his thanks for his copy of Rothschild’s and Jordan’s 1906 “Revision of the American Papilios,” Alfred Russel Wallace contemplated the Tring revisions within their context as material...

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