All Creatures: Naturalists, Collectors, and Biodiversity, 1850–1950 (review)

All Creatures tells the tale of the legacy of the Victorian Linnaean quest for the encyclopedic documentation of nature. It focuses on the history of North American natural history museums and provides a fascinating and highly readable account of how and why scientific collections were built up through surveys that reached their zenith in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. It is particularly interesting in that it reveals how taxonomic studies were bolstered not only by the desire to partake in adventurous expeditions but because of emerging popular outdoor pursuits associated with the rise of the middle class and the democratization of leisure as morally sanctioned recreation.

One of the most interesting aspects of the book is the revelation that the full flowering of the 20th-century study of biodiversity is due not only to the changing practices of collecting but also to the unanticipated productive intersection of vacation culture and science. It is in part the fascinating story of how the scientific art form of the diorama created such an enduring public interest that it forced curators not only to build new collections but to conduct field research and gather the contextual documentation needed to produce scientifically useful collections to better serve the public, the patrons and the state. In all this, it is interesting to keep in mind that though the great surveys are largely a thing of the past—with the ranks of taxonomists thinning and aging, and collecting having become a thoroughly evil thing to do in the naïve popular imagination, natural-history surveys remain important parts of the conservation movement. This is especially the case in the developing world, where biodiversity is far less well documented and where extinction rates are highest.

Perhaps the most well-known case in the mass media today is the project in West Papua by Conservation International. The discovery of so many new species on last year’s two week visit to the Foja mountains reveals how little we still know about some of the most threatened parts of our endangered planet. To visit such rare places is in a sense to return to the Garden of Eden, for the birds are yet fearless and perform their astounding mating displays unconcerned, the ultimate reward for latter-day adventurers and scientists reveling in Darwinian wonder and delight. To all those mesmerized by these new photographs and film footage, particularly of the bower birds and birds of paradise, All Creatures will be a fascinating and compelling book, for it provides a historical perspective on how natural history collections are built and why they are so important. In short, for the ever growing community of people around the world who are emotionally and intellectually charmed by nature and the increasingly urgent quest to actively become friends rather than enemies of the earth, this book will become a prized and well examined specimen in their book cases.

Interestingly enough, Kohler concludes that new forms of cultural consumption and popular concern for the environment will inform future survey practices in terms of how they combine expeditionary and project work. Ideally, in the Papuan case and in other developments in Indonesia and elsewhere, the continuing imperative for collection and survey provides an excellent context for charting a course for empowering local communities to claim and protect their natural heritage. One can only hope that this will encourage local communities and local and national governments to conserve rather than destroy their natural resources—which in most tropical cases have never been surveyed extensively, never mind selectively. Indeed, as All Creatures details, surveys require a functioning civil society and a popular imagination that is actively and creatively engaged with nature. While this conjunction of interests has been well established in the developed world since the late 1800s, the task is just beginning in the developing world, where “native” knowledge has been traditionally discounted by the modern state...