A Natural History Let Down

John Cook, the publisher and editor of The Stranger, a literary paper in Albany, New York, was disappointed. For seven years he had waited with confident expectations to read the full story, and at last the History of the Expedition had come off the press in the winter of 1814.^[1]Cook’s review appeared in the issue of 9 April 1814. It ended with the promise, “To be continued,” but Cook must have lost heart, for The Stranger shut down after five more issues … Continue reading As a reviewer, he was prepared to overlook any minor literary failings from an explorer who was not an experienced author, but who had been “thrown into new, and difficult circumstances, undergoing perils and privations, in the cause of knowledge.” However, Cook’s patience was insufficient to the challenge. According to the title page, he began, the History had been “Prepared for the Press”—which Cook presumed to mean edited—”by Paul Allen, Esquire.” To him that explained the undistinguished quality of the result, for he knew of Allen as merely “a writer of verses, and some prose pieces” for the popular Port-Folio of Philadelphia.^[2]History of the Expedition under the Command of Captains Lewis and Clark from St. Louis, to the Sources of the Missouri; Thence Across the Rocky Mountains and Down the River Columbia to the Pacific … Continue reading In April 1807 Governor Lewis had published an elaborate prospectus for his own narrative of his and Clark’s Tour to the Pacific Ocean, but Allen’s substitution, belated by seven years, fell short of Lewis’s goal. Cook certainly knew that Lewis had been dead for five years, but this editor—not the poetaster Allen but actually the young polymath Nicholas Biddle—had largely obscured whatever semblance of Lewis’s real voice might have resided in his original journal.

Worst of all, the real meat of the story in Cook’s opinion, those “various objects of natural History” that could “revive the drooping attention” of the reader, were merely hinted at, and were now expected to come from the hand of Professor Benjamin Smith Barton^[3]Benjamin Smith Barton (1766-1815), the prominent physician, anatomist, linguist, ethnologist, zoologist, botanist and author of the introductory textbook, Elements of Botany, (1803), a copy of which … Continue reading at some unspecified future date.^[4]Not until the end of the century was Nicholas Biddle’s editorship confirmed. Biddle himself, pleading the urgent necessity for returning to his obligations as a Pennsylvania legislator and a … Continue reading In the present work, Cook complained, the narrative bogged down in details that impeded the reader’s progress and pleasure: Unembellished reports on weather conditions, tedious enumerations of game kills, and pointless daily tallies of miles traveled may all be very important to the traveler, he admitted, “but the reader is principally interested with descriptions of objects in natural history.” Specifically, in his mind, mosquitoes were not among those “objects,” and the captains’ persistent griping about mosquitoes was boring to the point of annoyance. “There seems to have been no opportunity missed,” he frowned, “in which the incursions of these interesting little animals, are not introduced.”^[5]This review appeared in The Stranger, a Literary Paper, Vol. 1, Issue 22 (Saturday, 9 April 1814). The paper was published in Albany, New York, in 27 issues from 3 July 1813 until 24 June 1814. Cook … Continue reading

Of Little Interest

Interesting little animals? Was Cook seriously criticizing the explorers for missing an opportunity of scientific importance, or was he just being sarcastic? Probably the latter. Size, power, majesty! Those were the expected criteria when it came to writing about animals. Bison, elk, bear, antelope and bighorn sheep! Eagles and condors! Megafauna! How could “gnats” be made interesting? Cook couldn’t have known, or much cared, that Biddle had omitted fully two-thirds of the captains’ original complaints about mosquitoes, nor would that have made much difference to him. Moreover, the only insects that were of any conceivable interest to the general public were those that either were problems to farmers, such as voracious beetles, or were delicate and beautiful, like insouciant butterflies. Nature’s anomalies and freeloaders—ants, ticks, roaches, mosquitoes—were merely to be endured, not studied, much less admired. The mosquito was neither pernicious (as far as anyone knew) nor pretty, and there was no virtue in celebrating misery. As an “object of natural history” the little pest couldn’t even claim the cachet of the predaceous yellowjacket, which warranted at least a short description from Lewis.

In his formal orders to Captain Lewis,^[6]Jackson, Letters, 1:61-66. President Jefferson had not expressly directed him to study mosquitoes, but he knew that Lewis possessed “a remarkable store of accurate observation on all the subjects of the three kingdoms,” and could be depended on to distinguish new from known species when it seemed important.^[7]Jefferson to Benjamin Smith Barton, 27 February 1803. Jackson, Letters, 1:17. The president’s official instructions contained only the direction that Lewis was to pay attention to “the times of appearance of particular . . . insects,”^[8]Ibid., 1:63. and he and Clark did so. Similarly, they recorded the mosquitoes’ autumnal retirements. In general, however, their remarks about the little pests went no deeper than a mosquito’s proboscis.

On the 5 April 1806, obedient to Jefferson’s instruction to watch for “animals of the country generally, & especially those not known in the U.S.,” Lewis took pains to record his observations of the “butterfly[,] blowing fly and many other insects,” but saw “not any among them which appear to differ from those of our country or which deserve particular notice.” At Long Camp on 30 May 1806, he repeated his opinion that “most of the insects common to the U’ States are found here.” For all we know, he may have been right, but Thomas Say (1784-1834), who began studying insects in 1812 when he became a founding member of the Academy of Natural Sciences of Philadelphia, and was to publish his 3-volume landmark book, American Entomology only twelve years later, must often have wished Lewis had taken Jefferson’s assignment a little more seriously.

Misunderstood Importance

So far as most people—including the most qualified naturalists—were concerned, the mosquito seemed everywhere merely to flaunt its ages-old reputation as the best known, most objectionable and least controllable nuisance in the world. Scientifically, it was about as intriguing as a toothache. For all its furtive history of relentless assaults on the human race, nature’s stealthy Weapon of Mass Destruction kept its deadly secrets for nearly a hundred years more. Meanwhile, cruel ironies were hidden in its small size and magnified by its prodigious powers of reproduction, and its minute morphological diversities.

To further complicate the mystery, only a few of the thousands of species in the enormous family called Culicidae (koo-LISS-id-eye, the plural Latin form of the Greek word for “gnat”), were eventually to be convicted of dealing death in the form of malaria, yellow fever, dengue (pronounced DEN-gee with a hard g), West Nile virus, and various forms of encephalitis. But Lewis and Clark, like all of their contemporaries, were blissfully ignorant of those threats; understanding the connections between those afflictions and their vectors was in still in the distant future. Practically the only irremediable error Lewis committed was his failure to buy enough mosquito netting to last his party for three full summers, although that is forgivable in retrospect.^[9]The netting Lewis purchased in Philadelphia in the spring of 1803 would have been made of cotton, which would have had a low resistance to tears and punctures, and would have been subject to damage … Continue reading How could he have known?