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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I am grateful to Julia Steele (then Collections Manager, Economic Botany Collection) for her assistance in 2005 while I was based at the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, as Australian Botanical Liaison Officer, supported by a grant from the Australian Biological Resources Study, Canberra.
REFERENCES HOME, R. W., LUCAS, A. M., MAROSKE, S., SINKORA, D. M. and VOIGT, J. H. (editors), 1998, Regardfully yours: selected correspondence of Ferdinand von Mueller. Volume 1. 1840–1859. Bern. HOME, R. W., LUCAS, A. M., MAROSKE, S., SINKORA, D. M. and VOIGT, J. H. (editors), 2002, Regardfully yours: selected correspondence of Ferdinand von Mueller. Volume 2. 1860–1875. Bern. MUELLER, F., 1880. Eucalyptus globulus. Eucalyptographia 6. Melbourne. PENFOLD, A. R. and WILLIS, J. L., 1961, The eucalypts: botany, cultivation, chemistry, and utilization. New York. ZACHARIN, R. F., 1978, Emigrant eucalypts: gum trees as exotics. Carlton. Received 2 March 2012. Accepted 23 March 2012.
ALEX S. GEORGE Four Gables, 18 Barclay Road, Kardinya, Western Australia 6163. (e-mail:
[email protected]) DOI: 10.3366/anh.2012.0102
A recently discovered manuscript by William Alford Lloyd on the growth of seaweeds in aquaria A four-page manuscript written by William Alford Lloyd (1828–1880), entitled “Observations on Mr. Gosse’s paper pp. 488–91”, was recently found by the present author at the National Agricultural Library (NAL), Beltsville, Maryland, USA. The manuscript, written on pages embossed on the left upper corner with “Zoologische Gesellschaft Hamburg”, was tipped-in in a volume of the Annals and magazine of natural history, on the last page of an article by Philip Henry Gosse (1854), “On the growth of sea-weeds”, and provides interesting insights into Lloyd’s thoughts about Gosse’s work. In that article, Gosse discussed the difficulties on growing red seaweeds (“Rhodosperms”) which “have resisted domestic culture” in contrast to the green seaweeds (“Chlorosperms”) which “have been mastered.” He concluded (1854: 491): The facts above recorded are sufficient to show that there is nothing in the nature of the Rhodosperms to prevent their being cultivated in confinement, with a facility far superior to that which attends the culture of multitudes of terrestrial plants that reward the skill and perseverance of the horticulturist.
Lloyd’s manuscript presents a strongly dissenting view, as follows: Observations on Mr. Gosse’s paper pp. 488–91. These notices were written by Gosse when he kept Aquaria at 58 Huntingdon St., Islington, London, 12 years ago. His tanks consisted of several vessels of varying shape & materials placed in windows of an ordinary dwelling-room at the top of the house, and it will be perceived that April was the time when the notes were written. But, during the next & the following hot summers (1855 & 1856) most of the Rhodosperms described were spoiled by being grown over with confervæ & other parasitic plants, so that the character of the red plants was quite obliterated by the effects of excessive light, while another tank standing in the same
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room between the windows, & therefore not exposed to direct illumination, was not so visited by conferva, & the plants in it remained tolerably free from parasites & preserved their normal colours. The same thing has been experienced in the Hamburg Aqm. where Rhodosperms in tanks under the full light of skylights have become grown over, while others in complete or partial darkness have continued clean. As to the central tanks in the Regent’s Park Aquarium, referred to here by Gosse, & elsewhere, (“Aquarium” 2nd ed: p. 277–8 1856) as affording examples of successful Alga growing, time has shown that they have done nothing of the kind, for they, too, after a period, succumbed to their great enemy – Light – & are now no longer existing. It has been said that the red algae growing in Dr. Meyer’s cellar in Hamburg contradicts this theory about light, but it doesn’t, on the contrary, it harmonizes with it. Certain plants grow there, certainly, & are free from conferva but then the room has the coolness & subdued illumination of a cellar, while the Hamburg Aquarium, obtaining its light from skylights, has in it more of the circumstances of a hot-house than a cellar. Of course, there are varying degrees of light, & this amount of illumination, combined with a low and equable temperature has been well hit in Dr. Meyer’s case. Absolute darkness may not be required, but even much greater darkness than Dr. Meyer possesses may be employed with advantage. Let him still further decrease his illumination & increase the motion of the water, & a still greater success will result. Mr. Gosse is much out of his reckoning in saying that the Chlorosperms “have been mastered.” Certainly Ulva, Enteromorpha, Cladophora, Bryopsis, & a few others have been grown in tanks by Gosse, & in Regent’s Park, in Paris, Hamburg, & elsewhere, but only by chance, & Gosse has himself often told me that neither he nor anyone else could with certainty grow them twice running, & that the cause of failure was unknown. My experience coincides with this, & therefore there has been nothing “mastered,” but I can with certainty cultivate many Rhodosperms. W. A. Lloyd Oct. 25th 1866 p.s. Oct. 27th 1866 I have further to reason that not only did Gosse’s red algæ, referred to in his paper, became in time disfigured by conferva but the seawater itself became opaquely green in consequence of the appearance of millions of locomotive plants, which Gosse, thought were spores, but which Dr. Cohn1 of Breslau has since determined to be a separate algæ Chlamydomonas marina. I remember calling on Gosse one hot day in July 1856, when he was fastening the Times newspaper round his tank to keep out the light, & he was in a state of wild despair & mentally tearing his hair with vexation, because as he said, he wrote instructions for the public to keep Aquaria, & he could not keep his own – either plants or animals! W. A. Lloyd
In 1854, when Gosse’s paper was published, Lloyd was still working as a bookbinder in London, although by 1855 he had changed occupations and was the proprietor of a business specializing in aquarium-related supplies.2 A remarkable aspect of Lloyd’s manuscript is that it was written twelve years after Gosse’s paper was published, when Lloyd was Director of the Hamburg Aquarium (1862–1868), a position he had secured with the help of the Heinrich Adolph Meyer (1822–1899), whose name is mentioned in the manuscript. An examination of the Annals and magazine of natural history at NAL also revealed that volumes 3–8 (third series, 1859–1861) were stamped “H. Adolph Meyer” on the title-page. Thus, the volume containing the manuscript originally belonged to Meyer and was acquired in 1895 by NAL (the volumes were also stamped “August 26 1895”). Regardless, 145 years after Lloyd’s manuscript was written, an act of serendipity has revealed to us the private thoughts of an eminent aquarist and a loyal friend. Lloyd’s friendship with Gosse was recollected by Gosse’s son, Edmund (Gosse 1890): “The late Mr. W. Alford Lloyd, whose affectionate devotion to my father deserves the warmest recognition . . .”. It appears that the closest Lloyd came to express the views in his manuscript was a paper published in 1876 in which he wrote (Lloyd 1876): “. . . at present we do not know how to grow the higher marine algæ, the red, the brown, or even the green kinds, at will. Sometimes I succeed, but always by chance, not knowing why.”
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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I am grateful to Sarah Sworder and Lorraine Portch (Natural History Museum, London), Lynda Brooks (The Linnean Society of London), and Rona Morrison (Centre for Research Collections, Edinburgh University Library) for providing information on Gosse and Lloyd, and to Professor Ray Williams for comments on a previous version of this note.
NOTES 1
Ferdinand Julius Cohn (1828–1898), a German scientist famous for his important contributions to bacteriology.
2
URL (accessed 27 April 2012): http://www.parlouraquariums.org.uk (R. Alexander, 2012 “Welcome to a student history of Victorian marine parlour aquariums and “The seaside years” of Philip Henry Gosse. 1852– 1856”).
REFERENCES GOSSE, E., 1890 The life of Philip Henry Gosse F. R. S. London. GOSSE, P. H., 1854 On the growth of sea-weeds. Annals and magazine of natural history, second series, 13: 488–491. LLOYD, W. A., 1876 Aquaria: their past, present, and future. Popular science review 60: 253–265. Received 9 April 2012. Accepted 27 April 2012.
FERNANDO E. VEGA 14609 Pebblestone Drive, Silver Spring, Maryland 20905, USA. (e-mail:
[email protected]) DOI: 10.3366/anh.2012.0103
An early preserved example of Phylloxera infesting British grape vines In September 1872, at a meeting of the Scientific Society of Thornhill, Dumfriesshire, Scotland, David Sharp (1840–1922) gave an account of Phylloxera, the “vine-pest”. This was of particular relevance to the audience due to the destruction of the vines at the nearby Drumlanrig Castle. It was reported also that specimens of Phylloxera were exhibited under a microscope “put up in Canada balsam by Dr Bogie of Annan” (Anonymous 1872b). Agnew Black Bogie (1818–1876) was a graduate of the University of Edinburgh, general practitioner in Annan, Dumfriesshire, and member of the Society. It is believed that this is the same slide from Thornhill Museum (since transferred to The Hunterian Museum) with a label “Phylloxera vestatrix [sic], from the roots of a vine at Drumlanrig, Sepr 1872” (Figure 1). The specimens are in a liquid mount, a glass ring sealed in place with Canada balsam and painted with what appear to be remnants of gold size. It was probably the superficial appearance of the slide which led to it being described in the newspaper report as a balsam mount (Anonymous 1872b). Moore (1979) described fluid mounts from 1843–1846 in the Quekett collection as having the glass cells held in place by marine glue (bitumen). After this period Canada balsam began to be used more widely and became the medium of choice (Brown 1997) and so its use in association with a liquid mount such as this Phylloxera slide would be more usual by 1872. Thornhill Museum opened to the public in 1872 and was based on collections put together from about 1852 by Dr Thomas Boyle Grierson (1818–1889). The museum
