If you had been on Macquarie Street in Sydney on September 21 1874, you may have seen two burly men carry another on a chair from the Australian Museum and throw him out on to the street. The unfortunate was Gerard Krefft, the museum’s curator. Six years earlier, Krefft had described the reef manta ray to science from a specimen collected in Watson’s Bay. Kreftt’s problem was that he was a vocal supporter of Charles Darwin and this infuriated the mainly anglican museum trustees. They had dismissed him three months earlier after a rather dubious investigation. Krefft and his family refused to leave their quarters in the museum. The trustees hired two two prize fighters to effect his eviction.
That’s one of our back stories from Pam and Wayn Osborns new book, A Short History of the Discovery of Fish”. We started with Linnaeus and his description of a saddleback anemonefish back in 1758 and concluded the book in 1900, 591 species and 73 scientific authors later. We made a decision to only cover the fish species we have photographed (899 species) and used our images in the book. Two dominant themes emerged. One was the eminent scientists involved but the other was a bit more of a surprise. The early voyages of discovery and exploration were a major source of collected specimens. From Cook’s Pacific voyages through to Nicolas Baudin and Louis de Freycinet.
A Short History of the discovery of Fish is a free download on Apple Books. Just search on the title or authors’ names. If you would like a copy and don’t have an Apple device, email Wayne at wayneosborn@mac.com and he will send you link for the current EPUB or PDF version.
