Under a Wild Sky (53 page)

  
28
   
One day he shot several cardinals
Ibid. At least I believe they must have been cardinals. Wilson said only that he shot some “red birds.” When he wrote the natural history of the cardinal some years later, the species had been exported to Europe and was becoming known on the other side of the ocean. Oddly, Cantwell insists that the birds Wilson killed on this occasion were red-headed woodpeckers—a tri-colored species that even the most careless observer would not likely describe as a “red bird.”

3. A NAME FOR EVERY LIVING THING

  
29
   
Most of the country's
Scordato,
The New York Public Library Desk Reference
, page 866.

  
29
   
Thomas Jefferson's purchase of
Ibid.

  
30
   
European naturalists, disinclined to let
Porter,
The Eagle's Nest
, pages 1–11.

  
30
   
Inevitably, the same principles
Ibid.

  
30
   
Linnaeus, the father of modern taxonomy
Koerner,
Linnaeus
, page 15.

  
30
   
A man of wide interests
Ibid., pages 121–22. Linnaeus's conviction that Mediterranean and even tropical flora could thrive in the near-arctic environment of Sweden was largely premised on a naïve assumption that the harshness of the Northern winter was offset by the long periods of daylight that occur in the summer at high latitudes. He was wrong. Linnaeus, and his worshipful students, believed plants could be “fooled” into adapting to different climatic conditions. But since Linnaeus did not believe in evolution, and only grudgingly accepted the principle of hybridization, he could never explain exactly how such adaptations would occur. Like so many frustrated pre-Darwinian naturalists, Linnaeus, by the end of his life, had begun to suspect that nature was more changeable than prevailing religious and scientific doctrine supposed.

  
30
   
In the Linnaean system
Ibid., pages 15–16.

  
30
   
A thousand years before Linnaeus
Barnes (ed.),
The Complete Works of Aristotle
, vol. I, page 774.

  
30
   
He emphasized the importance
Ibid.

  
30
   
A close observer of animal behavior
Ibid., page 781.

  
31
   
“
[W]e must take animals species by species”
Ibid.

  
31
   
For several decades
Porter,
The Eagle's Nest
, page 15.

  
31
   
“
The thing is”
Koerner,
Linnaeus
, page 45.

  
31
   
He estimated the total
Ibid.

  
31
   
There are something like
Tudge,
The Variety of Life
, pages 6–7.

  
31
   
Current guesses put the number
Ibid., page 7.

  
31
   
Beetles alone make up
Ibid., page 304.

  
32
   
As new species turned up
Charlotte Porter, personal communication, November 21, 2002.

  
32
   
In Linnaeus's day
Ibid. The emphasis on species as the primary units of biology in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries is roughly analogous to the way we think today about the importance of genes. Identifying species was then fundamental to understanding the living world. The irony, of course, is that close study of species would one day lead to the concept of evolution. In her book,
The Eagle's Nest
, and in her interview with me, Dr. Porter argues that American naturalists like
Wilson and Audubon—who gave unprecedented weight to direct field observation in classifying species—were nudging science forward in a direction that would eventually undermine the belief that all of life on earth was determined at the moment of biblical Creation.

  
32
   
“
We count so many species”
Koerner,
Linnaeus
, page 44.

  
32
   
Linnaeus was sure these processes
Ibid.

  
32
   
The presence of plant and animal shapes
Prothero,
Bringing Fossils to Life
, page 1.

  
33
   
It was believed by some
Ibid., pages 1–2.

  
33
   
Speculation during the Middle Ages
Ibid.

  
33
   
Aristotle believed such fossils
Ibid.

  
33
   
Leonardo da Vinci thought
Ibid., page 2.

  
33
   
Linnaeus took a pragmatic view
Ibid., page 4.

  
33
   
All of this would have to be rethought
Porter, “The Excursive Naturalists,” pages 11–14.

  
33
   
Born in 1707 to a middle-class family
Roger,
Buffon
, pages 3–43.

  
33
   
In 1739, King Louis XV
Ibid., pages 45–47.

  
33
   
It was actually a well-organized academy
Ibid., page 51.

  
33
   
This work morphed into
Ibid., page 79.

  
34
   
Buffon endeavored to explain
Porter,
The Eagle's Nest
, page 15.

  
34
   
Buffon thought the Linnaean system
Roger,
Buffon
, pages 312–13.

  
34
   
Nature, Buffon insisted
Ibid., page 312.

  
34
   
A species, Buffon decided
Ibid., page 314.

  
34
   
“The ass resembles the horse”
Ibid.

  
34
   
A species, Buffon said
Ibid.

  
34
   
Buffon's Natural History
was massive
Porter,
The Eagle's Nest
, page 15.

  
34
   
Prior to writing the
Natural History Roger,
Buffon
, pages 15–58.

  
35
   
Intrigued by the story of Archimedes
Ibid., pages 52–53.

  
35
   
He believed the earth was much older
Ibid., pages 106–15; and Porter,
The Eagle's Nest
, page 16.

  
35
   
Anticipating Darwinian evolution
Porter,
The Eagle's Nest
, page 16.

  
35
   
European horticulturalists saw the botanical wealth
Porter, “The Excursive Naturalists,” page 2.

  
35
   
Buffon supposed that America
Roger,
Buffon
, page 305.

  
36
   
What was most remarkable to Buffon
Ibid.

  
36
   
The differences between
Ibid.

  
36
   
In the New World
Quoted in Kastner,
A Species of Eternity
, page 122.

  
36
   
“The air and the earth”
Ibid.

  
36
   
“These changes are made only slowly”
Roger,
Buffon
, page 307.

  
36
   
Buffon argued that
Ibid., page 305.

  
37
   
Although the savage
Quoted in Waldstreicher (ed.),
Notes on the State of Virginia by Thomas Jefferson
, page 120.

  
37
   
In 1705, a farmer mucking about
Semonin,
American Monster
, page 15.

  
38
   
It was sent to the Royal Society
Ibid.

  
38
   
Its president at the time
Ibid., page 16.

  
38
   
Cotton Mather, the influential Boston cleric
Ibid., pages 27–40.

  
38
   
Perhaps they came from large sea creatures
Ibid., pages 42–43.

  
38
   
Elephants, believed to have been
Ibid., page 44.

  
38
   
Even Isaac Newton still believed
Ibid., page 60.

  
38
   
There was growing interest in
Ibid., page 62.

  
38
   
In America it was dubbed
Ibid., pages 62–63.

  
39
   
One possible explanation
Waldstreicher (ed.),
Notes on the State of Virginia by Thomas Jefferson
, pages 109–11.

  
39
   
Meanwhile, a new term
Ibid., pages 62–70.

  
39
   
In 1739, a French military expedition
Semonin,
American Monster
, page 87.

  
39
   
Great herds of bison and deer and elk
Ibid., page 109.

  
39
   
They soon returned laden with
Ibid., page 87.

  
39
   
Benjamin Franklin, serving as
Ibid., page 143.

  
40
   
Interest in the fossils remained so high
Ibid., pages 176–78.

  
40
   
It was just before the end of the war
Waldstreicher (ed.),
Notes on the State of Virginia by Thomas Jefferson
, page 16.

  
40
   
In his book
Ibid., pages 79–208. (Specific references can be found in Waldstreicher's contents, pages viii–ix.)

  
40
   
In his discussion of the people
Ibid., pages 121–25.

  
40
   
Emerging from revolution
Ibid., pages 18–19.

  
40
   
America, he believed
Ibid., pages 20–21.

  
41
   
Like other adherents
Ibid.

  
41
   
“
Such is the economy of nature”
Ibid., page 116.

  
41
   
Mammoth remains hinted at
Ibid., page 109.

  
42
   
Jefferson thought there was only one
Ibid., page 110.

  
42
   
Jefferson was well versed in
Ibid., pages 107–108.

  
42
   
Some years later
Kastner,
A Species of Eternity
, page 120.

  
42
   
But to whatever animal we ascribe
Waldstreicher (ed.),
Notes on the State of Virginia by Thomas Jefferson
, pages 110–11. Jefferson's wonderful little book, considered
in toto
, was more than an enumeration of America's natural riches and a defense against Buffon. Taking the long view, Jefferson argued that America—young, vital, and big—was in merely the early stages of its ascendancy, and that Europe, which was by contrast old and growing feeble, was in decline, even if nobody on the other side of the ocean could yet believe it.