Biological collections: the basis of evolutionary theory.(All Creatures: Naturalists, Collectors, and Biodiversity: 1850-1950.)(Book review)

All Creatures: Naturalists, Collectors, and Biodiversity, 1850-1950. Robert E. Kohler. Princeton University Press, Princeton, NJ, 2006. 380 pp., illus. $35.00 (ISBN 9780691125398 cloth).

Robert Kohler says he wrote All Creatures: Naturalists, Collectors, and Biodiversity, 1850-1950 to answer the question, "Hundreds of expeditions launched to every corner of the world: millions of specimens assembled and lovingly preserved--what made that happen?" In typical historian fashion, Kohler documents his answer to that question with 776 endnotes--a gold mine of information for anyone wanting to explore further. He writes an excessively long (90-page) introduction before he ever gets to the major collecting expeditions, discussing patterns of land use and recreation across the United States (which is important for documenting his idea that hunting, fishing, and camping were the ancestral requirements for large-scale collecting). Kohler also provides an excellent discussion of how Americans' view of nature evolved over 100 years, noting that amateur collections of birds' eggs and other biological specimens turned out to be valuable additions to the collections of major museums. Kohler's skillful writing helped sustain my interest through the parts of his discussion that I thought were quite outside the main themes of the book.

The title All Creatures is an exaggeration--the book refers only to creatures with fur or feathers, and only to collections within the United States. Insects get very short shrift, and slugs, snails, worms, and other invertebrates none at all. Kohler has a few comments on botanical collections, and I hope he writes another book on exploring the world for plants. He generally stays within the subtitle's 1850-1950 boundaries, but he does mention DNA at the end of the volume, and understandably so: Data and methods developed from 1950 to date have totally revised our concepts of how to classify collections, especially insect collections.

Chapter 3, "Patrons," describes how important the millionaires were in supporting grand expeditions in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, with their small armies of men ready to kill every bird and animal in their gun sights. Although Kohler says the records are complete, he avoids telling us how many thousands of animals were killed in the cause of obtaining specimens for museums. The mass slaughter would be prohibited today by law and, perhaps more important, condemned by public sentiment for conservation. Kohler does not indicate whether there is any evidence that the scientists who were complicit in the slaughter contributed to the extinction of any species. Patrons were essential for obtaining the big game animals and an entire family group of elephants for the American Museum. We are fortunate that these collections were made then, and they are still enchanting millions of visitors. It would be virtually impossible to construct such multimillion-dollar dioramas today.

The next big challenge I see for museums is to make dioramas of insects that truly show their incredibly detailed morphology. The simplistic ones at the American Museum and the Field Museum show only caricatures of insects, lacking all their wondrous detail. I am waiting for an exhibit based on scanning electron microscopes that will show insects as they really are. The current crop of nature videos appears to be attempting to make all Americans hate and fear insects. Kohler claims that "tiny insects ...