An on line discussion of books that have been or are currently being read by members of the Audubon Naturalist Society Conservation Philosophy Reading Group. We choose books, old and new, that collectively constitute the intellectual underpinnings of conservation philosophy.
April 1, 2019 - The Feather Thief: Beauty, Obsession, and the Natural History Heist of the Century by Kirk Wallace Johnson (a Stephen suggestion).
My favorite part of this book was the early chapter about Wallace -- his travels and travails, his disappointments and achievements. It dovetailed nicely with another book I was reading, The Darwinian Revolution by Michael Ruse. The mystery surrounding the whereabouts of the missing specimens was sufficient to pull me through the rest of the book but in the end I was disappointed, knowing little more than I learned from the prologue. Although I enjoyed learning about the crazy fly tiers, it was a little more detail than I needed. Still, a better read than many.
Walter Rothschild, "whose minions collected the greatest number of bird skins and natural history specimens ever amassed by a single person" has an interesting quote from the book of Job on his tombstone: Ask of the beasts and they will tell thee and the birds of the air shall declare unto thee. (p.41) And further down on same page comes a warning from Alfred Newton, one of Walter's professors at Cambridge, about the negative impact of specimen collectors, how they "unstock the world -- and that is a terrible consideration." I was repeatedly struck by the excesses of the collectors, so much competition to see who could have the best stocked museum. But all that was nothing compared to the slaughter that took place later on behalf of the fashion industry.
And this nice recounting from Lorne: (edited to meet space restrictions)
My first response was that there were too many threads to follow in the storytelling. But after several chapters, I began to become engaged. My attention was caught with what was going to happen next. Kirk Wallace Johnson wrote this non-fiction book in the style of a well-researched detective novel.
The book includes historical illustrations and photographs of women wearing fashionable hats decorated with birds and feathers. Johnson notes that between 1883 and 1898, this resulted in the killing hundreds of thousands of birds in the United States and Europe. The gunners who shot birds, such as egrets and hummingbirds, were also stopped later by women who became vocal opponents for protecting endangered bird species. Johnson makes this history engaging and interesting.
Readers also learn early on in the book that fly-fishing in rivers with tiers special exotic feathers may not always attract salmon to bite. (This part of the storytelling is confusing.) This has been known since Victorian times. Salmon flies were given names such as the “Infallible” and “Thunder and Lightning”.
Fly-tying is a technique and art that only devoted persons can develop. In current times, fly-tiers use the expensive feathers of endangered species, such as the Greater Bird of Paradise, the Resplendent Quetzal, the Spangled Cotinga, the Red-ruffed Fruitcrow, and other tropical birds. They use “recipes” that require exotic feathers.
It is not easy to summarize this story or the diverse motivations of a young fellow named Edwin Rist, and the many twists and turns involved in his life that led him to become obsessed with fly-tying and fly-tiers.
He broke into the Tring Museum (holding one the largest ornithological collections in the world) to steal feathers and bird skins. Rist had visited the Tring Museum before, saying a friend at Oxford, who was working on a dissertation, had asked him to make high resolution photographs of Birds of Paradise. This allowed Rist to make a plan for breaking into the Tring museum and focus on more than Birds of Paradise. .
After local police received a tip, and searched his apartment, finding enough evidence to imprison him, a Crown Prosecutor and magistrate judge, were not able to sentence him.
One of Rist’s lawyers, Peter Dahlsen, brought up a mental health matter, “Asperger’s disorder” (now called Autism). Rist would need a psychiatric assessment.
There was a precedent for this defense in Britain set ten years earlier when Simon Gibson and two of his friends broke into a cemetery and found a damaged tomb. They opened a coffin and stole a skull and pieces of vertebrae. (see page 145). Gibson’s lawyer used the “Asperger’s disorder’ defense. Gibson and his friends were not sentenced to do time in prison.
Rist was set free with two years of probation.
Johnson an interview with Edwin Rist. Johnson managed to get Rist to talk in a hotel room in Germany. This only happened once.
One of the key persons he interviews is Long Nguyen, “one of Norway’s greatest fly-tiers”. It appears that Long did much of the selling of feathers and bird skins for Rist, via the internet. Later, Long Nguyen sends what he still has back to the Tring Museum.
Many of the feathers and bird skins are missing the museum tags that connect them to times and places where they were originally collected. Some were collected by Alfred Russel Wallace in 1862, “in his eight-year expedition throughout the Malay Archipelago, where he gathered over 125,000 specimens.”
Johnson also learns from the curators at the Tring Museum the many reasons bird feathers and bird skins are needed today, such as measuring increasing carbons in the atmosphere and mercury in rivers, lakes and oceans.
3 comments:
My favorite part of this book was the early chapter about Wallace -- his travels and travails, his disappointments and achievements. It dovetailed nicely with another book I was reading, The Darwinian Revolution by Michael Ruse. The mystery surrounding the whereabouts of the missing specimens was sufficient to pull me through the rest of the book but in the end I was disappointed, knowing little more than I learned from the prologue. Although I enjoyed learning about the crazy fly tiers, it was a little more detail than I needed. Still, a better read than many.
Walter Rothschild, "whose minions collected the greatest number of bird skins and natural history specimens ever amassed by a single person" has an interesting quote from the book of Job on his tombstone: Ask of the beasts and they will tell thee and the birds of the air shall declare unto thee. (p.41)
And further down on same page comes a warning from Alfred Newton, one of Walter's professors at Cambridge, about the negative impact of specimen collectors, how they "unstock the world -- and that is a terrible consideration." I was repeatedly struck by the excesses of the collectors, so much competition to see who could have the best stocked museum. But all that was nothing compared to the slaughter that took place later on behalf of the fashion industry.
And this nice recounting from Lorne:
(edited to meet space restrictions)
My first response was that there were too many threads to follow in the storytelling. But after several chapters, I began to become engaged. My attention was caught with what was going to happen next. Kirk Wallace Johnson wrote this non-fiction book in the style of a well-researched detective novel.
The book includes historical illustrations and photographs of women wearing fashionable hats decorated with birds and feathers. Johnson notes that between 1883 and 1898, this resulted in the killing hundreds of thousands of birds in the United States and Europe. The gunners who shot birds, such as egrets and hummingbirds, were also stopped later by women who became vocal opponents for protecting endangered bird species. Johnson makes this history engaging and interesting.
Readers also learn early on in the book that fly-fishing in rivers with tiers special exotic feathers may not always attract salmon to bite. (This part of the storytelling is confusing.) This has been known since Victorian times. Salmon flies were given names such as the “Infallible” and “Thunder and Lightning”.
Fly-tying is a technique and art that only devoted persons can develop. In current times, fly-tiers use the expensive feathers of endangered species, such as the Greater Bird of Paradise, the Resplendent Quetzal, the Spangled Cotinga, the Red-ruffed Fruitcrow, and other tropical birds. They use “recipes” that require exotic feathers.
It is not easy to summarize this story or the diverse motivations of a young fellow named Edwin Rist, and the many twists and turns involved in his life that led him to become obsessed with fly-tying and fly-tiers.
He broke into the Tring Museum (holding one the largest ornithological collections in the world) to steal feathers and bird skins. Rist had visited the Tring Museum before, saying a friend at Oxford, who was working on a dissertation, had asked him to make high resolution photographs of Birds of Paradise. This allowed Rist to make a plan for breaking into the Tring museum and focus on more than Birds of Paradise. .
After local police received a tip, and searched his apartment, finding enough evidence to imprison him, a Crown Prosecutor and magistrate judge, were not able to sentence him.
One of Rist’s lawyers, Peter Dahlsen, brought up a mental health matter, “Asperger’s disorder” (now called Autism). Rist would need a psychiatric assessment.
There was a precedent for this defense in Britain set ten years earlier when Simon Gibson and two of his friends broke into a cemetery and found a damaged tomb. They opened a coffin and stole a skull and pieces of vertebrae. (see page 145). Gibson’s lawyer used the “Asperger’s disorder’ defense. Gibson and his friends were not sentenced to do time in prison.
Rist was set free with two years of probation.
Johnson an interview with Edwin Rist. Johnson managed to get Rist to talk in a hotel room in Germany. This only happened once.
One of the key persons he interviews is Long Nguyen, “one of Norway’s greatest fly-tiers”. It appears that Long did much of the selling of feathers and bird skins for Rist, via the internet. Later, Long Nguyen sends what he still has back to the Tring Museum.
Many of the feathers and bird skins are missing the museum tags that connect them to times and places where they were originally collected. Some were collected by Alfred Russel Wallace in 1862, “in his eight-year expedition throughout the Malay Archipelago, where he gathered over 125,000 specimens.”
Johnson also learns from the curators at the Tring Museum the many reasons bird feathers and bird skins are needed today, such as measuring increasing carbons in the atmosphere and mercury in rivers, lakes and oceans.
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