~oologicalJoumal ofthe Linnean Sock@ (1994), 112: 179-196. With 5 figures
Vertebrate Palaeobiology. Edited by M. J . Benton and D. B. JVorman
The plesiosaur’s birthplace: the Bristol
Institution and its contribution to vertebrate
palaeontology
MICHAEL A. TAYLOR, F.L.S.
Department of Geology, National Museum of Scotland, Chambers Street, Edinburgh EHl 1JF
The Bristol Institution for the Advancement of Science, Literature and the Arts opened in 1823.
The science expounded at the Institution was an anti-Lamarckian ideology based on Paleyan
natural theology and the Aristotelean Great Chain of Being. Pioneering work on Jurassic marine
reptiles by W. D. Conybeare and H. T. De la Beche in 1821-1824 used material from its
collection, and it was at the Institution that Conybeare first publicly announced the discovery of
the first complete plesiosaur. In the early 183Os, Henry Riley and the second curator Samuel
Stutchbury first described Permo-Triassic reptiles including 7Jzecodontosaurus. Riley was one of the
earliest exponents of Geoffroyan comparative anatomy in Britain. The Institution declined under
financial pressures, eventually to be taken over by Bristol City Council in 1894. Its main
contribution to science was its collection of fossil and Recent vertebrates. Louis Agassiz drew upon
its fossil fishes for Poissom fossiles, and Richard Owen used the reptiles for his British Association
Report of 1841-1843. Much of the collection was destroyed in 1940 but much also remains.
ADDITIONAL KEY WORDS:-museum
fish - Richard Owen
Louis Agassiz.
collections - ichthyosaur - archosaur
77zecodontosaurus
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CONTENTS
Introduction . . . . . . .
The Bristol Institution: ideology and science
The plesiosaur’s birthplace . . . .
Comparative anatomy: the Continental link
Thegrowthofthecollection.
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Gentlemenandplayers . . . . .
The legacy of the Bristol Institution . .
Acknowledgements . . . . . .
References . . . . . . . .
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INTRODUCTION
Bristol was a centre of research in vertebrate palaeontology long before the
University’s foundation. The local cleric Alexander Catcott (1725- 1779), author
of A treatise on the deluge (1771), first discovered the British Quaternary cave
fauna in the Mendip Hills south of Bristol, in his hunt for evidence of a
divinely ordered Creation reconcilable with the account in Genesis (Neve &
Porter, 1977). Catcott’s manuscripts and specimens, held by the Bristol Library
Society, were later used by Buckland (1823) in his own work on the ‘Diluvium’:
an early example of the use of a publicly accessible collection (MSS now in
CRL; specimens transferred to BRSMG, destroyed 1940).
0024-4082/94/090179+ 18 $08.00/0
179
0 1994 The Linnean Society of London
180
M. A TAYLOR
The most important work, however, took place during the nineteenth century,
associated with the Bristol Institution for the Advancement of Science, Literature
and the Arts, opened in 1823. Neve (1983) critically assesses the Institution’s
‘gentlemanly’ science. In a case study of the Liassic chimaera Squaloraja, Taylor
& Torrcns (1987) outline the Institution’s role as a centre for \Vest Country
geology, exemplified by its purchasing Lyme Regis ichthyosaurs from the
commercial collector Mary Anning jnr. (1799-1 847), and the financial implications
of its expensive style. Desmond (1989) reassesses the Institution in the wider
context of early nineteenth century comparative anatomy and politics. In this
paper, I review the value of the Institution’s work in vertebrate palaeontoloLgy
arid argue that Neve’s (1983) negative conclusions do not fully take account of
its major legacy to science: an important palaeontological collection.
In the text, AR denotes one of the annual reports of the Bristol Institution
(BRSMG). Repository abbreviations are: BRSMG, Geology Section, Bristol City
Museums and Art Gallery, Queens Road, Bristol BS8 1RL; BMNH, Palaeontology
Library, Natural History Museum, Cromwell Road, London SW7 5BD; CRL,
Central Reference Library, County of Avon Central Library, College Green,
Bristol BS1 5TL; NMW, De la Beche archive, Department of Geology, National
Museum of Wales, Cathays Park, Cardiff CF1 3NP.
‘IHE BRISTOT, INSTITUTION: IDEOLOGY AND SCIENCE
The main role of the Bristol Institution for the Advancement of Science,
Literature and the Arts was to provide a museum with collections, library,
‘apparatus’, lecture-room and public lectures. The ‘annexed’ Bristol Philosophical
and Literary Society also held its meetings and lectures there. The Institution’s
ethos was a combination of gentleman’s club and private research institution
and museum, as it was not normally open to a member of the public without
authorization from a member. Its early history is complex (R. D. Clark,
personal communication; BRSMG records). The Philosophical and Literary
Society was founded in or before 1805. In order to house the amalgamated
’Phil and Lit.’ and Bristol Library Society within one building, the Institution
was founded as a separate body in 1809, and subscriptions opened in 1810;
when the Library withdrew, the building committee simply continued to raise
funds. The foundation stone of the ‘Building for Philosophical and Library
Purposes’ was laid on 29 February 1820, and it opened in 1823 (Figure 1;
Anon., 1820; Barker, 1906).
Exclusivity was ensured by the high costs of membership: as well as investing
capital of L25 in a share, the full member paid an annual subscription of 2
guineas (1 980s equivalents possibly A5000 and L450 (Taylor & Torrens, 1987)).
This financial barrier must have acted as a filter of social class, although there
is no known case of membership having been refused, except on failure to pay
the subscription (R. D. Clark, personal communication).
A further pointer to the Institution’s social ethos is its officers’ report on an
experimental lecture course “on the practical principles of the steam engine,
delivered for the benefit of the working mechanics”:
. . . to impart appropriate and beneficial information is the surest method to redaim the mind from what
is inappropriate and dangerous . . . In endeavouring to render an Institution designed for and supported
by the higher classcs, in any degree subservient to such purposes [of promoting mechanical and economic
T H E BRISTOI, INSTITUTION
181
Figure 1. The building of the Bristol Institution for the Advancement of Science, Literature and
the Arts in Park Street in the late 1820s, from a watercolour possibly painted by Montague about
1860 (BRSMG K4539). Photograph courtesy of Bristol City Museums and Art Gallery.
progress], the acquisition of knowledge is represented in its most beneficial and becoming relation, as a
boon emanating from the superior to the inferior; and thus . . . becomes a new and strong bond of
consolidation in the fabric of society (Annual Report for 1823 and 1824: 25, 39, BRSMG; [Carpenter],
1836).
The experiment seems not to have been repeated (cf. Bath, Torrens, 1990),
the Bristol gentlemen preferring to set up a separate Mechanics’ Institute under
their patronage and control in 1825 (Neve, 1983). But this official statement
of Institution policy shows clearly its patrician approach. This is found in
research associated with the Institution, and is indeed typical of gentlemanly
geology of the time.
T H E PLESIOSAUR’S BIRTHPLACE
The most important palaeontological research in Bristol (and some of the
first competent British work) was executed by the Revd. William Daniel
Conybeare (1787-1857), in collaboration with Henry De la Beche (1796-1855).
They studied the Lower Liassic marine reptiles of Somerset and Dorset,
especially Lyme Regis, where De la Beche lived (De la Beche & Conybeare,
1821; Conybeare, 1822). They re-examined ichthyosaur material in several
private collections in the Bristol area, including Catcott’s and De la Beche’s
own, thereby improving on previous research. At the same time they identified
a new reptile from miscellaneous unidentified bones and partial skeletons and
named it Plesiosaurus. The 1822 paper included an isolated plesiosaurian head
from the Lower Lias of Street, Somerset, the first of many important specimens
from what was to become, with the work of Thomas Hawkins (1810-1889)
I82
hl. A. TAYLOR
and other collectors, a major locality for ichthyosaurs and plesiosaurs (Howe,
Sharpe & Torrens, 1981; Taylor, 1989).
Conybeare had felt vulnerable to criticism of his inferred reconstruction of
the plesiosaur from more or less disarticulated material (Conybeare, 1824: 381),
so ht: was delighted when the Anning family of Lyme Regis fossil collectors
discovered a complete skeleton, the holotype of Plesiosaurus dolichodeirus Conybeare,
1824, which “confirmed the justice of my former conclusions in every essential
point connected with the organisation of the skeleton”. In a letter of 4 March
1824 he wrote to De la Beche, then in the West Indies:
I . . . received a very fair drawing by Miss Anning of the most magnificent specimen which 1 shall
shortly describc. It was the Evening also of the 2d. meeting of our Phil. Socy [i.e. the Bristol Institution‘s
associated Philosophical and Literary Society]. . . . to the Society I went, delighted . . . to pay that
infant nursling 01 my own the Comppimen]t of making this strange monster first known to the public
through its means. Such a communication could not fail to excite great interest. Some of the folk ran
off instantly (it was Friday Evg.) to Gutch’s printing office (John Matthew Gutch 1776 1861, proprietor
of the weekly ncwspaper Felix Farley’s Eristol ,j%urnal], whither I was obliged to follow to prevent some
strangr blunders falling under the lash of my friend Cumberland [George Cumberland (1754 18481,
Rristol polymath, owner of a fossil collection including marine reptiles, and acerbic commentator o n
geolocqS);l. . . (NMW B4.20GD.302).
Despite Conybeare’s hopes, some of the press coverage was confused, Felix
Parley’s Bristol Journal (6 March 1824: [3]) belatedly reporting “Mary Anning’s
New Discovery” as an “extraordinary fossil fish [which] belongs to Ichthyosaurus
[sic] tribe”.
Conybeare obviously liked to think of himself as instrumental in the foundation
of the Bristol Institution, which he called “my nursling” in the letter cited
above, but this probably exaggerates his involvement. Probably Conybeare was
involved in re-founding the Philosophical and Literary Society within (‘annexed
to’) the Institution, as well as being involved with the Institution itselc
[Carpenter] (1836: i) says that he and Conybeare made the preparations for
the first Provisional Committee of the Institution.
Conybeare certainly used his connections within the Geological Society of
London, and with William Buckland (1784-1856) in Oxford. During the 1820s
and 1830s, Buckland (an honorary member of the Institution) and his colleagues
also developed an interest in fossils as showing a progressionist sequence of
animals designed by a Creator. In his 1831 lectures to the Bristol College,
Conybeare recommended a knowledge of the sciences and their contribution
to natural theology as a necessary element of a proper theological education
(Rupke, 1983: 239). He also discussed the reconciliation of Genesis with geology
in the Institution’s house journal, the West of England Journal of Science and
Literature (Conybeare 1835a: 18-19).
Conybeare and De la Beche’s work on marine reptiles was deeply informed
by Cuvier’s functional analysis of fossils as living organisms (Porter, 1977: 169170), but it also had an un-Cuvierian emphasis in that the fossils’ purposeful
design and adaptation were used to demonstrate the Creator’s beneficence.
British researchers such as Conybeare worked within a Protestant tradition
which welcomed such natural theolo<gy as ‘proof‘ of a Divine Creator. Another
concept underlying the marine reptile work was the Great Chain of Being, in
which all created items could be arranged in a series of links from the simplest
to tho most complex, in a static, non-evolutionary explanation of diversity and
order within divine creation. Thus De la Beche & Conybeare (1821: 562)
THE BRISTOL INSTITUTION
183
accepted Charles Koenig’s name Ichthyosaurus to suit its role as a link between
fishes and reptiles, and coined Plesiosaurus from the Greek words for ‘nearer to
reptiles’. “The newly discovered animal, named on that account Plesiosaurus,
approaches much more nearly to the crocodile, forming in its whole structure,
a link between it and the Ichthyosaurus”. Conybeare often stressed the point
that palaeontology presented links in the Great Chain that would otherwise
have been missing due to extinction (e.g. Conybeare, 1835a: 7; Taylor &
Torrens, 1987).
The Great Chain of Being was confronted by the evolutionary ideas of JeanBaptiste de Lamarck (1744-1829), the impact of which had social and religious
as well as scientific implications. Working-class radicals adopting Lamarckism
demanded, in Desmond‘s phrase, “knowledge free of middle-class hegemonic
values” and espoused a secular science to “destroy the intellectual buttresses of
Anglican aristocratic power” (Desmond, 1987: 84, 103; 1989). Lamarckism
proposed that purposeful adaptation was driven by internal forces within each
animal, rather than being imposed from above by the guidance of a divine (or
divinely authorized) ruler. Its materialistic denial of divine creation struck at
the roots of English society, at the Established Church of England, and at the
argument that God created everyone to his or her place in society. Lamarckian
transmutation by extension denied the validity of barriers between social classes.
This was inflammatory stuff for early nineteenth century Britain, at a time
of repression and reaction. Conybeare’s outburst against Lamarckism, criticizing
‘the credulity of a material philosophy’ and its ‘bigotry’, may seem quite out
of place in a paper on marine reptiles (De la Beche & Conybeare, 1821: 560561fn.), but simply shows the fear of the threat to the established order of an
Anglican clergyman who was after all living off tithes, a stipend and inherited
wealth. Any member of the Bristol tlite would have shared his sentiments. De
la Beche’s income, for example, was derived from West Indies plantations
operated by slaves (Figure 2). This sensitivity should also be seen in the context
of the 1831 riots in Bristol, arising from a political demonstration, when the
town mob burnt and looted key public buildings and many houses and
warehouses (Latimer, 1887; h e y , 1979).
However, it would be wrong to assume a completely homogeneous ideological
stance amongst the Institution’s activists. In practice, the Bristol Institution
reflected the liberal Anglicanism that informed Conybeare (and also Buckland;
Rupke, 1983) and allowed him to cooperate with members of Nonconformist
communities in Bristol, particularly the Unitarian Church and the Society of
Friends, who were strongly represented in Bristol’s tlite. Another example of a
liberal conservative Institution member was James Cowles Prichard (1786-1 848),
a Bristol physician and, together with Conybeare, Pro-Director of the
Philosophical and Literary Society, famous for his medical research and his
pioneering anthropological and biogeographical work, Researches into the Physical
History o f M a n (Prichard, 1813; Stocking, 1973; Bynum, 1975; Neve, 1983).
COMPARATIVE ANATOMY: THE CONTINENTAL LINK
A further measure of Bristol’s importance as a research centre is the speed
with which new ideas were imported. Obviously, Conybeare was one channel,
with links, for example to Cuvier (Howe et al., 1981). Interestingly, Cuvier,
184
hl. A. ’I‘AYLOR
I‘igurr 2. Ue la Bcche’s illustration, in his . I d e s on the pre~entcondition ofthe negroer of 1825. showing
~ l n v e b o n the family plantations in Jamaica. l h e Bristol Institution’s members drew their wealth
lrom cxploiting a deeply unequal society, and this was reflected in its conservative, anti-Lamarckian
scientific iclrolo,q. Photograph courtesy of the National Museum of !Vales.
bhose politically conservative position was well known (Lyell, 1881; Appel,
1987), was made an honorary member of the Philosophical and Literary Society
on 9 December 1830 (BRSMG records). Bristol also imported the ‘opposition’
to Cuvier, in the form of Etienne Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire (1772- 1844), who
expounded the possible evolutionary transformation of animal groups through
time. The debates of the 1820s and 1830s may or may not have had undertones
of transformism (Appel, 1987; cf. Corsi, 1988: 255-257, 290), but they happened
at a time when French anatomy was supremely influential and when British
doctors were going to Paris to be trained in it (Desmond, 1989).
On 1 1 December 1833 (AR for 1833: 46, BRSMG), Dr Henry Riley (17971848) gave a paper to the Bristol Philosophical and Literary Society on “Some
considerations on the mode of determining the character of the remains of
extinct species of Animals; with Illustrations applied to the Megalonyx,
Megatherium, Mastodon and Mammoth”. The title echoes Geoffroy’s ( 1828:
215) suggestion of %ne skrie progressive, comme la suivante, par exemple:
Icjh]thyosaurus, Plesiosaurus, Pterodac&lus, Mososaurus, Teleosaurus, Megalonix, Megatherium,
Anoplotherzum, Paleotherium, etc. Par les Mastodontes . . .”
Riley, a local surgeon and medical school teacher, was a keen naturalist and
Paris-trained comparative anatomist (Prichard, 1894). “A lecturer of more than
usual ability” (Munro Smith, 1917: 303), Riley often used large drawings and
museum specimens from the Institution’s and his own collections, and in one
case the London herpetologist Thomas Bell’s, as well as live animals. He gave
a wries of public lectures on ‘Zoological and Philosophical Anatomy’ in 1831,
said to be the “first of the kind ever delivered in the British Islands” (AR for
1831: 13, 16, 17, 39; BRSMG). While hardly unique in Britain, these were
THE BRISTOL INSTITUTION
185
the first public expositions of new Continental thought in Bristol (Bristol Gazette,
17 March 1831; Bristol Merculy, 1, 15 March 1831; Bristol Mirror, 26 March
1831; Felix Farlq’s Bristol Journal, 5, 19 March 1831). There were also lecture
series in 1832 on “Erpetology, or the organization and habits of reptiles”
(Brzstol Gazette, 26 April 1834; Bristol Mirror, April-June 1832; Felix Farlq’s Bristol
Journal, April-May 1832) and in 1833 on ‘Comparative Anatomy and the
Philosophy of Zoology’ (Bristol Mirror, April-July 1833).
The ‘Erpetology’ series included behaviour, ecology and interactions with
humans, such as the use of crocodiles to supplement the moats of colonial
forts in the Dutch East Indies. Especially in the 1831 and 1833 series, Riley
discussed a broad range of current French and German ideas such as the then
new concepts of serial homology and the vertebral skull, the relevance of embryological data to the affinities of animals, and the Cuvier-Geoffroy debate itself.
Little documentary evidence of Riley’s lectures remains and he only published
two brief papers (Riley, 1834, 1837). It seems, however, that he took a middle
position emphasizing Cuvierian functional adaptation equally with Geoffroyan
searches for homologies. If so, he adopted this very early indeed, before his
colleagues in Paris felt safe to adopt a similar synthesis.
Riley showed his awareness of Lamarck when discussing Geoffroy’s concepts
of crocodilian transmutation: “The Teleosaurus affords, in some degree, an
illustration of Lamarck‘s theory of the progressive elevation of the forms of the
lower animals, till they arrive at a higher state” (Bristol Mirror, 12 May 1832).
Nevertheless, it seems that Riley gave no cause for scandal, and was, on the
contrary, a respected figure in the Bristol establishment. The conservative Bristol
Mirror gave the fullest coverage of his 1832 and 1833 talks. Riley was, moreover,
active in the Provincial Medical and Surgical Association, a professional
gentleman’s reformist club concerned with ‘honour and respectability’, and very
far from being Radical (Desmond, 1989; 125). The final indication of Riley’s
presumably conservative stance must be his recommendation by Conybeare and
the Dean of Bristol as a possible author to cover comparative anatomy for one
of the prestigious ‘Reports’ of the British Association (Morrell & Thackray,
1984: 149-150, 154).
THE GROWTH OF THE COLLECTION
The Bristol Institution is truly the birthplace of the plesiosaur, as far as its
public announcement went, although the bulk of Conybeare and De la Beche’s
research was carried out in private collections. In fact, their work precisely
overlaps the transition from almost total dependence on private collections to
the increasing availability of more or less public institutional collections with
their supporting curatorial staff.
Riley closed his 1832 lecture series with the hope that “the utility of
contributing to one large and complete collection, instead of retaining insulated
specimens in their own cabinets [i.e. private collections], would be apparent to
his audience” (Bristol Mirror, 9 June 1832: [4]). Right from the start, an
important role of the Institution was to build up a collection of fossils. This
was so successful ([Carpenter], 1836) that only 13 years after the Institution’s
foundation, having argued that, for geology, museum collections were as
important as fieldwork, Conybeare said (183513: 97) “no other provincial
186
M. A. TAYLOR
institution is . . . so richly furnished, as that of Bristol . . .” though he
admitted (183513: 98) that “[olur geological stores . . . are not nearly so well
known, because, from the deficiency of cabinets, it has hitherto been impossible
to arrange them”. The Institution’s geological collection remained the only one
of significance in the Bristol area, apart from that of the Bath Royal Literary and
Scientific lnstitution (Torrens, 1990), until the later nineteenth and twentieth century
collections of the University’s Department of Geology and Spelaeological Society.
The development of the Institution’s quasi-public collection had a direct
impact on research. Conybeare and De la Beche’s marine reptile w7ork seems
to have been constrained by the lack of such collections. As Delair (1969)
pointed out, they apparently ignored a number of ichthyosaur speciniens, some
more or less complete, which had by then been collected (see also Cumberland,
1829, and Howe et al., 1981). I suspect that this was at least partly due to
problems of access to some privately owned specimens; Conybeare and De la
Beche depended very largely on a number of private collections in Bristol and
London, notably those of Colonel Birch (c. 1768-1829) and James Johnson (c.
176418412.),as well as Catcott’s. Even so, private collections were not necessarily
accessible and might be dispersed at any time, as finally happened to Birch’s
and Johnson’s collections (Rolfe, 1976; Torrens, 1979; BRSMG Geology File
JOH 00 1). Another problem was the preparation of illustrations, which required
an artist and appropriate facilities. This was a major constraint on Louis
Agassiz’ research on British fossil fishes, only really resolved by grant-aid and
by the Geological Society of London acting as a working base for the mass
loan of specimens to be drawn there by Agassiz’ assistant Josef Dinkel. The
Bristol Institution itself acted as a lender as well as a concentration point for
local private collections (Anon., 1835; Taylor & Torrens, 1987).
Conybeare’s 1824 paper has a very early reconstruction of a vertebrate
skeleton (actually two, an ichthyosaur and a plesiosaur, Figure 3), which drew
upon the Institution’s very first geological donation. This was a single but
excellent ichthyosaur from Mary Anning, acquired by subscription in 1823 by
a group including Conybeare and De la Beche ([Carpenter], 1836; Taylor &
Torrens, 1987). Institution membership thus meant that men could band
together to buy fossils, literature and equipment which they could not afford
individually.
The Institution also attracted donations; the engineer and honorary member
Isambard Kingdom Brunel (1806-1 859) gave an ichthyosaur from the newly
built Great Western Railway excavations, while Joseph Parker (1805-6. 1830?)
of Bitton, Gloucestershire, donated plesiosaurs (BRSMG records; Swinton, 1931,
1948). Other specimens were bought, such as the reptiles acquired from
quarrymen working the ‘Dolomitic Conglomerate’ of Durdharn Down (see
below), or collected by fieldwork, as when Conybeare went down to Lyme
Regis in the wake of the Great Storm of November 1824 with J. S. Miller,
the first Curator, whom the Institution’s Committee had ordered to make a
collecting trip (Taylor & Torrens, 1987).
GENTLEMEN AND PLAYERS
This accretion of specimens, supplemented by the occasional entire collection,
continued throughout the nineteenth century, even when the Institution was so
T H E BRISTOL INSTITUTION
187
Figure 3. Amongst the first ‘three-dimensional’ skeletal reconstructions of fossil vertebrates are the
Ichthyosaanu and Plesiosaurus from Conybeare (1 824: plate 47). This incorporated data from the
Bristol Institution’s first geological specimen, an ichthyosaur skeleton bought from Mary Anning
of Lyme Regis. Photograph courtesy of Bristol City Museums and Art Gallery.
moribund and financially stressed, after about 1856, that it could not always
pay its curators (BRSMG; Copp, 1985). An effect of the British amateur
tradition during the early nineteenth century was the lack of paid posts for
researchers. De la Beche himself was to become one of the first professional
government scientists when his family fortunes collapsed and he became the
founder of the Geological Survey in 1835 (McCartney, 1977; Porter, 1978;
Secord, 1986). But before then and for a long time thereafter virtually the
only paid palaeontological posts outside the major London and Oxbridge
institutions were as ill-paid and insecure curators (Porter, 1978; Allen, 1985;
Taylor & Torrens, 1987).
J. S. Miller (nk Muller, 1779-1830), a German emigrC and the Institution’s
first paid curator, was himself a major researcher and author of A natural histo~y
of the Crinoidea (182 1). Miller was primarily an invertebrate palaeontologist and
conchologist (Copp, 1985), but he was also the first to recognize the existence
of pterosaurian material from Lyme Regis, which William Buckland later named
Dzrnoqjhodon (Welly], 1833). Without an independent income, Miller drew a
salary in the mid-1820s of L150 a year, well above the norm for such posts
but not sufficient for a truly gentlemanly lifestyle (Taylor & Torrens, 1987).
His sympathetic obituarist (Welly], 1833: 117-1 19) commented that “We come
now to a period in the life of this eminent naturalist to which it is impossible
to recur without feelings of deep regret and sorrow: I mean his appointment
to the office of Curator of the Bristol Institution, which took place early in
the year 1824”. Miller’s appointment was good for the Institution, and to some
extent to his bank balance, but the pressure of work without adequate support
I88
M A IAYLOR
led to an early death: the “excessive confinement and continual occupation”
of the routine work alone, with the “chaos of a newly-established museum,
into which contributions are unceasingly flowing, and where there is as yet no
adequate provision made for placing them away”. The last straw was that “On
three days in every week the Institution is usually thrown open; and for six
hours on those days a talented and profound naturalist, one whom Baron
Cuvier himself thought worthy of no ordinary praise and commendation, was
doomed to the misery and degradation of having to ‘shew the lions’ of the
exhibition to every ignorant and idle gazer which curiosity and a member’s
introduction brought thither!”
Yet Miller’s treatment and salary still compare favourably with those of other
curators of the early nineteenth century, at least two of whom were driven to
cuicide by professional and financial worries (Brears, 1984; Secord, 1985;
Torrens & Cooper, 1986; Torrens, 1987; Torrens & Taylor, 1990). The practice
of scientific research and the membership of scientific societies may have been
a useful way of enhancing one’s social position and crossing class boundaries,
as Gideon Mantel1 explicitly admitted in his diaries (Cleevely & Chapman,
1992), but this was only true of unpaid work. As Allen (1985) noted, making
a living from natural history was not yet a recognized gentlemanly profession
comparable to, say, law, and being in paid employment of any kind was
demeaning. Miller’s loss of a quarter of his working life meant amongst other
things that his death left a major review of British fossil corals unfinished and
soon lost, possibly stolen from his office at the museum (Welly], 1833). William
Clift, the equally competent Conservator of the Hunterian Museum of the
Royal College of Surgeons in London, suffered from similar problems (Dobson,
1954), and Richard Owen, his successor, only escaped by resigning his post
once he had built up enough of a reputation to enable him to obtain an
alternative position (Desmond, 1989; Rupke, 1994).
Samuel Stutchbury (1798-1859; Figure 4; [Carpenter], 1836; Crane, 1983;
Copp, 1985; Branagan, 1993) took up his post as Miller’s successor in 1831.
He had started his career as assistant to Clift at the College of Surgeons,
whcre he helped Gideon Mantel1 compare the teeth of the living iguana with
those of the fossil reptile later named Iguanodon (Spokes, 1927), and then made
a successful voyage to the Pacific as naturalist of a commercial expedition.
Jt’hilc at the Bristol Institution he published on various zoological and botanical
topics, and developed links with local shipping interests, becoming an active
hsseminator of material and information. Thus he obtained some of the first
gorilla and chimpanzee specimens in Britain and facilitated their description by
k c h a r d Owen (Rupke, 1994). Head-hunted by De la Beche, by then head of
the Geological Survey, Stutchbury left Bristol for Australia in 1850, to take up
the post of mineral surveyor of New South Wales.
Stutchbury is something of a transition figure between the menial curator of
the early nineteenth century and the professional of later decades. Stutchbury
was never of the same status as the elite gentlemanly geologists, and certainly
never climbed as far as Richard Owen. But, as Branagan (1993) notes, this
practical man with theoretical expertise became increasingly well-regarded. Thus,
initially an Institution employee, he was elected first to ordinary and eventually
to honorary life membership.
One of Stutchbury’s research themes seems to have been the exploitation of
THE BRISTOL INSTITUTION
189
Figure 4. Samuel Stutchbury (1798-1859) second Curator of the Bristol Institution and codescriber of 7hecodontosaurus. Photograph courtesy of Bristol City Museums and Art Gallery.
his network of contacts to yield ‘living fossils’, following his discovery in
Australasia of the extant species of the common fossil bivalve Ti-igonia. In this
way, for example, local fossils of Jurassic crinoids and Rhaetian lun$shes were
complemented by Recent West Indian and Australian specimens, sometimes
among the first brought to Britain (Crane, 1983; Copp, 1985). It was Stutchbury
who described the Institution’s magnificent Lower Jurassic pliosauroid as
Plesiosaurus megacephalus Stutchbury, 1846 (Fig. 5).
Stutchbury carried out the most important vertebrate palaeontological work
performed at the Institution, the recovery of the then oldest known reptiles
from the local Triassic ‘Dolomitic Conglomerate’ in 1834. In the first study of
a pre-Quaternary ‘fissure faunas’, Henry Riley and Stutchbury described
irhecodontosaurus and two species of Palaeosaum (Riley & Stutchbury, 1837, 1840);
some of this material was later named R i l q a plapodon (von Huene, 1902, 1908).
Thecodontosaum was regarded as a link in the Chain of Being between lizards
and crocodiles, showing the continuity of the underlying model informing
research at the Institution. Riley & Stutchbury (1837) gave a confused argument
for two lines of the Chain of Being leading from ‘sauroid fishes’ to
‘saurians’. This dependence on the Chain of Being had already led to Riley’s
M. A. TAYLOR
190
Fikwrc 5. The holot>Fc of Plesiosaurus megacephalu Stutchbury, 1846 (BRSMG cb2335i horn thc
I,o\ier Jurassic or Somerset, on display in the Bristol Museum in the late nineteenth ccntuiy. Likr
innii) of the other reptiles, it was destroyed in 1940. Photograph courtesy of Bristol City \fuseurns
and ;2rt Gallcr)..
misidentification of a Lower Liassic chimaera, later the holotype of Sguuloraja
bob.@ondyla Agassiz, 1833-1844, as an intermediate link between sharks and
rays (Taylor & Torrens, 1987).
T H E LEGACY OF T H E BRISTOL INSIITUTION
Owen’s famous “Report on British Fossil Reptiles”, in which Bristol Institution
apecimens figured prominently, is now a palaeontological classic, remarkable for
his underlying ideological motives (Desmond, 1989; Torrens, 1992; Rupke,
1994). It was in the second part (Owen, 1842) that he devised the dinosaur;
in thc first part, Owen (1840) had already modified Geoffroyan transcendental
anatomy to a more acceptable theory of homology and of the vertebrate
archetype. He attacked Geoffroy’s transformist speculations about marine reptiles
and by implication Lamarckian progressionism, notably on the grounds that
thew large ectothermic reptiles were now obsolete thanks to changes in climate
(Desmond, 1989, p. 324; Rupke, 1983, 1994). Owen drew heaLily on the
Bristol Institution’s collection in this key work, including the holotypes of the
new species Ichthyosaurus latzmanus, I. thyreospondylus, Plesiosaurus bruchyephalus, P.
costutur, P. rugosus, and P. subtngonus, as well as Riley and Stutchbury’s Dolomitic
Conglomerate material. However, by the time Owen wrote his Palaeontographical
Society Monograph on Liassic reptiles (Owen, 1861-188 l), the Bristol specimens
were barely discussed. Already they were becoming neglected.
From about 1836 onwards the Institution was in a chronic financial crisis
due to the difficulty of supporting its services on the vagaries of private
subscriptions. Eventually it united with the private Bristol Library in 1872, and
was finally taken over by the municipal council in 1894. Only then did the
ilIuscum become truly available to the Bristol people, with free admission and
almost unrestricted opening hours (Barker, 1906). But without the financial
support of one man, John Naish Sanders (c. 1777-1870), the Institution would
almost certainly have collapsed long before 1872, with the probable dispersal
and possible loss of its collection. Many such institutions in other British cities
THE BRISTOL INSTITUTION
191
collapsed in the mid-nineteenth century, apparently due to rising costs and to
competition from the new and more democratic Field Clubs and county
naturalists’ societies, and changes in fashion (Allen, 1976, 1978; Brears, 1984;
Torrens & Taylor, 1990).
What was the Institution’s true value? Neve (1983) and Desmond (1989) are
in part correct to regard it as an outpost of London science, with the form of
an klitist gentlemanly institution and certainly with the function of a gathering
post for fossils and information. The members, it seems, were expected-like
all provincial geologists of the time (e.g. Rudwick, 1985; Branagan, 1993)-to
be grateful for the opportunity to provide specimens and data for the exclusive
theorizing of the metropolitan savants. O n occasion they might also have to
provide the arena, as when the Institution hosted the 1836 meeting of the
British Association for the Advancement of Science, the invitation having been
mediated by Conybeare. The Association, a supposedly decentralized and
provincial body, was effectively hijacked by the London scientific klite (Morrell
& Thackray, 1981, 1984). Even Conybeare was stage-managed: the Rev. W. V.
Vernon Harcourt (1789-1871, then General Secretary) wrote to James D.
Forbes (1809-1868, physicist and glaciologist), on 1 October 1835: “I should
have liked to have proposed Conybeare [for President of the whole meeting]
but do not think he would get discreetly through the dinners and Prichard is
too quiet”.
Conybeare’s metropolitan links, high profile and abundant writings must not
be allowed to mask the Institution’s role as a specifically Bristolian intellectual
centre. The Institution activist and Unitarian minister Lant Carpenter hoped
to promote an active interest in science amongst the young (Felix Farley’s Bristol
Journal, 6 March 1824). More generally, the Institution was to be a centre of
local scientific-what was then called ‘philosophical’-intercourse. Thus Prichard
could try out his ideas on plant varieties, biogeography and human races at
the meetings of the Philosophical Society (e.g. Felix Farley’s Bristol Journal, 27
March 1824: [3]), alongside Riley’s talks on comparative anatomy. Certainly
Prichard and perhaps also Riley inspired Lant Carpenter’s son, the young
William B. Carpenter (1813-1885), in his future career as a physiologist and
notable contributor to a British synthesis of the CuvierGeoffroy debate and
to early evolutionary thought (Estlin Carpenter in Carpenter, 1888; Appel,
1987; Desmond, 1989). But if one takes away Conybeare and his cronies one
is seemingly left with little other than these medical men, who were already
developing parallel networks of their own, both professional medical groups
(notably the Bristol branch, founded 1840, of the Provincial Medical and
Surgical Association) and social meetings in which Prichard, Stutchbury, the
Carpenters and other intellectual friends met (Symonds, 187 1; Estlin Carpenter
in Carpenter, 1888; Prichard, 1896; Neve, 1983; Desmond, 1989). Other
scientific and learned societies were also founded in the 1840s to 1860s (Neve,
1983). So the Institution apparently achieved little of lasting scientific, educational
or economic value, apart from being a centre for the very limited distribution
of some of the latest news, and the communal purchase of books and journals.
Its house journal, the West of England Journal of Science, Literature and the Arts,
failed within a couple of years of its first issue in 1835, in contrast to the
lasting journals of the Leeds, Newcastle, and Manchester institutions. Perhaps,
Neve (1983: 12) argues, we should not expect too much of “Bristol’s scientific
I42
h l A TAYLOR
culture . . . a secondary formation, based on the needs of its proponents to
attach themselves to the new conscrvatism”.
Neve’s judgemcnt is somewhat harsh (1983: 196): “[tlhe commercial city . . .
generated a scientific culture that was, for most of the nineteenth century, only
partially successful”, but I feel that Neve is too concerned with publzshed work,
and that he does not fully appreciate the Institution’s superb collection of
fossils. Admittedly it must be assumed that the Institution preserved material
which would not have gone to another museum. Moreover, its founders’ aimc
do not specifically include the preservation of local geological finds, unlike thc
socic-ty museums at Whitby (stimulated by alarm at the loss of local Upper
Liassic marine reptiles (Browne, 1949)) and York (likewise with the Pleistocene
rrmains from Kirkdale Cavern (Orange, 1973)). In practice, however, we need
riot disbelieve Conybeare’s claim of Bristol’s superiority; for example, its marine
reptile collection grew much more rapidly than most. Whitby and York each
took decades to acquire two substantial specimens of marine reptiles while
Bristol had acquired its second ichthyosaur within three years (Benton & Taylor,
1984; Taylor & Torrens, 1987). It would be interesting to compare the British
hluseum with Bristol as an active collector during this period, once allowance
is made for the ‘pre-packaged’ collections of Hawkins and Mantell.
The list of fossil type specimens at the Bristol Museum in 1890 (Wilson,
18901 shows a predominance of invertebrates, but important work had also
been done on vertebrates. Apart from the work of Conybeare, Owen, Riley
and Stutchbury, by far the most important research was done by Louis Agassiz,
who visited Bristol in 1834 to examine the fishes of the local Carboniferous
Limestone and found in the Institution and in private collections many othcr
novel species, such as the Squalorup mentioned above and the lungfish from
the local Rhaetian. Agassiz (1833-1844) published no less than 44 types based
on Bristol Museum specimens (Taylor & Torrens, 1987; Wilson, 1890). A few
other specimens had been published by other authors, such as the Pleistocene
mammal collection made about 1819 by Joseph Cottle from Oreston Cave
near Plymouth and used by Buckland (1820: 72) for a faunal list (and also in
Cottle’s own publication on the caves, Wilson, 1890) (see Cleevely, 1983, for
these and other collections).
The collections’ true value amounts to more than a mere count of type
specimens. Recent research (not discussed here) must not be overlooked, and
the value of non-type material is also important. Moreover, many specimens
were not acquired until after the first round of taxonomic studies on the group
in question. Thus the museum obtained material from Britain and abroad, as
well as the immediate area of Bristol, thanks to the catholic collecting policy
typical of the nineteenth century. While Ichthyosaurus coybeam’ Lydekker, 1888,
was described from an old specimen, Pleszosaurus conybeari Sollas, 1881, was a
new acquisition. Many others, however, never received their due attention. For
example, the Institution handed down to the City Museum the best collection
of British Lower Jurassic plesiosaurs outside London (Swinton, 1931, 1948).
The British Liassic plesiosaurs are now being reassessed (in part by Bristolbased research!) for the first time since Owen, yet the Bristol specimens’ full
\ d u e will never be known: the Museum was partly destroyed during an air
raid in November 1940 (Anon., 1941), and much-but not all-of the collection,
including some of the marine reptiles, was lost.
THE BRISTOL INSTITUTION
193
A second reason why we cannot fully assess the Institution’s contribution to
vertebrate palaeobiology is that there is no full study of the growth and
significance of the Museum’s Recent vertebrate collections beyond the brief
discussion by Copp (1985). Miller, Riley and Stutchbury seem to have been
equally at home with modern as well as fossil material; thus, for example,
Owen drew upon the Institution for apes (see above) and also for lungfish
(Desmond, 1989). We should also acknowledge the work of Riley and others
in founding, in 1835, and then developing the Bristol Zoological Gardens
(Green-Armytage, 1964; Warin & Warin, 1985). Their inhabitants often ended
up in the Museum on their deaths.
Surely the two most important and productive people in the Institution’s
history, apart from the purely financial supporters, were those two overworked
and underpaid curators, Miller and Stutchbury. They carried out almost all
the original research, while dealing with the donkeywork of maintaining a
rapidly growing collection. They, and their Institution, were part of the
mid-nineteenth century infrastructure which developed to support vertebrate
palaeontology in the wake of pre-Institutional pioneers such as Conybeare and
De la Beche. They thus form an intermediate stage between the private
collections of the eighteenth century and the fully professional modern
establishments of the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, in the form
of the City Museum and, later, the University. I hope this paper will encourage
today’s researchers to investigate and exploit this major provincial collection
and fulfil the hopes of the founders of 1823.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
This work was supported by a Leverhulme Trust Research Fellowship while
I was on study leave from Leicestershire Museums, Arts and Records Service.
I thank D r T. S. Kemp (Oxford University Museum) and Dr E. A. Newsholme
(Merton College) for arranging facilities. I am, as ever, very grateful to Dr
Hugh Torrens for his help and support, and Mr Roger Clark, Dr Peter
Crowther and Dr Adrian Desmond for information and discussion. I thank Mr
T . Sharpe (NMW) for permission to cite from the De la Beche archive, Bristol
City Museums and Art Gallery and the National Museum of Wales for
photographs and permission to publish, and the CRL staff for access to records.
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