Abstract
Raphael Meldola (1849–1915), an industrial chemist and keen naturalist, under the influence of Darwin, brought new German studies on evolution by natural selection that appeared in the 1870s to the attention of the British scientific community. Meldola’s special interest was in mimicry among butterflies; through this he became a prominent neo-Darwinian. His wide-ranging achievements in science led to appointments as president of important professional scientific societies, and of a local club of like-minded amateurs, particularly field naturalists. This is an account of Meldola’s early scientific connections and studies related to entomology and natural selection, his contributions to the study of mimicry, and his promotion in the mid-1890s of a more theory driven approach among entomologists.
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Notes
Hannah Gay, personal communication to author, 22 August 2008. I thank Hannah Gay for kindly sharing her research on Meldola's early years. For the Meldola papers see McEwan (2003/2004). The bulk of Meldola's papers were left to the Essex Field Club, and in the 1990s, after the closure of the Passmore Edwards Museum, were stored in a warehouse in east London. Through the efforts of Hannah Gay, they were moved to Imperial College Archives for more suitable preservation. For correspondence between Meldola and Darwin, see http://www.lib.cam.ac.uk/Departments/Darwin/; and "The Darwin Correspondence Online Database," http://darwin.lib.cam.ac.uk. Some 75 letters between Darwin and Meldola are listed in Burkhardt (1994).
During 1868–1871, Meldola was an assistant of John Stenhouse at the Royal Mint, and began to act as chemical adviser to W. & E. H. Stead, seed crushers and oil refiners of Liverpool.
There survives an undated note in the Wallace papers at the British Library which shows that Poulton had intended to dedicate his 1896 book to Meldola, "whose earlier writings under the inspiring influence of Charles Darwin & Alfred Russel Wallace were the foundation of a friendship and a life-work."
I thank Hannah Gay for information gleaned from correspondence between Poulton and Meldola held with the papers of Sir Edward Bagnall Poulton, Bodleian Library, University of Oxford.
While Carl Linnaeus divided the order Lepidoptera into three genera, Papilio, butterflies, Sphinx, hawkmoths, and Phalaena, all other moths, Trimen preferred another classification, based on just two groups, Rhopalocera, butterflies, and Heterocera, moths. See also Salmon et al. (2001), which includes a useful summary of the role of field clubs and entomological societies.
For Buckland, see Burgess (1967).
Lockyer received a letter of reference on Meldola, a "capital man for original chemical work," from Edward Frankland, on 23 January 1874. Sir Joseph Norman Lockyer correspondence, Special Collections, University of Exeter Library, MS 110.
Meldola published in Nature papers originally presented before the Essex Field Club, in addition to many review articles and letters. His prior experience with various journals was brought to bear on the club's own publication policy, particularly with regard to what from 1886 was known as the Essex Naturalist.
Bates was president, for a second time, of the Entomological Society of London in 1878. Charles Owen Waterhouse of the British Museum also expressed interest in Meldola's collection. Waterhouse to Meldola, 29 September 1875, Imperial College Archives (hereafter ICA). Meldola, however, refused to accede to his request for donation of specimens.
See, for example, correspondence under the heading "Lamarckism versus Darwinism," Nature, 23, August 1888, 388–389.
Lubbock was president of the Entomological Society of London in 1866–1867 and 1879–1880. During 1882–1883, he assisted Meldola with a petition in support of the Jews of Russia, who were suffering from pogroms, and with the objections to a Bill for construction of a railway through Epping Forest (Travis 2009).
Meldola, writing from the Atlas Works, Hackney Wick, to Darwin, 20 October 1878, letter 11192, Darwin correspondence project; Poulton (1896, pp. 208–209).
Darwin to Meldola, 31 October 1878, ICA; Poulton (1896, pp. 208–209).
Darwin to Meldola, 2 February 1882 (in Darwin 1903, vol. 1, p. 397).
Meldola to Darwin, 3 February 1882, log no. 2701, item 13655, Darwin Correspondence Online.
One section was devoted to studies of the changes of the Mexican axolotl, according to habitat. This remarkable amphibian was brought to France in the 1860s as a curiosity and soon became a topic of zoological research, and of evolutionary studies by Weismann, who was assisted by Marie von Chauvin. Meldola probably first met Weismann at the 1887 meeting of the British Association for the Advancement of Science held in Manchester. On that occasion, Weismann participated in a debate over natural selection led by E. Ray Lankester. Meldola's attendance at the meeting is confirmed by a note held at Imperial College Archives dated 5 September 1887 sent from the reception room of the association, requesting that he find a new chair for a session.
A particularly interesting correspondence on mimicry and inedibility of butterflies, with no direct reference to Müller, was later entered into by Frederick A. Dixey and Wallace. Dixey drew attention to South American butterflies in which mimicry "cannot be accounted for on Batesian principles. Such are the cases of interchange where each has acted on the other as both mimic and the model. Such again are the instances where two ‘mimics’ have approached each other more closely than either of them has approached the common ‘model’. These cases are explicable if we assume inedibility as a property not confined to one member of the group, but shared by some of the ‘mimics’; they are not explicable on any other supposition hitherto advanced. We are then justified in making this assumption, especially as evidence exists that both groups… include distasteful members." Dixey to Wallace, 16 November 1907, British Library, Addit. MSS 46437: folios 248–252.
Henry John Elwes to Meldola, 24 December 1892, and David Sharp to Meldola, 11 January 1893, Meldola papers, ICA. While Poulton and Swinhoe favoured Meldola, the ten other members of the committee were against Meldola’s appointment. Francis Galton, who supported Meldola, remarked: "What a row there seems to be at the Entomological. Of course I shall vote for you." Galton to Meldola, 7 January 1893, Meldola papers, ICA. In the event Elwes was appointed president for 1893–1894, and Meldola for 1894–1895. There was also the issue of the takeover of the society by professional scientists, who threatened to undermine the efforts of the main membership, amateur entomologists, as reflected in a letter from W. E. Distant to Meldola: “I quite agree with you about entomologists and evolution, but you must remember that the larger percentage of our society have no scientific training whatever & […] have undergone little scientific reading. Their admittance as you remember is owing to ‘their being much attached to the subject of insects,’ which might be put more correctly as ‘much attached to the pinning of insects.’ Consequently these friends ‘think [about] when they might be more profitably engaged in sugaring a fence, or [think that] to ask them to ‘enquire’ when they might be papering a drawer, is perhaps inconsiderate on our part. Is it because the objects studied are small that the ideas follow the same ratio?… An observant entomologist loses nothing by doing classifying work, in fact he thereby often see[s] a question and obtains evolutionary material.” Distant to Meldola, 10 April 1891, Meldola papers, ICA. Meldola's successor as president was Trimen.
Francis Darwin to Meldola, 17 June 1909, ICA.
Wallace to Poulton, 4 and 8 November 1888, papers of Sir Edward Bagnall Poulton, Bodleian Library, University of Oxford.
"On Heredity" appears on pp. 69–105.
Meldola to Dixey, 1897, Dixey Family Papers, Bodleian Library, University of Oxford. Dixey received considerable support from Meldola. For Dixey, see Poulton (1935).
Following Spencer's death in 1903, Meldola lobbied for a plaque or other memorial to be erected in Westminster Abbey, though it was ultimately rejected by the Dean of Westminster, mainly due to Spencer's avowed agnosticism. See Gay (1998).
Spencer to Meldola, 9 February 1898, Meldola papers, ICA.
As further examples of Meldola's eloquence, critiques of many entomologists, and enthusiasm for analyzing and evaluating scientific data, it is worth drawing attention to some other statements made in his paper:
In view of the splendid opportunities afforded by insects for treatment as living organisms capable of revealing natural laws by skilled experimental research, is it not pardonable if we sometimes give way to the unphilosophic thought that the possession of chitinous exo-skeletons by these creatures, whereby they lend themselves so admirably for preservation as cabinet specimens, is an arrangement expressly designed for the retardation of entomological science? (Meldola 1896, p. lix).
The philosophic faculty is quite as powerful an agent in the advancement of science as the gift of acquiring new knowledge by observation and experiment. It is not often that the faculties are combined in one individual…
The irresponsible manipulation of biological hypotheses by pure speculators does no real or permanent damage to the cause of science, and may indirectly do good by directing public attention to the work which is being carried on… It is possible to be quite as unscientific in the accumulation of facts as it is to become metaphysical by over-speculation (Meldola 1896, pp. lxiv–lxv).
I do raise the question here as to the kind of biological work which is to be recognized as a fitting preparation for the exercise of the speculative faculty (Meldola 1896, p. lxvi).
See http://faculty.kirkwood.edu/ryost/poulton.htm (accessed 6 April 2009).
See also Brower et al. (1968).
See for example, Barnett et al. (2007).
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Acknowledgments
The following are thanked for assistance: The Leo Baeck Institute London, Imperial College Archives, Writtle College Chelmsford, the Wellcome Collection, the British Library, the Science Museum Library, London, and Essex Record Office, Chelmsford. Martin Heywood in particular is thanked for his tremendous assistance with access to the archive of the Essex Field Club. I also thank Hannah Gay for kindly sharing her research into the life and times of Meldola, Roy MacLeod for information on the early years of Nature, and participants at the international workshop “The power of the margins. Construction and transformation of disciplinary identities,” held at the University of Regensburg, 4–6 December 2009, for valuable discussion.
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Travis, A.S. Raphael Meldola and the Nineteenth-Century Neo-Darwinians. J Gen Philos Sci 41, 143–172 (2010). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10838-010-9120-2
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10838-010-9120-2