People are often surprised to discover that my first degree was in medieval history, rather than ecology. As it happens I'm also qualified to decode Morse code, carry out psychometric testing and chair legal tribunals, but none of these are relevant either and just show how my career wandered about before I found my forte! But the history of science can be an intriguing cross-over - how did our knowledge of bats and ecology arrive where it is now and who did the ground-work for us?
Back in 2009 I wrote a couple of articles on this subject: The 'diffusion of useful knowldge' and An 1892 bat-worker. I recently came across another article from 1898, written by T.A.Coward in a magazine called "Wide World", describing efforts by he and his friend MR R. Newstead of Chester to photograph bats in various British caves, at a time when photography hadn't progressed far from the formal staged photographs of the Victorian era.
Reading articles of this vintage can be startling at times. Back then natural history was not the conservation movement it now is. Much of the damage we are now desperately trying to repair had yet to be done to the natural world by the technological and chemical advances of the twentieth century and wildlife was seen as an abundant resource, to be drawn from freely in order to study it. Our modern views on the humane treatment of animals were also in their infancy. We have to grit our teeth and set these things aside if we want to listen to the voices of our forebears in the light of the world they lived in at the time.
"...the naturalist thinks little of experiences like these, and if his clothes are dirty and his hair is full of mud as he walks home, looking like a bricklayer's labourer, what does it matter...?"
That sounds like many a hibernaculum survey I have done. He goes one to remind us that he is talking from one and a quarter centuries ago when he continues...
"...if in his pocket he has his treasures, and when he arrives he will be able to examine or photograph his little friend the bat."
Oops. He also mentions a Daubenton's Bat he "had wounded", swimming itself to shore, which makes uncomfortable reading for us today, as does hearing that Coward:
"...once received a large number of these bats from the North of Scotland."
A powerful comparison with today can be seen, when he talks about gaining access to bats, to study them:
"We have found the best way to obtain them alive is to search for them in their native caves... We have scrambled about in the semi-darkness lit only by the guttering, greasy candles, our boots sticking in the wet clay..."
Hand-held bat detectors were almost a century away, let alone infra-red cameras. Even the electric torch was about twenty years away. Whatever we may think about taking bats home to photograph (whether dead or alive), there's no doubt that this was hard-core work!
Newstead also took pictures of bats in situ in caves, though arguably the magnesium flares he had to use for illumination must have impacted on the poor subject bats. Nonetheless, it's exciting to see his photographs, which must surely be some of the earliest pictures of bats in their roosts. However, some of his portrait pictures are very definitely of dead and possibly taxidermied specimens!
I've written before about how weird occurances and bat-work seem to go hand-in-hand (Bat surveys - where odd stuff is normal, There's nowt so queer as folk and What is it about bat surveys?) It seems things was no different in 1898:
"...we entered an old lead working in Derbyshire, and just as we were striking a light (presumably to light a candle!) we were suddenly backed into by a cow that had been sheltering from the hot sun in the cool recesses of the cave."
Coward's love of bats might not always be apparent in his approach to studying them, but it certainly in in his prose:
"The Whiskered bat, a neat little fellow..."
"The Pipistrelle, or Flittermouse, is a pocket edition of the Noctule."
"Perhaps the quaintest of our commoner species is the Long-eared bat...as it turns its beady little eyes towards us, twitching its great ears, it seems to be asking who it is that is so rudely disturbing it."
Early naturalists like Coward and Newstead helped to build the early foundation towards an understanding of bats that we are still building and though their methods are alien to us today, we still owe them a debt. Coward wasn't shy of using his magazine article to address some anti-bat prejudices that seem very familar today:
"...wherever we go we are told stories of the "nasty things" flying in through windows, atttacted to sheets hanging up to dry, or getting entangled in ladies' hair. We only know they will never fly through windows, they never come when we hang up sheets and they take great care to keep away, not only from our heads, but well out of arms reach."
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