2006 L.M. Eastman 1 The Portland Society of Natural History: The Rise and Fall of a Venerable Institution L.M. EASTMAN * Abstract - The Portland Society of Natural History existed from 1843 to the early 1970s, when it was absorbed into the Maine Audubon Society. It counted among its members such notables as Commodore Robert E. Peary of North Pole fame, the poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, and George L. Goodale, who established the renowned "glass flowers" exhibit at Harvard University. Twice the Portland Society was devastated by fire, in 1854 and 1866, but like the mythological phoenix, it rose again from the ashes because of the dligence of its devoted members. The Society's library and natural history collections were once on a par with those at Harvard, Yale, the Boston Society of Natural History, and the Essex Museum (Salem, MA). Featured within its hallowed walls were such diverse items as a specimen of the extinct passenger pigeon, the skeletal remains of a prehistoric walrus discovered in Maine, and a moon rock from the 1969 Apollo 10 space mission. Upon the Society's disbandment, its vast holdings of books, papers, and natural history materials were scattered to farflung places, many now unknown. This paper presents an overview of the Portland Society's history. The regrettable fate of its profound natural history collections is also documented. The author was personally involved in salvaging many of the Society's holdings for posterity, including a protrait of Alexander von Humboldt that now resides at the Maine Audubon headquarters in Falmouth, ME. This painting had originally been saved from the 1866 conflagration by then-curator Edward Sylvester Morse. Introduction After more than 100 years of existence, the Portland Society of Natural History (PSNH) was disbanded. Its demise has been attributed to declining membership, limited finances, and condemnation of its building in order to construct a parking lot (Sleeper 1971). As factual as these events may have been, to truly understand the dissolution of the PSNH it is necessary to consider both the historical and the changing social contexts. Archaeologist Ian Hodder (1991) has related, “We can never understand anything in the present moment—we must always refer to the past and to the process of becoming the present.” Historical change depends on the social process of negotiation between differing interest groups. Most often unconscious and overlapping, cultural assumptions based on ideology, power, and class can lead to social action that has unintended consequences. An example is the PSNH’s being replaced by the Maine Audubon Society. These assumptions are revealed by newspaper accounts, internal proceedings by and for members, letters written by fellow naturalists, and personal interviews with those people who presided over the change. *5181 West Kristina Loop, Lecanto, fl34461 (formerly of Greene, ME); lmejad@ earthlink.net. 2006 NORTHEASTERN NATURALIST 13(Monograph 1):1–38 2 Northeastern Naturalist Vol. 13, Monograph 1 In the first week of September 1974, I walked into the first officer’s headquarters building at Fort Williams in South Portland. Before me was a huge, knee-deep stack of letters that covered the entire floor area. Vandals had dumped box after box of correspondence that once belonged to the Portland Society of Natural History . Directly in the middle of all this clutter was a huge section of waterlogged ceiling that had fallen down onto the stacks of letters. The section of ceiling was large enough to require two people to remove it. I estimated that two-thirds of the letters had been reduced to nothing more than papier-mâché. I was so dismayed by this scene of devastation that I had little hope that anything could be salvaged. In the second officer’s building, the scene was a little better, but not much. The letters here had also been dumped onto the center of the floor. There was evidence that vandals Figure 1. Letter from Commodore Robert E. Peary to the PSNH. 2006 L.M. Eastman 3 had attempted to set them on fire. Fortunately, the fire had gone out before little more than some cardboard had been burned. While a student at the University of Southern Maine, I had been hired by Richard Anderson1 of the Maine Audubon Society as part of a work/study program to clean up the muddle and determine what, if anything, could be salvaged. Since Anderson and I had been acquainted for a number of years, he was aware of my interest in and knowledge of the PSNH and its collections. By this time, the PSNH had evolved into the Maine Audubon Society, and the vast majority of the natural history specimens had been dispersed to other institutions, both state and national. Maine Audubon had just abandoned its condemned headquarters on Elm Street in Portland and had moved into rented quarters in a former carpet cleaning establishment at 57 Baxter Boulevard. Temporary storage for the letter archives of the PSNH at Fort Williams had not been ideal. As a member of the PSNH since high school, I was dismayed to see what had become of such a revered institution. After my initial introductory tour of the two storage buildings, I returned the next day to begin clearing out the mess. The first letter I picked up was signed “Robert Peary, Civil Engineer, U.S.N.” (Fig. 1).2 My doldrums, engendered by what I considered my misfortune to preside over the demise of an institution that I once held in such awe, changed to elation that I would be able to save a small portion of these historic letters. As a person brought in after most of the PSNH’s past had been destroyed to see what I could make of the remaining jumble, I was in a privileged position to interpret individual actions and social practices, and to see how the view of man’s relationship to Nature and to the study of natural history had been transformed. To understand the meaning behind the dissolution of the PSNH, it is necessary to recognize that the Society existed in many relevant dimensions at the same time. An examination of the PSNH and its relationship to social and economic structures through time will place the institution and its demise in context. Portland Society of Natural History: 1850–1971 On November 24, 1843, some 24 Portland luminaries met at Mr. Stearn’s schoolhouse on Free Street for the purpose of organizing an investigative society to study Nature. Those in attendance were already well known in Maine and in other parts of New England. They included the Hon. Ether Shepley, Rev. John White Chickering, Edward Gould, John Neal, Dr. Jesse Wedgwood Mighels (pronounced “Miles”), Henry Quincy, Dr. William Wood, and Dr. Augustus Mitchell (Anonymous 1913). It was decided that evening that a natural history organization should be established in the city of Portland. Within a month, the Society found a home in the Merchants Exchange Building on Middle Street (Fig. 2). The group was incorporated in 1850 as the Portland Society of Natural History. This was not the first attempt to organize a society devoted to the study of Nature. In 1836, several young Portland men, including Dr. Mighels, a 4 Northeastern Naturalist Vol. 13, Monograph 1 charter member of the PSNH, gathered in a schoolhouse in order to found the Maine Institute of Natural Science (Norton 1927). A keeper of the cabinet was appointed. All materials of the natural world were eagerly sought: fishes, woods, minerals, insects, plants, and shells. The institution hired Dr. Charles Thomas Jackson, the noted State Geologist of Maine, as its first speaker. By the end of 1839, for reasons unknown, the Institute ceased existence. Ether Shepley was chosen as president of the newly organized PSNH from 1843 to 1848. Judge Shepley was both a former US senator and a US attorney for the state of Maine, as well as a future Chief Justice of the Maine Supreme Court.3 Shepley handed over the presidency to John W. Chickering, minister of the High Street Congregational Church. Unlike Shepley, who was considered an armchair naturalist, Chickering was very active in the field, having climbed Mount Katahdin in 1850 and again in 1858. He collected a number of alpine plant specimens from the summit of Katahdin in 1850 that are still housed in herbaria at the Smithsonian Institution, New York Botanical Garden, and the Philadelphia Academy of Natural Sciences.4 Chickering also climbed Mount Washington in 1862 for the purpose of collecting alpine plant specimens. In 1852, William Wood (Fig. 3) was elected as the third president of the PSNH, a term that lasted for 47 years. Wood presided over the institution with the love and care of an admiring father. Within 1 year of incorporation, the PSNH had enrolled most of Portland’s Brahmin set. But its membership also included: Nicholls Crouch, a music teacher and snake Figure 2. First home of the PSNH, the Merchant’s Exchange Building (right) on Portland’s Middle Street. Destroyed by fire in 1854. 2006 L.M. Eastman 5 charmer who literally carried snakes around in his hat; Major Robert Anderson, commander of Fort Preble and later Union commandant of South Carolina’s Fort Sumter during its bombardment by Confederate rebels; Neal Dow, the famous temperance leader who presaged the prohibition movement; and William Willis, lawyer, Portland mayor, historian, and diarist who wrote accounts of the first fire to engulf the PSNH (Anonymous 1927). Willis was also active in a number of other Portland-based organizations. He was president of the Portland Lyceum and recording secretary for the Maine Historical Society. The membership and the organizational structure of the PSNH mirrored the male-dominated social hierarchy within a capitalistic culture. Furthermore, most of the members were men of some significant means. Few women and men from poor families are mentioned in the printed reports of the Society. The museum of the PSNH was a vehicle for showcasing the personal qualities and financial well being of an elite class of financial supporters. The members also shaped the organization by their desire to create a forum where men of like minds could express their views of the world, based on their own enculturation (Yentsch and Beaudry 1990). The Society was a genteel domain for the well-off, intellectually curious to pursue their quests for knowledge while at the same time reinforcing their own standings in the community. In addition, members wanted to gain the respect of other cultural centers. Figure 3. Dr. William Wood, long-term president of the PSNH (1852– 1899). 6 Northeastern Naturalist Vol. 13, Monograph 1 As the Society grew under Wood’s tutelage, significant numbers of natural history specimens were donated. Judging by the partial lists still on file at the Maine Historical Society,5 there was no consistent protocol for cataloging the donations. Books, shells, birds, plants, and mounted animals all appeared together. The specimens were not inventoried in specific categories, and many times the name of the contributor was not recorded. It seems that as the specimens arrived at the Society’s doors, a partial description was randomly jotted down on an entry sheet. This lack of organization and focus would be the foundation for modern criticism of collections of this kind (March 1978). On January 8, 1854, word spread throughout Portland that the Merchants Exchange Building was on fire. For 3 hours, the blaze roared uncontrollably. All the specimen and curio cabinets of the PSNH were destroyed. The only mounted specimen to survive the conflagration was a passenger pigeon that was on loan to John Cloudman, an artist who was using it as a model in his art class (Adams 1993). The estimated value of the Society’s losses was $25,000 (Hallet 1947). Word of the fire reached Jesse W. Mighels, who was then living in Cincinnati, OH. Prior to his departure from Portland, he had sold to the PSNH for $1000 his entire conchology collection, which consisted of more than 3000 mollusk species and 6000– 10,000 specimens. All was destroyed. In a plaintive telegraphic dispatch to the Society, Mighels wrote: My Dear Sir: Is it possible that my beautiful collection of shells is destroyed? Is it all ruined? Must I know I can see that collection no more? The work of nine years of delightful enthusiastic industry—is it all gone? …Your beautiful collections of shells, and birds, and minerals and fossils—alas, are they all lost? (Norton 1927) After arriving in Portland from Minot in the mid-1830s, Dr. Mighels had established a medical practice on upper Congress Street. He and William Wood joined forces to explore Casco Bay for shells. Prior to that date, only 12–15 species of mollusks were known to occur in the Bay. By using dragnets, the two doctors increased that number to over 200.6 From 1854 to 1859, the PSNH moved twice: once from rented quarters at City Hall, and then to an upper floor at the Merchants Bank on Exchange Street. During this time, a concerted and successful effort to raise money from the elite class of Portland occurred. Donors contributed $50 to $100 each to rent the space in the Merchants Bank Building. Smaller donations of $10 to $25 were also readily accepted. Sums greater than $10 were considered to be a substantial contribution in 1857. The state legislature provided additional support by granting the Society a half township of land in Bridgewater, Aroostook County.7 Within 5 years after the fire, natural history specimens of all kinds started rolling into the Society’s headquarters. Shells, minerals, birds, insects, fossils, plants, animal skulls, eggs, and anything else that represented the 2006 L.M. Eastman 7 natural world began to fill the cabinets. Once again, books, magazines, and sundry natural history publications started to occupy the makeshift library. John James Audubon’s Birds of America and Alexander von Humboldt’s 5-volume encyclopedia Kosmos (both in its original German and as an English translation) were but some of the prestigious resources that filled the library shelves. The poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, a Portland native, sent a commissioned copy of a portrait of Humboldt to the PSNH in 1857. I first came across the Humboldt painting in 1974 in my tiny, windowless working space at the Maine Audubon Society on Baxter Boulevard. There on a table, as though looking at me, was the Humboldt portrait. A card was attached to the back of the painting which explained that it had been donated by Longfellow, who had been a lifetime member of the PSNH. There was no additional information about the artist or the place and date that the portrait had been painted. There was a 3-cornered tear in the center of the picture. The Humboldt painting was removed to the Maine Audubon quarters at Falmouth and stored in the attic for a time. I later saw this identical portrait of Humboldt in a book that honored the first 100 years of the Boston Society of Natural History (Creed 1930). There I learned that the picture had been painted in Berlin, Germany, by Moses Wight in 1852. Several portraits of Humboldt were commissioned and sent to North America. The PSNH used the Humboldt painting to create a pen-and-ink likeness that was used until 1971 on the Society’s letterheads (displayed in Johnson 1997 and in Fig. 8 here). In November 1998, I learned from Nicholas Noyce, librarian for the Maine Historical Society, that the Humboldt painting was now hanging on a wall at the Maine Audubon Center in Falmouth. When I asked about the tear, Noyce stated that the painting had been repaired. An inscription by Longfellow now next to the portrait reads: May the wise old man find a place on the wall of your room, and in a certain sense preside over your meeting. At the bottom of the inscription reads the following: Restoration of this portrait was made possible by a gift from UNUM.8 Because of the successful restoration of the natural history collection of the PSNH, more space was needed, as the top floor of the Merchants Bank Building was filling up quickly. By 1857, efforts were made to find a location with adequate room for the collection. Early in 1859, the PSNH bought for $5000 an old brick building (circa 1808) that belonged to the Portland Academy. This building was located on upper Congress Street on the corner of Temple Street (Fig. 4). The building was remodeled for use as a museum and lecture hall. The cost of remodeling the old building was largely defrayed through the sale of the half township of wild land in Aroostook County for 50¢ an acre (Adams 1993). Although the Society had depleted most of its financial resources by January 1860, the old Portland Academy was remodeled and made ready for business. 8 Northeastern Naturalist Vol. 13, Monograph 1 Surviving inventories from the early part of the 1860s reveal the great diversity of materials that were being accumulated in the Society’s museum. Fossils from Japan, stuffed marmosets from Madagascar, palm leaves, corals, sponges, and other exotic items were making their way into the museum room on Congress Street.9 Except for the continued need for money, the PSNH appeared to be on firm ground at this time despite the interruptions of the Civil War. With the return from the war of its native son, Major John Mead Gould,10 who resumed his post as secretary and treasurer of the Society, the future looked promising. On July 4, 1866, disaster struck the city of Portland. Portland was engulfed in red hot embers. The “Great Fire,” as it was later called, is believed to have started from fireworks that were carelessly discarded. The fire lasted for nearly 2 days and destroyed 1500 buildings, including mansions, small houses, banks, businesses, foundaries, and churches. Over 200 acres of the inner city were destroyed. J.B. Brown’s Sugar House, one of the largest sugar refineries in America, was claimed by the fire in the first few hours of the blaze. Shortly after the fire extinguished itself due to lack of fuel, looters and pickpockets invaded the city. Armed men sat up all night to protect their burned homes and what furniture and clothes they had saved. Eventually, detectives and the military were called in to restore public confidence (Willis 1866). Figure 4. PSNH (c. 1860) on Portland’s Congress Street. Destroyed by the city’s Great Fire of 1866. 2006 L.M. Eastman 9 A small group of Society men watched as flames worked their way toward the renovated museum of the PSNH. Leading them into the museum before it erupted into flames was Edward Sylvester Morse (Fig. 5), the general curator of the institution. Morse was responsible for saving the Society’s library as well as the portrait of Humboldt. An 1869 account of the Great Fire, written by William Wood, is as follows: Such was the scene and hour, when for the first time it became apparent that danger threatened the City Hall and other public buildings in that vicinity, and among them the Hall of the Portland Society of Natural History. When two or three of the members of the Society, wearied with their exertions in other parts of the city, entered the building, they found there only the General Curator. He had been busy making preparations to remove the cabinets, by unlocking and opening all the cases, placing empty drawers in front of them, swinging the table-cases athwart the tables so that they could readily be seized by their ends, and in other ways making the best and every arrangement that suggested itself for effecting a rapid clearance of the Exhibition Hall. (Wood 1869) Nearly every item in the museum was destroyed by flames. Morse and a handful of members loaded settees with museum articles and carried them across Congress Street to the portico of the Chadwick Mansion. One of the greatest tragedies was the loss of the Society’s ornithology collection. Nearly every species of bird on the East Coast had been represented in the Figure 5. Edward S. Morse, curator of the PSNH at the time of the 1866 Great Fire. 10 Northeastern Naturalist Vol. 13, Monograph 1 holdings. The only specimen of Crotalus horridus L. (timber rattlesnake) indigenous to Maine was also lost to the Great Fire. The snake had been captured on Rattlesnake Mountain11 in Raymond, ME, and donated to the Society on February 20, 1862, by Dr. Benjamin F. Fogg of Portland (Fobes 1951). The shell collection, which rivaled that of the Boston Society of Natural History, was also consumed by flames. Morse tried desperately to save a giant slab of redwood by rolling it through the museum. Due to its weight and the difficulty, the wood was allowed to drop on its side and to meet the same dismal fate as the other natural history objects. The PSNH was a proving ground for Edward S. Morse, who had been born in Portland in 1838. He studied at Bethel Academy in the 1850s (but never graduated) and went on to become a student assistant under Louis Agassiz, the world renowned Swiss naturalist, at Harvard College. Evolution became one of Morse’s key interests. His study of the evolution of brachiopods received the attention of Charles Darwin in the 1870s (Morse 1902). Morse broke with Agassiz partly over the issue of evolution, a theory which Agassiz rejected.12 Also in the 1870s, Morse visited Japan initially for the purpose of studying the brachiopods of the Japanese seas, but he subsequently accepted the chair of zoology at the Imperial University in Tokyo. Gradually, Morse was drawn away from zoological work into the field of archaeological investigation. The fascinating character of Japanese art led to his study and collection of the prehistoric and early pottery of Japan (Morse 1901). Morse later took up residence in Salem, MA, where he became director of the Peabody Museum. Here he and his colleagues created The American Naturalist,13 a monthly magazine devoted to science. Morse died in Salem in 1925.14 Less than a week after the Great Fire, the PSNH held its first meeting at the residence of Rev. Edwin Cortlandt Bolles, the Society’s secretary. At first glance, the future prospects of the PSNH looked bleak. The available assets of the Society at this time were $1809. It was thought that all of the remaining resources of the Society would be absorbed by the outstanding debt for land costs and building construction. However, after selling the land and the materials remaining on it and after the Portland Academy forgave the interest on its loan, the PSNH was able to settle all its claims and still maintain a small working fund and thus was able to continue (Wood 1869). It was voted that a committee make a brief statement of facts connected with the history of the Society (Fig. 6). Those in attendance were president William Wood, vice president Henry Willis, treasurer Edward Gould, secretary Bolles, general curator Edward S. Morse, and keeper of the cabinets Charles Bowen Fuller. One of the unsung heroes during the time of the Great Fire was Charles B. Fuller (Fig. 7). When Fuller joined the PSNH, he was a wheelwright and carriage painter employed by Martin and Pennell of Portland. Self taught in natural history, especially in the field of marine zoology, he soon attracted the attention of Society members. On December 15, 1859, 2006 L.M. Eastman 11 Fuller was appointed by the Society as keeper of the cabinets. He filled this position for 35 years until he was struck by pneumonia and died on April 15, 1893. Because of Fuller’s expertise on the fauna of Casco Bay, he was nicknamed “Casco Bay” Fuller. He also belonged to the Mechanic Association and to a club called the Brush’ums, a professional and amateur group of male artists who resided in the Portland area. Fuller was a quiet, unassuming man who worked long hours for little pay. He was an expert at preparing and staining slides for microscopic study (Wood 1893). Fuller accepted the Darwinian theory and arranged the cabinets according to their evolutionary order. When the PSNH lost its natural his- Figure 6. An appeal to “friends” for aid by members of the PSNH after the destruction of the Society’s holdings by the 1866 Great Fire. 12 Northeastern Naturalist Vol. 13, Monograph 1 tory museum in the Great Fire, Fuller donated his entire private collection of marine invertebrates to the Society (Anonymous 1900). With continued fortitude and a strong desire to have a natural history society, the executive board of the PSNH continued to hold its meetings at Dr. Wood’s home or in the new City Hall and once again attracted the area’s most able naturalists. After 1866, two prominent Maine men became actively involved in the Society. They were George Lincoln Goodale and Merritt Lyndon Fernald, both highly recognized plant biologists who eventually taught botany at Harvard College (where Goodale established Harvard’s famous “glass flowers” collection15 ). Goodale was part of a scientific survey in 1861 that explored the “northern lands” for the state legislature and the Maine Board of Agriculture. He was accompanied by entomologist Alpheus Spring Packard, Jr., of Brunswick and geologist Charles Henry Hitchcock of Portland. In the Proceedings of the Portland Society of Natural History, Goodale published two lists of plants found in the Society’s herbarium in the 1860s (Fig. 8). On the first list were indigenous plants that occurred within Maine; on the second list were introduced species. Unfortunately, the locality where a specimen was found was frequently omitted. At the age of 19, Merrit L. Fernald (Fig. 9), whose father was the first president of the University of Maine, was enrolled as a student at Harvard. Nonetheless, he was able to devote himself to the PSNH herbarium. He be- Figure 7. Charles B. Fuller, long-term cabinet keeper of the PSNH (1859–1893). 2006 L.M. Eastman 13 came curator of the herbarium and eventually published his own Portland Catalogue of Maine Plants in 1892. Unfortunately again, this volume contained very few entries that documented the locations where species had Figure 8. Cover of the first catalog of Maine plants published by the PSNH and compiled by George L. Goodale and Rev. Joseph Blake. Figure 9. Merrit L. Fernald, who published treatises about Maine plants for the PSNH and worked in the Society’s herbarium for a time. 14 Northeastern Naturalist Vol. 13, Monograph 1 been collected. In spite of this shortcoming, Fernald’s compendium was a major accomplishment. A Second Supplement to the Portland Catalogue of Maine Plants by Fernald was published in 1895. In a continued effort to rebuild its collections, a special appeal was issued by the PSNH in 1868 for objects from Nature. Ten categories were established to which a donor could contribute: (1) minerals, rocks, and marls; (2) fossils and petrifactions; (3) shells: marine, land, or freshwater; (4) corals, sponges, and seaweeds; (5) insects, snakes, turtles, and lizards; (6) birds and their nests and eggs; (7) bones and skins of animals; (8) pressed plants, seeds, and “seed vessels” (fruits); (9) woods and barks; and (10) mosses, lichens, and fungi. Within that same year, a separate appeal went out to fishermen to pay particular attention to what was being caught in their traps and nets. The Society requested everything from corals to shrimps and provided instructions for preserving the specimens. Numerous institutions and individuals donated specimens to the museum. Alexander W. Longfellow, brother of Henry W. Longfellow, contributed coca leaves from Peru, balsa wood from Chile, and various minerals. Duplicate shell and fossil specimens from the Smithsonian Institution, the Essex Museum (of Salem, MA), the Boston Society of Natural History, and Yale University were added to the PSNH collections. The whereabouts of skeletal remains once owned by the PSNH of two oceanic creatures previously extant in Maine, Odobenus rosmarus L. (Atlantic walrus)16 and the now-extinct Mustela macrodon Prentiss (sea mink),17 are unknown today. During the late 1870s, track layers for the Boston and Maine Railroad uncovered the skeleton of the walrus 2600 feet south of the Union Station in Portland. In 1930, Arthur Herbert Norton reported this history about the walrus excavation: Mr. Fuller, Curator of the Society, was early notified of the fact, and upon repairing to the spot found that they had recovered the skull in nearly perfect condition, with quite a number of ribs, some of the large and a few of the small bones of the limbs and two or three of the vertebrae. The gentleman at the head of the work, Mr. Robert McCrindle, had become impressed with the value of this discovery in a scientific point of view and had given every attention to the careful removal and preservation of the bones, and at Mr. Fuller’s suggestion very readily consented to their being transferred as a donation to the cabinets of the Portland Society of Natural History. (Norton 1930) Richard Anderson told me that he had no recollection of ever seeing the walrus skeleton around the Maine Audubon Society. In the same work, Norton (1930) related that the PSNH owned the remains of the sea mink. He stated that most of the skeletal material had been found in prehistoric shell middens from Casco Bay to Roque Island in Washington County. These rare remains have also disappeared without a trace. The methods of appropriating, organizing, and displaying the PSNH’s natural history materials reveal the relationship between the museum and the ideology of the time. The acquisition of knowledge, the assessment of its value, 2006 L.M. Eastman 15 and the construction of categories were framed by the capitalistic culture. The collections can be considered as the museum’s capital and became prestigious commodities that had more than their intrinsic value. They became more valuable just because the Society wanted them. Thus, a box of cocoa leaves, an odd shell, or a rock that might have found its way to a dump site became a valuable addition to the museum shelves. An object was valuable because the PSNH said that it was. The mystique of science, money, and social class that surrounded the PSNH made it an arbiter of a value’s legitimacy. Newspaper articles reported that the Society’s collections were exhibited in ascending scale from the very lowest forms of life to the most advanced. This hierarchical arrangement was likewise repeated in a social application of Darwin’s theory of evolution. The various categories of people involved with the PSNH’s museum, from the general public to scholars and investors, did not share equal power to decide value, determine categories, or access resources (in this case, knowledge of the natural world). That the public was considered to have less interest and less knowledge, and needed less access, was evident. Fuller’s appeal to the fishermen assumes that although the anglers did not understand the value of “the objects which occur in your fishing,” these objects were valuable to members of the Society. In another report, the assumption was made that the Society’s herbarium would not be of interest to the general public because it was not colorful (Lord 1937). Still other materials were not thought to be of suitable attraction to the general public. The members of the PSNH demonstrated by their demeanor that they believed it was their uncontested right to monopolize the use of the natural history holdings and to determine the rights of access or distribution as part of their social and intellectual standing. The museum was an authentic showcase for the members to display their refinements of breeding and culture. The fact that the general public was even allowed limited access to the Society’s collections was a case of noblesse oblige (Little 1994). Although it was most likely unconscious, the concept of a stratified society was in force in determining how the museum would be used. The PSNH members, as an elite class, held the power to control the acquistion of and the access to knowledge (Hodder 1991). With its collections swelling, space at City Hall was becoming limited. In 1876, the Society bought the Day Mansion on Elm Street, tore it down, and erected a new edifice (Fig. 10). For a small fee, Portland’s foremost architect, Francis H. Fassett, who had designed the City Hall and the Baxter Public Library, agreed to fashion a new edifice for the PSNH (Anonymous 1913). He built a two-story, brick-and-mortar Gothic structure that stood until 1973, when it was dismantled by a wrecking crew to make room for the rear portion of the Portland Public Library. Earle Shettleworth, Jr., of the Maine Historical Preservation Commission told me that he had discovered the Fassett blueprints for the PSNH building in a trash can during the break up of the Society’s collections and had secured them in the files of the Commission. He believes that these are the only existing Fassett blueprints of a Portland building. The new building was first occupied by the Society for its annual meet16 Northeastern Naturalist Vol. 13, Monograph 1 ing, held on December 15, 1880. On this occasion, there was a larger gathering than usual for an annual meeting. The officers elected on this occasion were: president, William Wood; vice-president, Joseph P. Thompson; treasurer, Albert L. Burbank; secretary, John M. Gould; corresponding secretary, Prentiss C. Manning; and managers, S.B. Beckett, Theophilus C. Hersey, Lewis Pierce, Woodbury S. Dana, Thomas Hill, William Senter, and Alexander W. Longfellow. The Society’s museum was not opened to the public until October 3, 1881. On a motion made by Dr. Charles D. Smith, it was voted to open the rooms on Tuesday and Saturday afternoons each week without an admission fee. Sundry interior scenes of the PSNH’s museum are depicted in Figs. 11–16. The lower floor of the Society’s building contained a library, a lecture room, a small laboratory, and an office. By 1900, the library housed nearly 3500 bound volumes and about 3200 pamphlets. The second floor of the building contained floor and wall-mounted cabinets. Two balconies with cabinets were located above the main museum floor. The balconies surrounded the four sides of the interior walls. The spacious lecture room contained an immense table that was of particular interest. Its top consisted of a single, solid plank of Sequoia sempervirens (Lamb. ex D. Don) Endl. (California redwood) that had been shipped around the Horn by a correspondent of the Society who lived in San Francisco. The plank was 13 feet long, 7 feet wide, and over 3 inches thick. Carpenters added legs and braces after the plank had arrived in Portland. The finished table was used for over 90 years until the building was closed for good. Figure 10. Final home of PSNH (c. 1890) on Portland’s Elm Street. 2006 L.M. Eastman 17 The new building reinforced the museum’s rarefied mystique. It has been described as a “veritable temple to science in the grandest Gothic style of the day” (Adams 1993), a sacred site for the use of the initiated. This was a “temple” erected to the study of Nature in the center of a city surrounded and supported by commerce. The wild was brought to civilization, enclosed in glass, and named and categorized by the elite. Figure 12. Ground floor of the PSNH. Photo taken by Ed Richardson in the late 1960s. Figure 11. Overall view of the interior of the PSNH. Note the Penobscot Indian canoe. Photo taken by Ed Richardson in the late 1960s. 18 Northeastern Naturalist Vol. 13, Monograph 1 Figure 14. Bird and butterfly displays at PSNH. Photo taken by Ed Richardson in the late 1960s. Figure 13. Birds of Maine display at PSNH. Note stuffed alligator on top. Leatherneck sea turtle can be partially seen at left. Photo taken by Ed Richardson in the late 1960s. 2006 L.M. Eastman 19 After the completion of the new museum building, the PSNH again sought to add to its holdings by engaging the cooperation of non-naturalists. In April 1881, President Wood and Charles B. Fuller issued a pamphlet entitled A Circular to Sea Captains and Other Seafaring Men. This booklet was another plea to all seafaring personnel to be on the lookout for objects Figure 15. Arctic display at PSNH. Note the long Monodon moncerus L. (narwhal) tusk (middle) and two pairs of walrus tusks (right). Photo taken by Ed Richardson in the late 1960s. Figure 16. Marine display at PSNH. Note the porcupine fish (Family Diodontidae) in the middle. Photo taken by Ed Richardson in the late 1960s. 20 Northeastern Naturalist Vol. 13, Monograph 1 of Nature and stated that “the most common things are the really desirable ones” (Wood and Fuller 1881). No records have been found that document the effectiveness of this appeal. The PSNH was a mecca for the intellectual activities of the Portland area. Among those who used the facilities were the Microscopic Club, the Maine Mineralogical and Geological Society, the Cumberland Audubon Society, the Josselyn Botanical Society, and the White Mountain Club. This usage is not surprising, since membership lists reveal that many people who belonged to these various groups were also members of the PSNH. For example, the White Mountain Club, which functioned from 1873 to 1884, was organized by Portland residents for the enjoyment or amusement received on their outings (Fobes 1955). The members of this group were also scientifically minded people who calculated the heights of mountains with barometers on nearly every climb they made. Their observations of the fauna, flora, and geology were also recorded for each climb. Edward S. Morse was probably the most illustrious member of the White Mountain Club. On many occasions, Morse traveled from Salem, MA to join his friend John M. Gould and his brother George Frederick Morse, a local artist,18 to tramp the mountains of New Hampshire and western Maine. In March 1888, the PSNH acquired the Nathan Clifford Brown collection of North American bird skins that numbered hundreds of specimens, each one prepared with meticulous skill and care. About this same time, Commander Robert E. Peary provided a collection of rocks and fossils from Greenland. In 1887, Thomas C. Lamb donated an exquisite collection of Maine minerals. Many of the specimens came from the pegmatite site at Mount Apatite, Auburn. The decade of 1890–1900 witnessed significant donations to the Society’s herbarium. John C. Parlin contributed extensively from his bryophyte and vascular plant collections from York County. Edward L. Rand and John H. Redfield donated duplicate plant specimens from their study on the flora of Mount Desert Island. Hundreds of pressed European plants were received from the estate of William Wood, as well as an unpublished manuscript on the prehistoric shell middens at Damariscotta and Casco Bay. Portions of Dr. Wood’s library were also contributed to the Society. On January 20, 1899, the PSNH suffered its greatest loss since the advent of the organization: Dr. William Wood died. For over 50 years, Wood had been the most active and earnest member of the Society. He was regarded as the one individual responsible, above all others, for the organization’s success. Near the turn of the century, many of the Society’s original founders were dying of old age. Even those individuals who had joined the group after the Great Fire were passing into the Great Beyond. The person left to carry the Society’s torch into the twentieth century was curator Arthur H. Norton (Fig. 17). Like many of the learned men before him, Norton was a true naturalist; in addition, he was a geographer, historian, and writer. He was born on Whitehead Island, in Maine’s Saint George Township. His father was captain of the life-saving station on the island. In 1885, the family moved to Westbrook, near 2006 L.M. Eastman 21 Portland, and Norton took up the trade of silk weaver. Moving from relative isolation to the Portland area exposed Norton to more people with interests similar to his own. In 1897, he was elected president of the new Maine Ornithological Society, and in 1902 he was an organizer of the Maine Audubon Society (which one day would absorb the PSNH). Norton also served as a president and a secretary of the Josselyn Botanical Society, and he was a charter member of the American Society of Mammalogists. Because of his outstanding contributions to science, the University of Maine conferred on Norton an honorary Master of Science degree in 1940 (Palmer 1943). Norton was a short, stocky man with a thick mustache. According to Ralph Palmer, former New York State Zoologist who knew him personally, Norton was “one of the best read men in the state. There was hardly a subject that he did not know something about—from ichthyology to fossils.” Norton was able to answer virtually any obscure question that pertained to Maine’s natural environment. In 1926, when Dora Moulton wrote to him inquiring about the only historically known site of Camptosorus rhizophyllus (L.) Link (walking fern) in Maine, Norton was able to recall the place, date, and condition of the fern that he had last seen in 1894! In the early 1900s, Norton was instrumental in changing the focus of the PSNH from collecting to conserving Maine’s natural resources. Concurring with the National Audubon Society’s concern that species of birds on the East Coast were rapidly disappearing, partly due to fashion’s demand for feathered hats, Norton lobbied with the Audubon Society to pass legislation for the protection of non-game birds. Included as part of the protection program were nests and eggs. Figure 17. Arthur H. Norton, longterm curator of the PSNH (1905– 1943). 22 Northeastern Naturalist Vol. 13, Monograph 1 In 1937, Alice Frost Lord, while working for the Lewiston Journal, visited the PSNH and wrote of Norton that “he was on the happy side of life,” owing to his good-natured demeanor.19 She added, “Curator Norton takes one over the building as if it was all new to him! He does that with everyone, without a doubt. He’s the kind of curator that’s born, not made. The museum never goes stale for him.” (Lord 1937). In commenting about some of the native Maine shells, Lord complained that they were not very colorful. She said that many were so small that they had to be preserved in vials. Norton informed her that some of the tiny shells were of Zonites milium Morse, the most minute helicid land snail indigenous to Maine. This snail, today called Striatura milium (Morse), was first discovered in the state by Edward S. Morse. Norton guided Ms. Lord throughout the exhibits, stopping at the fossil and mineral cabinets, then the bird displays, and lastly at the herbarium, where 18,000 sheets of plants had been preserved. On January 6, 1943, President William H. Dow20 sadly announced to the membership of the PSNH that Norton had passed away the day before at age 72. Because of the loss of leadership and with members being occupied with the war effort, the Society decided to close its doors for the duration of World War II. At the end of the war, the Society’s doors reopened onto a world that was less interested in the natural environment due to the distractions of the modern world. Fewer schoolchildren and adults visited the Elm Street museum. As a child at this time, I met the Society’s new curator, William H. Rich. I remember him as a kindly old gentleman who would patiently listen and answer all questions, no matter how inane they sounded. In 1946, Rich authored the last article of the Proceedings of the Portland Society of Natural History, a work entitled “The Swordfish and the Swordfishery of New England.” The membership of the PSNH continued to dwindle and board members resigned, reflecting a general lack of interest. Due to a scandal in which the Society’s treasurer was found to have embezzled funds in the early 1950s, as well as the need for “new blood,” trustees were elected anew that were able to recover a portion of the stolen money. In 1953, Christopher M. Packard, who had studied under ornithologist Alfred O. Gross at Bowdoin College, was hired as curator of the Society at $25 a week (Adams 1993). Up until Packard arrived, sunshine through the windows and skylight constituted a major source of illumination for the Society’s building. In 1954, Packard arranged to have electric lights installed. However, gas light fixtures remained on the walls until the building was torn down nearly 20 years later. Packard was also instrumental in establishing a nature center at Mast Landing in Freeport on land that had been donated to the PSNH. This action put new life into Audubon chapters throughout the state and increased the enrollment of the PSNH. Richard Anderson, who was then working for the Maine Department of Inland Fisheries and Wildlife, informed me that he was hired by the PSNH as a biologist because of his efforts to ban the use 2006 L.M. Eastman 23 of pesticides, especially DDT, and to oppose the construction of an oil refinery in Machiasport. Anderson stated that just prior to his arrival at the Elm Street headquarters in the early 1960s, the PSNH and the Maine Audubon Society had voted to merge. Due to infighting with the board of directors and to a jealous rivalry that developed among Packard and two new employees, namely Anderson himself and William A. Bechtel (the newly appointed education director), Packard resigned in 1969. For a short time, Bechtel acted as director of the PSNH, but without the title. In order to increase public support for the Society, Bechtel arranged for an Egyptian mummy in its sarcophagus to be displayed at the museum. The mummy was on loan from the Philadelphia Academy of Natural Sciences. According to Anderson, “It was a big hit. Hundreds of people came to see the exhibit.” Bechtel’s second big show stopper was the display of one of the moon rocks that had been brought back by Apollo 10 in 1969. Christopher Ayres, an independent photographer, recalled that thousands of people showed up to view the moon rock. Ayers stated that when the Society’s museum was being dismantled in 1971–72, he was surprised to find the moon rock in a desk. Somehow it never had been sent back to the National Aeronautics and Space Administration! Ayers did not know what eventually became of the moon rock. Bechtel resigned from his job at the PSNH for personal reasons, just prior to the museum’s closing its doors for good in 1970. Within days after Bechtel’s resignation, Anderson was appointed as executive director of the Maine Audubon Society. When Maine Audubon shortly merged with the PSNH, the latter’s name fell into disuse. In October 1998, armed with a list of questions about the dispersal of items I knew had once been exhibited in the PSNH’s museum, I talked on the telephone with Anderson, who was now an environmental consultant, to query him about his role in the dismantling of the Society’s collections. He said that the disencumbrance of the museum’s belongings was the toughest job that he had ever undertaken. He remembered that once the Elm Street building had been sold, the need to empty it of its contents had been pressing. On January 4, 1971, reporter Reed Witherby headlined this story in the Portland Evening Express: “Natural History Society’s Surplus Is Up For Grabs.” The front page photo that accompanied the article showed two children carrying a large, preserved Alligator mississippiensis (Daudin) (American Alligator) out of the PSNH (Fig. 18; see also Fig. 13). In good conscience, the news piece related that Anderson wished to donate most of the collections to organizations that would maintain and use them, something the museum itself could no longer do (Witherby 1971). A large inventory that consisted of thousands of items was indeed dispersed throughout the country. Ronald Kley, research associate at the Maine State Museum in Augusta, was asked to examine rocks and minerals that were reported to have come from the Maine expeditions of Dr. Charles T. Jackson in the 1830s. It is currently uncertain if these geological specimens are housed somewhere in the Maine State Museum or if they were used in landfill, as rumored. Edward T. 24 Northeastern Naturalist Vol. 13, Monograph 1 Richardson, Jr., the final secretary of the PSNH, informed me that “the cellar of the museum was filled with wooden boxes that had never been opened. Some of these were filled with big chunks of rocks, unidentified and undated, which may well have been those that went into landfill.” One item in an unmarked box that proved to be quite a mystery was a complete outfit of a nineteenth century suit of Korean armor. Richardson could not remember whatever happened to this armor. Anderson related that he once counted 8500 bird skins and mounted birds that had belonged to the museum. Among the mounted birds were the extinct Ectopistes migratorius L. (passenger pigeon) and Conuropsis carolinensis L. (Carolina parakeet), Campephilus principalis L. (ivorybilled woodpecker), and two specimens of the vanishing Numenius borealis (Forster) (Eskimo curlew).21 The two curlews were sent to the Smithsonian Institution. Many of the exotic bird skins in the Society’s museum had come from the private collection of Dr. Henry H. Brock of Portland. As an example, a Crex crex (L.) (European corncrake), one of the few ever taken in Maine, had been shot at Falmouth in 1889. Included in Breck’s collection was a Polysticta stelleri (Pallas) (Steller’s eider), the first ever taken outside of Alaska. The eider had been shot at Pine Point. A mounted Grus americana (L.) (whooping crane), perhaps the most famous endangered bird in North America, was originally owned by Brock. The crane is still in the possession of the Maine Audubon Society. The Brock collection that had been donated to the PSNH contained over 600 mounted birds (Anonymous 1930). Also still owned by Maine Audubon is a mounted specimen of a rare Meleagris galloparvo L. (Eastern bronze turkey).22 According to Walter H. Rich, curator of the PSNH in the late 1940s, this turkey used to be displayed in the window of Link Daniels’ shop on Temple Street. “Link was a taxidermist and a good hunter of caribou in his day. He had that turkey in his front window a matter of 50 years before he turned it over to the museum, and I suppose we’ve had it 50 more,” said Rich (Hallet 1947). Anderson discovered that an item Figure 18. Children leaving with a stuffed alligator (see Fig. 13) upon the dismantling of the museum of the PSNH. From Portland Evening Express, Monday, January 4, 1971. 2006 L.M. Eastman 25 that had been labeled an egg of the extinct Pinguinus impennis (L.) (great auk)23 and displayed in a glass case was actually a plaster cast. He could not remember whatever happened to the cast. Most of the Society’s bird specimens, including a large collection of African birds, went to the University of Maine at Orono. Some mounted birds were retained by Maine Audubon, including a Haliaeetus leucocephalus (L.) (bald eagle), a Nyctea scandiaca (L.) (snowy owl), rails, some songbirds, and a Aquila chrysaetos (L.) (golden eagle) that had been shot over Peaks Island (Sobel 1977). Included in the Society’s collection of mammals were mounted heads of Ovibos moschatus (Zimmerman) (musk ox), Rangifer tarandus (L.) (caribou), Oreamnos americanus (de Blainville) (mountain goat), Ovis sp. (wild sheep), and several other species that were sent to the University of Maine at Orono, where the heads have been repaired and cleaned. They now are displayed on the walls of Nutting Hall. At last notice, a Bison bison (L.) (American buffalo) head still remains in the attic of the Maine Audubon Society at Falmouth. When I queried Anderson about the walrus remains that had been dug up in Portland in the 1870s, he could not recall whatever happened to them. He did remember that part of a Mammuthus primigenius Blum. (wooly mammoth) tusk that had been recovered from a Scarborough farm pond in 1959 and given to the PSNH, had led to an investigation of the site by the Maine State Museum. State archivist Gary Hoyle was able to uncover additional skeletal remains of the mammoth, including a large tooth.24 The Society’s mounted fish, snake skins, and turtle shells were sent to the University of Maine-Presque Isle (UMPI). A 1200-pound Dermochelys coriacea (Vandelli) (leatherback turtle) that had been captured in Penobscot Bay over 100 years ago25 can today be seen displayed on a wall of the Northern Maine Museum of Science in Folsom Hall at UMPI (see also Fig. 13). Over 100,000 of the PSNH’s terrestrial, freshwater, and marine shells were also dispersed. According to Anderson, many of the more exotic types went to the University of Hawaii, including Hawaiian species that the school did not have in its own collection. Anderson could not recall whatever became of the collection of Maine shells, nor could he recall the fate of the Pleistocene and early post-Pleistocene shell collections, which were among the best to be found anywhere.26 The Society’s moth and butterfly collections, representing worldwide species, were sold to Christopher Livesay of Brunswick. Livesay is a lawyer and an avid lepidopterist. The Society’s insect collection went to the Museum of Comparative Zoology at Harvard. A large collection of Maine minerals went to the State Museum in Augusta. Other minerals were sold at an auction held on Baxter Boulevard in Portland. Under the table in my workroom at the Maine Audubon Society was a cluster of quartz crystals that weighed 110 pounds. There was no label that documented where the specimen had been collected. However, I recall 26 Northeastern Naturalist Vol. 13, Monograph 1 as a teenager seeing this quartz displayed at the PSNH (Fig. 19), and a label then stated that the crystals had come from Diamond Ledge, Greenwood. In 1975, I donated this quartz specimen to the Maine State Museum on behalf of Maine Audubon. Harold W. Borns, Jr., a geologist at the Institute for Quaternary Studies of the University of Maine in Orono, salvaged a number of geological papers and artifacts from the PSNH that were in danger of being thrown out, including an unpublished handwritten manuscript by John De Laski. In this manuscript, De Laski, a local amateur geologist, records evidences of widespread glaciation in Maine. Additional observations by Harvard’s Louis Agassiz in the state in 1864 lent support to a North American Ice Age.27 Harry Tyler, Jr., who was working for the Maine State Planning Office during the time of the breakup of the PSNH, heard that the herbarium might be discarded. Tyler notified Albion Hodgdon, a leading New England botanist, and horticulturalist Radcliff Pike, both from the University of New Hampshire, about the plight of the Society’s plant collection. Anderson agreed to take the plant specimens to New Hampshire. By 1970, the PSNH’s herbarium had grown to 30,000 sheets. Most of the plants were in relatively good condition. However, the acid paper used to hold the plants was of inferior quality and had to be replaced. This task was accomplished after 5 years of meticulous work by University of New Hampshire graduate students. The over 500 archaeological artifacts owned by the PSNH included pre- Columbian Indian tools, a Sioux quiver and arrows, Aztec pottery, Maine Indian baskets, “Red Paint” tools,28 and Fiji war clubs. All were given to the Hudson Museum of the University of Maine at Orono. One of the last things to be dispersed was the PSNH’s magnificent library. There is no record of how many volumes were once housed in the library. “Tons!” was the answer Anderson quipped to me when I posed that question to him. Two 18-foot trucks were rented to cart the library to Swann Galleries Figure 19. Minerals of Maine display at PSNH. Large quartz in the middle was collected at Greenwood, ME. Photo taken by Ed Richardson in the late 1960s. 2006 L.M. Eastman 27 in New York City, one driven by Anderson and the other by Christopher Ayers. When the entire PSNH library was shipped out of state, the magnitude of Maine’s loss was profound. Swann Galleries printed a 52-page list of the materials to be auctioned at their establishment on January 13, 1972. Included among the holdings were natural history books signed by Louis Agassiz, Alexander von Humboldt, William Beebe, Alfred Russell Wallace, Asa Gray, William Brewster, Allen Bent, John Torrey, and Charles Willoughby. There also were volumes about Maine’s early history. Complete sets of publications to which the PSNH once subscribed were sold to Swann. Some examples are the Proceedings of the Boston Society of Natural History, Rhodora (the journal of the New England Botanical Club), and serials of the Essex Institute. Monographs, unpublished manuscripts, ledgers, documents, and diaries all disappeared at the auction block. According to Arthur H. Norton, the library of Jesse W. Mighels was in the PSNH collection (Norton 1927). Included among the Mighels material were the two volumes of Thomas Wyatt’s A Manual of Conchology, published in 1838, interweaved with figures of shells drawn by Mighels himself. A example of Dr. Mighels’ artistry can be seen in an 1841 article in the Boston Journal of Natural History entitled “Descriptions of Twenty- four Species of the Shells of New England” (Fig. 20).29 Also in the Mighels collection was a rare copy of the History and Instinct of Animals, by Rev. William Kirby. Kirby (1759–1850) has been called the “Father of Entomology” in England.30 One has to wonder how much money the Maine Audubon Society received from selling the PSNH’s library. I personally feel that this library was a resource without price and that dispersing it was a tragic loss to the state! Fortunately, the personal papers of former curator Arthur H. Norton were not part of the PSNH library collection that went to Swann Galleries and still survive today. They are available for the perusal of scholars in the Special Collections Department of the Fogler Library, University of Maine-Orono. These papers consist of five boxes that include personal correspondence, unpublished material on various natural history subjects, and partial inventory lists for the PSNH. In Box 2, there are approximately 10,000 index cards that document bird sightings in the state of Maine from the 1870s to 1942. These cards include the species, location sighted, habitat, and miscellaneous observations. The cards were used by Ralph S. Palmer for his 1949 classic book, Maine Birds. 1972–1975 After the Maine Audubon Society moved to its Baxter Boulevard headquarters in Portland, a number of materials from the PSNH that had not been distributed elsewhere were stored in various rooms of the building. Over a 2-year period, additional bird skins, insects, minerals, fossils, and other items from the Society made their way into schools and other institutions, mostly within the Portland area. As previously stated, I was hired to go through the PSNH documents and letters at Fort Williams. Throughout 28 Northeastern Naturalist Vol. 13, Monograph 1 the winter of 1974, I went through hundreds of papers that had been dumped into the middle of the floor at the old fort. Retrieving box loads of documents and letters from Fort Williams and drying them in my office at Baxter Boulevard was both tedious and time consuming. Since I continued to uncover fascinating and historically important correspondence, I carried on. Over the course of that winter, the names of a number of nineteenth and early twentieth century personalities were found among the letters that I was able to save. Louis Agassiz and his son Alexander were a few of the letter writers that I encountered. Their wet correspondence was slowly dried in my office and hung by clips on a makeshift cord draped across the room. A number of Figure 20. Marine shells collected in Port-land’s Casco Bay and sketched by Jesse W. Migh-els. From Boston Journal of Natural History, vol. 4. 2006 L.M. Eastman 29 letters from Alexander Agassiz were written on Boston Society of Natural History stationery. In the letters, Alexander promised to send duplicate bird and shell specimens to the PSNH. The Agassiz letters were sent to Harvard’s Museum of Comparative Zoology, where both father and son had served as curator. Letters from Edward S. Morse and Alpheus S. Packard were sent to Director Edward Dodge of the Peabody Museum in Salem, MA. Several letters from Canadian naturalist John William Dawson were sent to the McGill University Archives in Montreal. Letters from the prominent geologists Edward Salisbury Dana and Benjamin Silliman were returned to Yale University from whence they came. Several letters from Joseph Henry, the first director of the Smithsonian Institution, were returned to its archives. Botanical letters and unpublished regional floras were deposited in the Josselyn Botanical Society’s boxes at the Fogler Library. Letters from Maine botanist/artist Kate Furbish were deposited in the Bowdoin College Library. Other documents from Furbish, including a script of her lecture read to the PSNH in 1894, notes, and a card sent to Furbish that bore the likeness of Harvard botanist Asa Gray, were also given to Bowdoin.31 Notes, cards, and letters from some of the leading ornithologists during this period were set aside. Ornithological documents from Allen Bent, William Brewster, Ora Willis Knight, and Nathan C. Brown (who wrote A Catalogue of the Birds Known to Occur in the Vicinity of Portland, Maine in 1882) were placed in a separate box for the library of the Maine Audubon Society. A letter written by John James Audubon to botanist William Oakes of Ipswitch, MA was kept separately in a safe. When I later asked Anderson about the Audubon letter, he could not recall whatever happened to the document. Hopefully, it has not been lost permanently. I saved two boxes of material of local historical interest that I placed in the Maine Audubon Society’s library for safekeeping. One box contained photographs and several typed pages that described the Great Fire of 1866. The other box was filled with letters from William Wood, Portland naturalist Herbert M.W. Haven (a local candymaker by profession), Arthur H. Norton, Alexander W. Longfellow, and other prominent dignitaries within Maine. In 1998, I returned to the Maine Audubon Society and met with the new director, Thomas Urquhart. I inquired about the two boxes of material that I had saved in 1974. Urquhart stated that they had been deposited with the Maine Historical Society, but the latter does not have this material in its files! The only thing that the Maine Historical Society possesses among the materials that I salvaged is part of Haven’s unpublished diary.32 A portion of this diary was edited by Philip Morrill in 1966 as Tales of a Homemade Naturalist: The Maine Diaries of Herbert M.W. Haven and sold through the Winthrop Mineral Shop in Winthrop, ME. As I was completing my labors at Fort Williams in the spring of 1975, Anderson took me to the Forest Avenue warehouse of the Jøtul Stove Company. On the second floor were hundreds of boxes of publications, some no longer in print, that once belonged to the PSNH. The American Naturalist, 30 Northeastern Naturalist Vol. 13, Monograph 1 Audubon Magazine, The Auk, Bird-Lore, Journal of Mammalogy, The Maine Naturalist, The Nautilus, Oologist, and The Wilson Bulletin were but a few of the publications represented. There was not a complete set of any of the magazines or journals, however. Eventually, John Johnson, a Vermont book dealer, purchased all the publications for $600. Stored among the periodicals were some old maps and a 200-pound brass cannon inscribed with Chinese symbols. I asked Craig Dietrich, an Asian scholar at the University of Southern Maine, to translate the inscription. Dietrich stated that the cannon had been cast in the city of Canton in 1611. The cannon was eventually sold to an undisclosed antique collector. Duplicates of the old maps were sold at auction in February 1976. A 4- x 2-ft. hand-drawn map of Maine’s Merrymeeting Bay, made for the Crown by Phineas Jones in 1731, and other map rarities were donated to the Maine Historical Society (Frazier 1976). Recent Disclosures In 1999, I received a telephone call from Kevin McCartney, associate professor of geology at the University of Maine-Presque Isle. He had been given a preliminary report about the PSNH that I had sent to botanist Robert Pinette at UMPI. McCartney is director of the newly established Northern Maine Museum of Science in Folsom Hall at the university. He informed me that a number of specimens that had been acquired from the PSNH were incorporated into the museum’s exhibits. He urged me to come to Presque Isle to view materials that had come from the PSNH nearly 30 years ago and were still packed in boxes. So I drove to Presque Isle to see what remained of the Society’s collections. McCartney and the curator of the Northern Maine Museum, Jeanie McGowen, allowed me access to the collections, which were stored in an attic and basement of two classroom buildings, as well as in an outbuilding that once was the working quarters of Aroostook County naturalist Leroy Francis Norton.33 Prior to perusing the storage areas, I viewed the PSNH materials that had been incorporated into the Northern Maine Museum displays. The 13-foot slab of redwood that presumably had been sawn in half was still intact. Its legs and braces had been removed, and the huge slab that once was a table had been mounted on the wall under plexiglas. Maine specimens of turtles, rocks, and fossils were on exhibit. Birds from various parts of the United States and the world, all of which had come from the PSNH, were on display. I learned that an additional 10,000 herbarium specimens of the Society had been remounted on quality paper by Pinette and his students, similar to what had been done at the University of New Hampshire.34 The names of well known New England botanists were still attached to the labels. It was a veritable “who’s who” of prominent collectors, such as Merritt L. Fernald, Kate Furbish, Dana W. Fellows, Brynard Long, William Wood, Charles B. Fuller, and Amos Eaton. After I viewed the museum display in Folsom Hall, I was taken to an attic in another building where numerous stuffed birds, bird eggs, animal bones 2006 L.M. Eastman 31 and antlers, shells, fungi, lichens, and mounted Maine mammals were stored. Most of the birds that were too large to fit into boxes had been damaged prior to their arrival at UMPI. Birds that were boxed were in much better condition. However, the specimens were dirty and needed care. The 12 cases of insects that I observed were totally destroyed. Exposure to temperature fluctuations and mites over time had turned the specimens to dust. Among all this material was a trove of letters, dated 1900, written by Edward S. Morse to Joseph Thompson, president of the PSNH. Another box contained correspondence addressed to Arthur H. Norton, curator of the PSNH. McCartney and I decided to donate Morse’s letters to the Maine Historical Society in Portland and the Norton correspondence to the Fogler Library in Orono. My second stop was a basement storage room of a second classroom building that contained several cases of shells, minerals, and fossils that came from the PSNH. Across the darkened room, I was elated to spot a painting that I had only previously seen in old newspaper clippings. It was of a passenger pigeon perched on a branch against the Portland skyline of 1854. The stuffed bird model had been borrowed from the PSNH prior to the devastating fire of that year by John Cloudman and used for his art classes. The bird and the finished painting were returned to the Society once it had settled into new headquarters after the fire. The painting has not fared well over the years. It has been ripped from its frame, chips of paint are missing, and the canvas is badly wrinkled. I have recommended that the painting be sent to the Maine Historical Society for restoration. At noon, McCartney, McGowan, and myself attended a local restaurant with William Forbes, Richard Kimball, and a former student who had transported the remains of the PSNH collections to Presque Isle. Two trips were required. The first utilized two rental trucks, while three trucks were used on the second trip. Forbes stated that he had business in Portland in 1970 and by chance had stopped to see his friend Richard Anderson. Anderson and Forbes then agreed that the remainder of the PSNH material should go to UMPI. During February 2000, I was back at UMPI sifting through the remains of the PSNH collections for a second time. The Casco Bay shell collections of Charles B. Fuller appeared to be intact. Shells collected by other conchologists, such as Edwin C. Bolles, George Wright, C.G. Atkins, and G.W. Pratt, were also represented. Several cabinet drawers housed mineral specimens from Maine and throughout the United States. Unfortunately, nearly half the minerals bore no labels as to where collected. One case contained a large collection of brachiopods that was well labeled. Each brachiopod was identified and the collection site disclosed. Other cases contained scores of gastropods and echinoderms, some labeled and others not. Among the piles of boxes were several that contained sponges and corals. Most were neatly wrapped but not labeled. A file box contained an 1854 Portland newspaper article that described the first fire that destroyed the PSNH. Included in this box were histories of individual islands in Casco Bay, as well as correspondence ad32 Northeastern Naturalist Vol. 13, Monograph 1 dressed to members of the PSNH. This box of material was donated to the Maine Historical Society. Space for the PSNH collections is a major problem facing UMPI today. Because the university needs additional room, much of the PSNH material will have to be sent elsewhere. Natural history specimens that pertain to Aroostook County can be retained in the Northern Maine Museum of Science. Birds collected along the Maine coast (including the skins of nearly 100 songbirds collected in the Portland area by Nathan C. Brown in the 1880s), as well as bird eggs, mammals, and shells from Maine, could go to the Maine State Museum in Augusta. Natural history materials that come from afar should be sold or given to appropriate institutions that can make the best use of them. Epilogue The PSNH was a reflection of the worldview of its times. Robert Louis Stevenson once wrote, “The world is so full of a number of things, I’m sure we should all be as happy as kings.” The members of the PSNH seemingly agreed. Their focus and enthusiasm were on collecting and naming everything in the natural world. Their methods of categorizing and displaying the collections were based on the scientific understanding and theories of the times. Linnaeus had made the scientific world aware of the importance of a standardized taxonomy. Darwin’s theory of evolution had been expanded to social as well as scientific usage, so that artifacts and even skeletal remains of earlier human cultures were confidently displayed in the Society’s museum to portray evolution to the perfected specimen: modern Homo sapiens. How the collections were displayed demonstrates for us today the biases and politics of that bygone period (Little 1994). The Society’s museum lacked a coherent theoretical structure acceptable as a basis for its continued existence. In the gradually changing worldview, it was no longer sufficient to maintain a remote and detached approach to the study of organisms disconnected from their living habitats (Yentsch and Beaudry 1990). The effort now was to understand the natural world in a progressively wider and more inclusive frame of reference. Arthur H. Norton attempted to co-opt these new concerns into the construct of the PSNH by merging its efforts with those of the Maine Audubon Society, which focused on conservation legislation. The growing interest in conservation and the study of species in the field rather than as specimens in glass cabinets made the type of museum maintained by the PSNH obsolete. Conservation, rather than collecting and systematics, became the dominant theme in natural history. Surprisingly, some of the biggest corporate polluters became supporters of the new organization. In terms of scientific investigation, there was a shift away from consideration of an individual specimen as representative of an entire species to the responses of whole species to habitat loss, changing climates, and other organisms. Scientists were now attuned to the interaction of man and Nature in the field. The ideologies that had supported the PSNH in the past were also changing to some degree. The social and economic emergence of the middle class 2006 L.M. Eastman 33 led to modest affluence and increased leisure, which was manifested in some individuals by an enhanced involvement in nature study. A growing interest in bird watching expeditions and other field trips sparked a public concern for the conservation of Nature as opposed to the collection of specimens. Support for the old elitist PSNH gave way to the newer, more inclusive, and forward looking Maine Audubon Society. Scientific revolutions establish models of understanding through which we filter information that affect the assumptions of society’s various interest groups. As the breakup of the PSNH’s collections illustrates, new modes of understanding may often obscure the value of what has gone before. Once described as “a museum worthy of a world port” and a “measure of the richness of the city’s culture,” the PSNH became nothing more than a “dusty attic” and “an institutional form of genteel poverty in a ramshackle building—stuffed with thousands of dusty uncataloged plant and animal specimens” (Adams 1993, Gilman 1947, March 1978). Thus, a grand old institution where Portland’s blue bloods of commerce and intellect once met is no more. Addendum Various records indicate that the following 24 individuals were the original founders of the PSNH: Horace V. Bartol Sylvester Blackmore Beckett Eliphalet Case Rev. John White Chickering Asa W. H. Clapp Charles Cobb Randolph A.L. Codman George Grueby Edward Gould Samuel Haskell Charles Jones Sylvanus R. Lyman Dr. Jesse Wedgwood Mighels Dr. Augustus Mitchell John Neal Josiah Pennell Henry Quincy William Senter Ether Shepley Eden Steele Woodbury Storer Rev. Jason Whitman W.H. Wood Dr. William Wood The first meeting for election of officers was held on December 20, 1843. Twenty votes were cast, and the following people were elected: President: Ether Shepley 34 Northeastern Naturalist Vol. 13, Monograph 1 Vice President: Woodbury Storer Corresponding Secretary: Dr. Jesse W. Mighels Recording Secretary: Sylvester B. Beckett Treasurer: W.H. Wood Cabinet Keeper: Henry Quincy Acknowledgments Thanks are extended to Scott M. Martin for his encouragement and editorial assistance with this paper. Scott also amplified the footnotes. Literature Cited Adams, H. 1993. For objects so excellent: A history of Maine Audubon Society’s first 150 years. Habitat 10(4):24–36. Anonymous. 1900. Portland Society of Natural History was founded nearly seventy years ago. Portland Sunday Telegram, October 7, Section II , pp. 1–2. Anonymous. 1913. Brief history of organization and list of present active members and board of officers [of Portland Society]. Portland Sunday Telegram, November 23, Section C. Anonymous. 1927. Portland Society of Natural History elects William H. Dow its president. Portland Press Herald, January 17, p. 12. Anonymous. 1930. [Portland Society] possesses one of most complete bird collections [in] New England. Portland Sunday Telegram and Sunday Press Herald, Sunday, June 1, Section C, p. 8. Creed, P.R. 1930. The Boston Society of Natural History, 1830–1930. Printed for the Society, Boston, MA. 117 pp. Fobes, C.B. 1951. Rattlesnake Mountains in Maine and New Hampshire. Appalachia 28(5):530–534. Fobes, C.B. 1955. The White Mountain Club of Portland, Maine: 1873–1884. Appalachia 30(3):381–395. Frazier, M. 1976. Audubon treasures go on the block. Portland Evening Express, February 13, Section II, p. 1. Gilman, J.A. 1947. Exploring attics is fun. Portland Sunday Telegram and Sunday Press Herald, Sunday, January 5, Section D, p. 3. Hallet, R. 1947. History on display: Museum is cultural link with Portland’s maritime days. Portland Sunday Telegram and Sunday Press Herald, January 5, Section D, p. 3. Hodder, I. 1991. Reading the Past: Current Approaches to Interpretation in Archaeology. 2nd Edition. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, UK. 221 pp. Johnson, R.I. 1997. Maine’s Portland Society of Natural History. Northeastern Naturalist 4(3):189–196. Little, B.J. 1994. People with history: An update on historical archaeology in the United States. Journal of Archaeological Method and Theory 1(1):5–40. Lord, A.F. 1937. Five thousand visitors annually testify to their interest in natural history at Portland museum. Lewiston Journal, Magazine Section (Saturday, July 24), pp. 1,12. March, J.P. 1978. Environment ho! Down East 25(1):80–86. Morse, E.S. 1901. Catalogue of the Morse Collection of Japanese Pottery. Riverside Press, Cambridge, MA. 384 pp. 68 plates. Morse, E.S. 1902. Observations on living Brachiopoda. Memoirs of the Boston So2006 L.M. Eastman 35 ciety of Natural History 5(8):313–386. Norton, A.H. 1927. Jesse Wedgwood Mighels—Pioneer conchologist. The Maine Naturalist 7(2):63–74. Norton, A.H. 1930. The mammals of Portland, Maine, and vicinity. Proceedings of the Portland Society of Natural History 4(1):1–151. Palmer, R.S. 1943. Arthur Herbert Norton [obituary]. The Auk 60(2):315–317. Sleeper, F. 1971. Parking lot to replace 92-year old landmark. Portland Press Herald, November 25, p. 21. Sobel, D. 1977. Audubon’s three energy sources: Sun, wood, and Dick Anderson. Maine Magazine 1(10):34–38. Willis, W. 1866. Burning of Portland. Portland Transcript (Monday, July 16). Witherby, R. 1971. Natural History Society’s surplus is up for grabs. Portland Evening Express, January 4, p. 1. Wood, W. 1869. The Great Fire. Proceedings of the Portland Society of Natural History 1(2):194–196. Wood, W. 1893. Natural History Society: Action on the death of Mr. Charles B. Fuller. Portland Advertiser, April 21. Wood, W., and C.B. Fuller. 1881. A circular to sea captains and other seafaring men. Henry F. Perry and Co., Portland, ME. 11 pp. Yentsch, A.E., and M.C. Beaudry, Eds. 1990. Man and Vision in Historical Archaeology: Essays in Honor of James Deetz. CRC Press, Boca Raton, fl. 457 pp. Notes 1 For photos of Anderson and a description of his role as director of the Maine Audubon Society, see Adams (1993), March (1978), and Sobel (1977). A photo of a younger yours truly appears on p. 82 of March’s article. 2 Admiral Robert Edwin Peary (1856–1920), who grew up in the Portland area and graduated from Bowdoin College, is acknowledged as the discoverer of the North Pole. Peary first notified the world of this feat by wire from Battle Harbour, Labrador, on September 15, 1909. His gravestone at Arlington National Cemetery consists of a globe of the world with a bronze star covering the North Pole. 3 A photograph of Shepley, with accompanying information, can be seen today at the Maine Audubon Society, Falmouth, ME. 4 While working for the US Fish and Wildlife Service in 1983, I discovered Chickering’s plant specimens in these herbaria. There are letters from Chickering to Rev. Joseph Blake about his excursions to Mount Katahdin that are housed in the Special Collections Department, Fogler Library, University of Maine-Orono. 5 This material is housed in Box 5 of the PSNH Collection at the Maine Historical Society in Portland. 6 Mighels’ pioneering efforts in malacology are described in Richard I. Johnson, “Jesse Wedgwood Mighels with a Bibliography and a Catalogue of His Species,” Occasional Papers on Mollusks 1(14):213–232, and in three papers in volume 4 of the Boston Journal of Natural History for which Mighels was the principal author: pp. 37–54 [1841; co-authored with C.B. Adams], pp. 308–345 [1843], and pp. 345–350 [1843]. 7 In Box 5 of the PSNH Collection, there is a 6-page manuscript on PSNH letterhead stationery that describes how the Maine legislature granted this land to the Society. 8 UNUM is a multinational insurance conglomerate. 36 Northeastern Naturalist Vol. 13, Monograph 1 9 These inventory lists are preserved in Box 5 of the PSNH Collection. 10 For a review of Gould’s Civil War exploits, see: William B. Jordan, Bedford C. Hayes, and Richard Allen Sauers (Eds.) 1997. The Civil War Journals of John Mead Gould, 1861–1866. Baltimore, Butternut, and Blue., 564 pp. 11 For more information about the timber rattlesnake having once lived in Maine, see D.A. Crouse, “Rattlesnakes on Rattlesnake Mtn.?,” Cold River Chronicle 11:1–3 [December 1995]. 12 Morse eventually reconciled with his imminent mentor and proclaimed Agassiz as “the greatest teacher of natural history in the world.” See Edward S. Morse, “Agassiz and the School at Penikese,” Science, vol. 58(1502):273–275 [October 12, 1923]. 13 Since its inception in 1867, The American Naturalist has been considered to be one of the top scientific periodicals in ecology, evolution, and integrative biology. Today this peer-reviewed journal is published by the University of Chicago Press. 14 Morse was buried in Salem’s Harmony Grove Cemetery. Although virtually unknown in his native land today, Morse is still revered by the Japanese, to whom he introduced Western ideals of education and research while serving as a zoology professor at the Imperial University of Tokyo in 1877–1880. His gravesite in Salem is regularly visited by Japanese tourists. Morse was ambidextrous and sketched on the blackboard with either hand (sometimes both simultaneously) while giving lectures on biology (see Fig. 5). 15 You can read about this remarkable exhibit in Richard Evans Schultes and William A. Davis, The Glass Flowers at Harvard (Cambridge, Botanical Museum of Harvard University, 1992), and Karen Wright, “Splendor in Glass,” Discover 22:42–43 [January 2001] . 16 For more information about fossil walruses in northeastern North America (including Maine), see Samuel N. Rhoads, “Notes on the Fossil Walrus of Eastern North America,” Proceedings of the Academy of Natural Sciences of Philadelphia 50:196–201 [1898], and Glover M. Allen, “The Walrus in New England,” Bulletin of the Boston Society of Natural History 47:10–12 [1928]. 17 Skeletal remains of the sea mink are known from prehistoric shell middens on the oceanic islands and along the coastline of Maine that date less than 5000 years old. For more information on this extinct mammal, see Jim I. Mead, Arthur E. Spiess, and Kristin D. Sobolik, “Skeleton of Extinct North American Sea Mink (Mustela macrodon),” Quaternary Research 53:247–262 [2000]. 18 For more about George F. Morse, see his obituary in The Maine Naturalist 6(3):119 [1926]. 19 Norton’s cheery temperament persisted in spite of the fact that his wife was institutionalized by this time in a mental facility. Norton visited her frequently but could do little to restrain her slide into dementia. 20 Photos of Dow and other PSNH notables, namely, Dr. William Wood, Rev. Edwin C. Bowles, Charles B. Fuller, and Arthur H. Norton, accompany Lord’s 1937 article in the Lewiston Journal. 21 The passenger pigeon was at one time probably the most numerous bird in the world. The last known of this animal to be killed in the wild was “Buttons,” a female shot by a schoolboy on March 24, 1900, in Pike County, OH. The bird’s nickname comes from the shoe buttons fashioned for its eyes by a local taxidermist. “Buttons” can be seen today at the Ohio State Historical Museum in Columbus. The last remaining passenger pigeon, named “Martha,” died at the Cincinnati Zoo on September 1, 1914; her remains are preserved at the Smith2006 L.M. Eastman 37 sonian Institution. The demise of the Carolina parakeet occurred in Florida, where a flock of 30 birds of North America’s only native parrot was last seen in 1920. The ivory-billed woodpecker, once considered extinct, has recently been sighted several times in Arkansas’ Cache River National Wildlife Refuge (see Scott Weidensaul, “The Ivory-bill and Its Forest Breathe New Life,” Nature Conservancy, vol. 55, (2005), pp. 20–31, and Rachel Dickinson, “The Best-kept Secret,” Audubon, (July-August 2005), pp. 38-43, 82–83. For more about these birds, see Christopher Cokinos, Hope is the Thing with Feathers: A Personal Chronicle of Vanished Birds (Jeremy P. Tarcher/Putnam, 2000, New York, NY). The Eskimo curlew once migrated in huge flocks between its breeding grounds on the taiga to its wintering territory in Argentina. By the beginning of the 1900s, it was presumed to be extinct, but limited sightings in past decades in Canada and the US suggest that a small breeding population still persists. The curlew was once an abundant fall transient across the Gulf of Maine. 22 The North American turkey was first domesticated by the Indians of Mexico and taken to Europe by the Spanish after the Conquest. There it was subjected to genetic selection, which produced several breeds, including the bronze turkey, noted for its shimmering green-bronze color that appears metallic in the sunlight. 23 Skeletal remains of the great auk have been found in prehistoric shell middens along Maine’s coast. To learn more about this extinct bird, see C. Cokinos' Hope is the Thing with Feathers. 24 The wooly mammoth and Mammut americanum (Kerr) (American mastodon) were contemporaries. Both died out in Maine about 10,000 years ago at the end of the last Ice Age. Mammoths were taller (10–12 feet) and heavier (14,000–20,000 pounds), had long, curled tusks, rounded heads, and front quarters higher than hindquarters. Their teeth were adapted for chewing tough grasses. Mastodons were shorter (6–10 feet) and lighter (8000–12,000 pounds), had short tusks, flat heads, and front and hindquarters of about equal height. Their teeth were adapted for crushing trees and shrubs. 25 Arthur H. Norton reported the capture of this turtle in Penobscot Bay to the Linnaean Society of New York City in 1891. The account appears as a brief abstract on page 5 of the January 9th Proceedings of the Society. 26 According to Johnson (1997; see Literature Cited), some of these shells were acquired by Harvard University’s Museum of Comparative Zoology, while others were purchased by the Delaware Museum of Natural History. A small number of the shells are currently housed at the University of Maine-Presque Isle and need to be curated. 27 For more on this story, see David C. Smith and Harold W. Borns, Jr., “Louis Agassiz, the Great Deluge, and Early Maine Geology,” Northeastern Naturalist 7:157–177 [2000]. 28 The Red Paint People were a prehistoric group that once lived in Maine. They are named for the deposits of red ochre found in archaeological excavations that contain their artifacts and bones. The age and identity of these people, the breadth of their culture, and their relationship to other groups, both ancient and modern, has been a controversy among anthropologists ever since their discovery by original excavations made in 1892 by Charles Willoughby of Harvard’s Peabody Museum. 29 The article appeared in the Boston Journal of Natural History 4:37–55. Mighels’ sketches constituted the accompanying plate IV. 38 Northeastern Naturalist Vol. 13, Monograph 1 30 Charles Darwin studied Kirby’s works in the attempt to formulate how the mind and behavior might have evolved. He was most intrigued by this passage of Kirby and marked it in his copy: “… we may call the instincts of animals those unknown faculties implanted in their constitution by the Creator, by which independent of instruction, observation, or experience, and without knowledge of the end in view, they are impelled to the performance of certain actions tending to the well-being of the individual and the preservation of the species: and with this description, which is in fact merely a confession of ignorance, we must, in the present state of metaphysical science, content ourselves,” The passage appeared in Kirby’s work, A Introduction to Entomology, co-authored with Willliam Spence and first published in 1846. Kirby was very interested in instincts among insects, especially honeybees. 31 Kate Furbish, who grew up in Brunswick, ME, bequeathed her plant artwork and personal materials to Bowdoin College’s library in 1908. Beginning in 1870, she collected, classified, and drew Maine’s flora for about 40 years. Kate’s name gained fame in 1976 when the wild snapdragon Pedicularis furbishiae S. Wats, dubbed “Furbish’s Lousewort,” was rediscovered after having been thought extinct. This discovery halted the building of a dam on the St. John’s River that would have flooded 80,000 acres of northern Maine forestland. Furbish’s Lousewort was among the first plants to be listed as endangered under the US Endangered Species Act. 32 See Boxes 3 and 4 of the PSNH Collection at the Maine Historical Society in Portland. 33 Leroy Norton, a Presque Isle postman and serious amateur naturalist, built this structure himself. It was donated to UMPI and physically moved there shortly after his death in 1970. Contained therein were Norton’s library and natural history collections, the latter especially replete with botanicals, shells, and turtle shells. 34 Not yet processed at UMPI are a number of herbarium sheets of seaweeds from the PSNH.