The Unburnt Egg, page 16
I exposed a second hoax involving large eggs for auction. The catalogues were printed and the auction was due to take place in Auckland in December 2003. Items 84 and 85 purported to be largely intact moa eggs supposedly excavated from early Māori campsites in coastal Otago in the 1950s. Each was expected to sell for up to $7,000. I received a request from the auctioneers to examine them urgently, which I did just two weeks before the auction.
It so happened that I was currently studying moa eggs, having tracked down some thirty-six in New Zealand and foreign museums. Most of these I had examined and measured in person so if anyone knew what a moa egg looked like it was me. The eggs from the auction, in their size, shape, weight, feel and surface detail, seemed exactly like ostrich eggs. There were more than a dozen ostrich eggs in the museum's bird collection and Lots 84 and 85 were a close match. I measured the two eggs and the ratios of length divided by width were 1.22 and 1.23. From volume one of Handbook of the Birds of the World, I obtained the average dimensions of ostrich eggs, and the same ratio was 1.21. Ostrich eggs are "short oval" in shape—that is, tending towards round, a ratio of 1.00. Moa eggs are more elongated and the ratios of length to width for those I measured varied from 1.25 to 1.49.
The eggs were pulled from the auction. Their documentation included an old newspaper cutting reporting the original "discovery" of one of them. A photograph in the article showed a very rounded ostrich-type egg, so the hoax was perpetrated from the start and the vendor in 2003 was possibly an innocent party.
Still on the subject of eggs, there was a case where a woman was caught at Auckland International Airport attempting to smuggle into the country what appeared to be live parrot eggs. The eggs were strapped to her body and she deliberately smashed them when she was caught. I was asked to examine seven of the embryos to ascertain their identity.
The museum collection held a small selection of bird embryos preserved in alcohol but there were no parrots among them. I referred to illustrations in books held by the museum's library, and it was clear the embryos in question had several superficial features of the beak and feet consistent with their being parrots. Eggshell fragments were present and in all of them the colour of the shell was white, as is the case with parrot eggs.
I checked and approved a draft brief of evidence prepared by the Crown Solicitor. A few days later two court officials turned up at the museum's north entrance. As I walked through the building to meet them I ran into them on the grand stone staircase. In this spectacular setting they served me with a summons under the Summary Proceedings Act: I was to appear in the District Court as a witness for the prosecution. In due course, however, the offenders pleaded guilty and the case did not proceed. In around sixty forensic identifications during my career, I never did get to make a court appearance.
A man from the Ministry of Agriculture and Fisheries rang one day to say that an unusual live lizard had been dropped off anonymously at a private zoo. He assumed it to be a native lizard. If I were to examine it alive and confirm this, it could be released. Otherwise, it would have to be killed by the ministry and then referred to me for identification.
I met the woman from the zoo in the museum's main foyer. She had the lizard in a plastic ice-cream container. "It bites and it jumps," she warned. I suggested we take the container to my workroom where we could close the doors to confine the area and open it over the large deep sink. I lifted a corner of the lid, saw a beautiful scaly body, and hauled out a very lively little agamid lizard, which proceeded to bite me ineffectually. It was certainly not a New Zealand native, and may have been smuggled in from Australia or Asia. I reported this and the man from the ministry's initial response was "Oh, bugger!" The lizard was a disease threat and would have to be put down.
Another request from the ministry to identify a live reptile involved a snake that had been dumped at an animal rehabilitation centre in Whangarei after being smuggled into the country, probably on a yacht. It was now in the ministry's offices in central Auckland. When I entered the large room with the caged snake at centre stage, there were about a dozen people clustered around, including a television crew filming for the evening news. There was an awkward moment as they all stood back, seemingly expecting me to take over and deliver an illuminating verdict. I said it looked like some sort of non-poisonous constricting snake, but owned up to having no expertise on the subject. How could I have developed any working knowledge of snakes in a country that lacks them? I certainly wasn't going to handle the creature for various reasons, not least an awareness of the well-known adage about never appearing live on camera with children or animals.
The snake proved to be a boa constrictor. The media continued to be interested and dubbed it "Benny the Boa". In due course it was put down by a vet.
In 1985 authorities asked me to identify mangled remains found in the undercarriage bay of a DC-10 jet that had landed in Auckland after a flight from Los Angeles via Honolulu. The remains were those of a barn owl that must have roosted in the undercarriage and become trapped. I also received requests from the police. In one case of poaching I established that bones seized from a prepared meal—literally removed from a pot on a stove—belonged to a protected native bird the New Zealand pigeon, or kererū. In another case, helped by recourse to the museum's historic skeleton LM131, I confirmed that bones found under an old house were from domestic animals and were not human as feared.
In 2004 I was asked to identify raw meat packaged and labelled as "chicken thighs" on sale in an Asian grocery shop in South Auckland. The Institute of Environmental Science and Research, a government-owned body, was investigating on behalf of the Ministry of Agriculture and Fisheries and I went to the institute's laboratory to examine samples.
The meat was packed in meal-sized portions on polystyrene trays wrapped in clear plastic film. Superficially it looked just like packaged chicken meat, but on closer examination each "thigh" appeared to be the skinned and trimmed abdomen and legs of a large frog. Through the translucent flesh were apparent the very slender lower leg bones of frogs, which differ from the much thicker leg bones of chickens. I suggested the appropriate zoological wording for a brief of evidence that was being prepared by the ministry's investigating solicitor and signed it, but the defendants pleaded guilty at the eleventh hour and witnesses were not required in court. Total fines of around $6,000 were split between an individual and two companies, including the grocery store: it was found guilty of "recklessly selling unauthorised goods".
Further reflections
Most New Zealanders have some forebears who lived in rural villages in the British Isles in the eighteenth century. When a child fell ill, someone in the village may have had access to a popular medical text, Poor Man's Physician by John Moncrief, published in 1712. If the child had fallingsickness, which we now call epilepsy, the book's advice was clear: "Take a little black sucking puppy (but for a girl take a bitch-whelp), choke it, open it, and take out the gall [gallbladder] which hath not above three or four drops of pure choler [bile]; Give it all to the Child in the time of the fit, with a little tiletree flower water [from the lime tree, Tilia], and you shall see him cured ... ."
Like human societies everywhere, we had built up a body of knowledge about the natural world but the knowledge was defective. It comprised a chaotic mix of accurate observation, trial-and-error learning, hearsay, faulty observation, pronouncements by authority figures, myths and superstitions. There was no mechanism to tell one from the other. Necessity forced all human societies to develop an armoury of remedies against illness using local plants and other materials, yet only a small proportion of remedies worked. Nobody knew which ones they were, so in ignorance and desperation you suffocated a puppy and gave its bile to an epileptic child.
Beginning roughly in the middle of the seventeenth century, the Enlightenment in Europe and North America launched a revolution in thinking and a leap in intellectual progress. Its proponents sought to replace ignorance, dogma and superstition—obstacles to progress—with reason and enquiry, which in turn gave rise to the modern scientific method. Previous knowledge of the world could now be scrutinised, item by item, to know for the first time what was sound and what was nonsense. Evidence of efficacy came to be required in medicine and the practice of smothering and eviscerating puppies for the sake of epileptic children fell by the wayside.
From science came technology and the two propelled the West to its initial pre-eminence in innovation, living standards and financial and military power. Science and technology are enabling other countries to follow suit. As if that isn't enough, the Enlightenment also contributed to the openness and democracy enjoyed in Western countries today.
Science can be defined in several ways, and the term loosely used to mean any body of knowledge. A commoner meaning is narrower: the systematic and organised knowledge arrived at by the special scientific method. Science is one of the most successful human endeavours and our best system for seeking out truth. All scientific findings are open to challenge and free to be revised and modified. Hypotheses are formulated, guesses on what the world, or a small part of it, may be like. Hypotheses cannot be proved, but they can have temporary status as an approximation of the truth so long as competing hypotheses are less well supported by the evidence. Scientists present their findings to their peers for scrutiny, and final results are published so as to be widely available for future examination and re-testing. The scientific method encourages openness, honesty and cooperation because deceit, self-deceit, falsified evidence and theft of others' work are soon exposed.
Only science has given us our modern material advances, yet increasingly it has come under public suspicion and is today under much attack. Delight in its splendour and inspiration gave ground from the middle of the twentieth century to misgivings: perhaps science dehumanised, was hijacked by dictators, caused major global problems such as nuclear accidents and chemical pollution? But science itself is of course neutral: it is its application that can be for good or evil.
I came to the museum world from university biology departments, where everyone was engaged in science and knew and understood its importance. In museum circles I began to mix professionally with people in the arts and humanities, and encountered subtle opposition to science, or viewpoints that were suspicious or mocking. An exhibition, "Enduring Nature", that I saw at Auckland Art Gallery in 2004 featured detailed cut-out shapes of insects on a wall. The label explained that the artwork was, in the curator's eyes, "a tale perhaps of the doomed human attempt to classify, to name and to control the natural world, and hence pin down its stories!"
In a glass case nearby, a volume of The Zoology of the Voyage of H.M.S. Erebus and Terror was open at a beautiful natural history plate. The accompanying caption read: "The conquest of New Zealand nature was attempted by ... scientists who, as Anne Salmond [in her book The Trial of the Cannibal Dog] explains, were 'classifying and collecting plants, animals, insects and people. ... Wild nature ... was brought under the calm controlling gaze of Enlightenment science.'"
To me, the naturalists on James Cook's eighteenth-century voyages of discovery, and on Her Majesty's Ships Erebus and Terror under James Clark Ross in their intrepid exploration of the Southern Ocean from 1839 to 1843 were heroes: in dangerous and uncomfortable conditions they took some of the earliest steps towards understanding biodiversity in our part of the world. But it seems others have a different view in which the work of natural historians is some sort of flawed and ill-advised attempt at domination and control.
These attitudes seem to have formed from a vogue among some academics for "post-modernism". Post-modernism ultimately challenges all claims to knowledge and holds that there are no facts, only interpretations. Some seem comforted by philosophies that knock science off its pedestal, among them "cultural relativism", the idea that science is simply a cultural pursuit and one world view among many that are all equally valid. Some see scientists as an élite pushing scientific methods to strengthen its own standing and wrest power from the rest of society.
In July 2015 The New Zealand Herald reported that in Tanzania since 2000 at least seventy-five albino adults and children have been murdered and at least sixty-two others grievously injured: their body parts are sought by traditional witch doctors for use in charms said to bring wealth and good fortune. I wonder if this is one of the world views that the cultural relativists will refuse to judge against the scientific surety that there is no known mechanism by which success in life can be enhanced by charms containing human remains? As the scientist and author Richard Dawkins put it: "An African tribe might believe that the moon is an old cooking pot thrown up into the sky, but that doesn't get you to the moon. Science does."
One contemporary threat to public understanding of biology, especially in the United States, is "scientific creationism". For religious purposes, alternative explanations for life on Earth other than evolution by natural selection are dressed up as science in an attempt to garner credibility. These interpretations, although poorly supported by evidence, are presented as truth in certain museums and textbooks.
In New Zealand there is a push to insert Māori mythical and spiritual views of the natural world into natural history. Unthinkingly, this forcing of cultural relativism on to biology undermines science by implying that scientific information on our plants and animals is optional. Where natural science forms part of a larger encyclopaedic museum, it needs to present itself on its own terms, not qualified or diluted with competing cultural or religious interpretations of nature. To do otherwise is to risk the museum's credibility.
In October 2007 representatives of natural history institutions from thirty-six countries met in Paris to discuss the global environmental crisis. It was the tercentenary of the birth of Georges-Louis Leclerc, Comte de Buffon, one of the founders of the modern science of natural history. The delegates released the Buffon Declaration, which emphasised the fourfold contribution of museums, including botanical gardens and zoos, to the sustainable management of ecosystems and therefore the survival of people. First, museums are the main repositories of the scientific samples that enable us to understand life's variety. Secondly, they contribute to research on the structure and dynamics of living things past and present. Thirdly, they help build capacity to tackle environmental challenges. And fourthly, they engage with civil society as a forum for consideration of issues crucial to our common future.
Natural history is enjoying mass popularity, at least in the West: international wildlife documentaries screening in prime time on New Zealand's commercial television channels are testament to that. A United States survey released in 2001 showed that over seventy-one million Americans, a quarter of the population, watched birds, and that birdwatching was the fastest-growing outdoor activity in North America.
Natural history collections in museums have been called libraries of life. The very purpose of the preserved specimens is to help society investigate, understand and enjoy one of the most intriguing of all scientific topics—the world's amazing biodiversity. The stories in this book are about specimens in natural history collections, and the biology, history and people connected to those specimens. I hope they have excited you about the wonder of such collections, shown that the institutions housing and caring for them are modern and relevant, and illustrated the unrivalled power of science as humanity's best hope for achieving accuracy and finding truth.
Illustrations
Auckland War Memorial Museum, 1953
Sir George Grey Special Collections, Auckland Libraries, 580-032. vi
Auckland Museum, Princes Street
Sir George Grey Special Collections, Auckland Libraries, 1-W4; photograph by Henry Winkelmann, 1902. viii
Skeleton of king penguin from Macquarie Island
Auckland Museum, LB587. 14
Pipi wau rau roa [Pipiwharauroa] Cuckoo N.Z.
Auckland Museum Pictorial Collections PD-1952-2-1-12; painting by Charles Heaphy, 1853. 28
Mrs Halcombe's burning house
The remains of Blanche Halcombe's house being destroyed by the fire service, 1961. Collection of Puke Ariki, New Plymouth, PHO2002-51. 40
Richard Owen and giant moa
He is holding the first moa bone fragment he had examined in 1839. From Memoirs on the extinct wingless birds of New Zealand, vol. 2, by Richard Owen: John Van Voorst, London, 1879. 52
Long-tailed cuckoo's egg
The egg removed from a female's oviduct. Auckland Museum LB8968; photograph by Brian Gill, circa 2012. 64
Masked booby, Sula dactylatra
Adult with two eggs in nest circle. Henderson Island, Pitcairn Islands, October 2011; photograph by Matt Charteris / New Zealand Birds Online. 76
Male huia
Female in background; lithograph from "Charakteristik der Avifauna Neu-Seelands" by Otto Finsch: in Globus 69, 1896. 92
Sea lion fossil
Left femur of a sea lion from North Cape. The bone is just over 100 mm long. Auckland Museum LM777; photograph by J. Froggatt 2016. 108
