PRÁCTICA 6 ¿CÓMO FUNCIONA UNA MEMBRANA CELULAR? EQUILIBRIO OSMÓTICO

When it came to engaging in scientific discourse, Vandemonian

enthusiasts faced many of the same obstacles as gentlemen in other colonies and towns distant from the scientific centre. They were isolated from the metropolis, lacked formal training, and did not have access to a substantial library of reference works. To overcome this sense of distance required the formation of some sort of likeminded community. As Savithri Preetha Nair has demonstrated in her analysis of Raja Serfoji II of Tanjore, if someone had the power and enthusiasm, they could draw around them the network they needed, becoming a centre in their own right. In Serfoji’s case, he acted as a Latourian ‘centre of calculation’, becoming a scientific centre on the euro-centric periphery.7

Gunn was in no position to ape Serfoji’s solution to the ‘tyranny of distance’, being in a geographically isolated location, with a small, sparsely- spread population, and limited finances; but he still strove to create some kind of

7 _{S.P. Nair, ‘Native Collecting and Natural Knowledge (1798-1832): Raja Serfoji II of Tanjore as a} ‘Centre of Calculation’, Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society, third series 15 (2005), pp. 279-302.

connection with other colonists (fig. 9). Without organised meetings in northern Van Diemen's Land, a more informal and flexible colonial network emerged, fed by the exchange of correspondence and specimens by post. Anne Secord

reinforced the importance of written correspondence for facilitating the development of such relationships. Participating in written correspondence (whether as part of a large network or even if just between two people), was one of the main ways men formed a sense of community.8 The correspondence and circulation of specimens became a form of communal learning, with letters passed from hand to hand. In early nineteenth century Van Diemen's Land the importance of such a correspondence network was even more vital, as there was no other mechanism to support an interest in natural history.

Maintaining a healthy corresponding network had other advantages beyond tying together individuals across distances. It permitted flexibility of participation, enabling collecting activities to be fitted in around work or other commitments. Gunn commented to William Hooker upon his heavy workload in Launceston. He was not only a magistrate, but carried the assignment duties and immense paperwork required as Superintendent. Despite this he still managed to squeeze around these responsibilities for collecting trips, once travelling seventy- six miles to the Deloraine district and back in twenty-eight hours. 9

8 _{A. Secord, ‘Corresponding Interests: Artisans and Gentlemen in Nineteenth-Century Natural} History’, The British Journal for the History of Science, 27 (1994), pp. 383-408.

9 _{R.C. Gunn to W.J. Hooker, 30 Mar 1835, Burns and Skemp, VDL Correspondents, p. 41;} Buchanan, Collecting Localities, p. 41.

Figure 9 Map of Ronald Gunn’s collecting expeditions in Van Diemen's Land, 1830-1850.

Participants in the corresponding network also had the freedom to move about the colony without compromising their ability to participate in discussion. When Robert Lawrence moved from ‘Vermont’ to ‘Formosa’, Gunn lamented he could no longer easily access Lawrence’s herbarium and library, although the move did not cut Lawrence’s ability to communicate and share material.10 In turn, when Gunn moved from Launceston to Circular Head in the northwest, he made up for his isolation by striking up vigorous and highly detailed correspondence with his friends in Launceston. Correspondence shared with his close friend surgeon and fellow Scot James Grant (c.1813-65) formed a series they called the Circular Head Scientific Journal. With its grandiose, semi-humorous title, the journal was a private correspondence between Grant and Gunn dedicated purely to the scientific description and discussion of native birds.11

The ‘traditional’ idea of a letter as a communication between two people could be expanded through the simple act of sharing correspondence between friends. Gunn, Grant and others took this idea further, circulating a series of humorous, hand-written ‘newspapers’ between themselves.12 These papers were a mix of local gossip, poetry, newspaper clippings, illustrations and personal in- jokes. Written under pseudonyms and largely in a cryptic style, deciphering these

10 _{R.C. Gunn to W.J. Hooker, 18 Aug 1832, Burns and Skemp, VDL Correspondents, p. 22.} 11 _{The Journal was hand-written by Gunn and Grant, each responding to the other, drawing up the} pages in a journal style, with columns, volume and edition numbers, and (from Grant), even a motto ‘Flammam Alêre’, to feed the flame. Grant’s motto was accompanied by a small sketch of a hand pouring oil into a flaming lamp, the lamp sitting next to an open book featuring a picture of a kangaroo and an emu. Ted Davis has recently published an edited transcription of this

ornithological correspondence, being the first substantial scientific work on native birds produced by Australian residents. In total they discussed between sixty and seventy bird species, today nearly 200 are recognised in the island. Davis, Early Tasmanian Ornithology, pp. 4, 16, 32-3. 12 _{The titles of these ‘newspapers’ changed over time and only single copies were created. Some of} the titles they used included the Horton Herald, the North West Literary Chronicle, the Western Luminary and later simply 2nd Series. The whereabouts of all but the last of these papers is unknown, the bulk being listed as ‘missing’ by the Tasmanian Archives in 1989. The six-page 2nd Series is in the Wilson private collection.

today can be difficult, although it is clear that all hands in the newspapers had a sharp sense of humour, as well as a love of puns and other word-play. The time and wit injected into this group correspondence can be appreciated when examining a caricature produced by ‘Longnose & Co.’ (James Grant, possibly Joseph Milligan and others) of ‘Caleb Comical’ (Ronald Gunn). The image is of a portly, older Gunn sitting at home in front of a fire, sipping claret, smoking cigar, and resting a gouty toe (fig. 10).13

13 _{I.J. Wilson, 2}nd _{Series Nemo me impune lacessit unpublished transcription and editorial notes of}

the six-page newspaper from 1837 by ‘Longnose &Co.’, Wilson private collection (2010). For more on the use of humour amongst friends when discussing scientific topics see M.J.S. Rudwick, ‘Caricature as a Source for the History of Science: De la Beche’s Anti-Lyellian Sketches of 1831’, Isis 66 (1975), pp. 534-560; J.E. Browne, ‘Squibs and Snobs: Science in Humorous British Undergraduate Magazines around 1831’, History of Science 30 (1992), pp. 165-97; J.G. Paradis, ‘Science and Satire in Victorian Culture’, in Victorian Science in Context, ed. B. Lightman, (Chicago, 1997), pp. 143-75; J.E. Browne, ‘Darwin in Caricature: A Study in the Popularisation and Dissemination of Evolution’, American Philosophical Society 145 (2001), pp. 496-509 and D. Knight, The Age of Science: The Scientific World-view in the Nineteenth Century (Oxford, 1986), pp. 97-98.

Figure 10 ‘Otium cum dignitate –!’ or dignified leisure or ease. A caricature of an older, corpulent Gunn with gout, claret, a cigar and a good fire. Note the inclusion of paintings of Falstaff and Dan Lambert in the background, Falstaff being a fictional overweight knight from Shakespeare’s Henry IV (both parts) and Henry V. Daniel Lambert (1770-1809) was famous as England’s most rotund resident, both images suggesting that Gunn in his dotage had something to aspire to. Wilson private collection.

Of course not all natural history communication in the 1830s was by letter. When the opportunity arose, the men would meet together for an afternoon, evening discussion, or in special circumstances, for a field trip, just as Robert Lawrence had met Francis Lord in order to ‘improve themselves’ in chemistry and botany.14 Others went to some lengths to enjoy the company of like-minded friends. The Silesian Adolphus Schayer (1793-?) was employed by the Van Diemen's Land Company to maintain livestock on the northwest coast, living in

total isolation on Woolnorth Point, where he enjoyed the opportunity to pursue his interests in entomology and botany. He would regularly take passage on VDL company supply vessels on their return to Launceston, to socialise with Gunn and Grant.15 His publications on Van Diemen’s Land and collections from the island remain largely unknown, as his Germanic background caused him to correspond to a different metropolitan centre.16 His later reports on the scientific community in Van Diemen's Land to the Berlin Geographical Society demonstrated the importance of local connections:

Like in all young states material interests occupy all classes of the inhabitants: the club members are mainly squatters, public servants & businessmen who, out of love for learning strive to maintain from Europe an imported sense for higher noble pursuits in this far flung part of the world.17

Another member of this small corresponding network was Joseph Milligan (1807-1884) who was, like Grant, a surgeon and a Scotsman. It is not surprising that he gravitated towards other Scots like Gunn and Grant, further cementing their corresponding network. Milligan, like Schayer, worked for the Van

Diemen’s Land Company, but in a less isolated position at the Hampshire Hills.

15 _{I. McFarlane, ‘Adolphus Schayer: Van Diemen's Land and the Berlin Papers’, Tasmanian} Historical Research Association Papers and Proceedings 57 (Hobart, 2010), pp. 105-118. Schayer published several papers on Van Diemen's Land in Germany, describing an Aboriginal corroboree and later the Tasmanian Society. The endemic grasshopper Schayera baiulus bears his name and is currently on the Tasmanian Government’s threatened fauna list. The Tasmanian Herbarium holds nine specimens collected by Schayer at Woolnorth, each bearing a different collecting number that suggests the existence of much large botanical collection, most likely held in Germany.

16 _{A similar observation has been made of the enormous scientific contributions on the mainland} of Australia by Ludwig Leichhardt. See Barker and Barker, 'Botanical Contributions Overlooked’, p. 60.

17 _{A. Schayer providing an ‘overview of the general state of affairs’ in Van Diemen's Land, printed} in the monthly reports of the Berlin Geographical Society (1845), cited in McFarlane, ‘Adolphus Schayer’, p. 115.

He was especially interested in geology, but also enjoyed botany, collecting and exchanging specimens with Gunn that were later forwarded to William Hooker. His botanical coups included joining Sir John and Lady Franklin on the overland expedition to Macquarie Harbour in 1842, during which time he wrote several letters to Gunn in his hurried, messy hand, displaying a man who bounded with enthusiasm perhaps at the expense of thoroughness – ‘I have seen the

Grasstrees (Richea or whatever it is) you told me I might have seen it at St. Clair’.18 The botanical content of his letters battled for space with a general description of the expedition, Lady Franklin’s interjections, geological notes and musings on his fondness for the fair Miss Lawrence, ‘my especial favourite’.19 He married Miss Eliza Lawrence, sister of Robert and the second daughter of William Lawrence the following year.20

Milligan later became the secretary of the Royal Society of Tasmania, despite his reputation for being highly disorganised. William Archer later described Milligan to Joseph Hooker as ‘a good collector, but quite destitute of the organ of order’.21 Despite this, Milligan contributed greatly to the colony’s scientific societies and proved a good friend and companion in the field.22

18 _{J. Milligan to R.C. Gunn, 15 Apr 1842, ML A316.} 19 _{J. Milligan to R.C. Gunn 15 Apr, 16 May 1842, ML A316.}

20 _{Eliza died after giving birth to a son on Flinders Island, sixteen months after they were married.} W.G. Hoddinott, 'Milligan, Joseph (1807 - 1884)', Australian Dictionary of Biography, online ed., accessed 25 Feb 2010, http://www.adb.online.anu.edu.au/biogs/A020199b.htm.

21 _{W. Archer to J.D. Hooker, 20 Jul 1860, Kew DC 218.}

22 _{Milligan was made FLS in 1850 and has been commemorated in the lily genus Milligania, the} dwarf leatherwood Eucryphia milliganii (collected during the Macquarie Harbour expedition), as well as several other showy daisies, epacrids and proteas. His other notable work was in amassing a word list of tribal dialects of the Tasmanian Aborigines on Flinders Island where Milligan was posted as the medical officer. J. Milligan ‘Vocabulary of Dialects of the Aboriginal Tribes of Tasmania’ and ‘On the Dialects and Language of the Aboriginal Tribes of Tasmania, and their Manners and Customs’, Papers and Proceedings of the Royal Society of Tasmania, 3 (Hobart, 1855), pp. 239-274, 275-282. These articles included lists of single words, some simple phrases, Aboriginal place names and names of men and women. Amongst the hundreds of words, Milligan

His location at the Hampshire Hills brought him into contact with another visiting naturalist and contributor to Vandemonian botany, James Backhouse, a Quaker missionary and nurseryman from York, who with his companion George Washington Walker spent six years travelling the Australian colonies to examine the welfare of convicts. Backhouse was particularly interested in ‘useful’ plants that could be cultivated for edible or ornamental applications, and during his time in the colony published two articles on these topics in the Hobart Town

Almanack.23

Backhouse spent time in the Hampshire Hills during December and January of 1832 and 1833 where Milligan hosted him, and they went on several excursions together. Backhouse’s commercial horticultural training would have given Milligan a rare chance to work alongside a ‘professional’, although the broad use of this term in the nineteenth century is not without contention.24 Similarly, Ronald Gunn took advantage of Backhouse’s time in the north of the colony, meeting Backhouse and Walker at the Meander River as they made their way to Launceston. Backhouse noted that Gunn was ‘the most industrious botanist in Van Diemen's Land’, but the Quakers turned down Gunn’s invitation

recorded six plant names for Blandfordia nobilis, (today B. punicea), the gum tree (Eucalyptus), blackwood (today Acacia melanoxylon), waratah (Telopea truncata) and a coastal wattle Acacia maritime (today A. terminalis). For a fuller discussion of Milligan’s lists as well as putting them into context with similar collections see N.J.B. Plomley, A Word-List of the Tasmanian Aboriginal Languages, Launceston, 1976).

23 _{Backhouse, ‘Esculent Plants’ (1834), and ‘Index Plantarum’ (1835). These are further discussed} in chapter 1. Backhouse is remembered in Correa backhouseana, named for him by William Hooker in 1834.

24 _{Endersby discusses the use and meanings of terms like ‘professional’, ‘amateur’, ‘philosophical’} and ‘scientific’ in the first half of the nineteenth century, when Hooker and his contemporaries were not attempting to ‘professionalise’ science, because these men attached negative connotations to the word ‘professional’. It was acceptable to be ‘professed’, that is to have a vocation for botany, where disinterested study was aspired to rather than fulfilling any commercial role. Endersby, Imperial Nature, pp. 21-26.

to form a botanical party, as the two travellers had other appointments in the settled districts.25