An Ambidextrous Collector: The Lively, Faithful Portrait of a Great Salem Naturalist

I CAN write with authority about this book, for I was in on it from the beginning. Moreover, I knew Morse for many, many years, His life was one long adventure, for Morse was built that way: affectionate, lovable, impulsive, irresponsible, but talented beyond possible exaggeration. As a student of Agassiz he was bold and independent, and when the old professor acted in too European a manner, so to speak, and failed to give his students credit for work they did and he proposed to publish, Morse objected. There was a rift, and afterwards a rapprochement — which made Morse happy for the rest of his life.

Morse was an artist to his finger tips. He drew beautifully. And such intellectual curiosity as his I have never known, for he wrote on everything from brachiopods to Japanese latrines. Incidentally, he was the one to point out that the brachiopods, which had always been considered to be aberrant mollusks, were no such thing, and all zoologists remember and hail him for this contribution.

Morse would collect anything. He was the world’s prime pack rat, and he never threw anything away. His collection of Japanese pottery is the finest that has ever been gathered. Even before he became of age his collection of mollusks brought him into the ken of all the distinguished naturalists of his day. And this was before 1860.

It is hard to touch on all the facets of this man’s activity. He brought biology to Japan, where he was loved and revered by his students— perhaps to this day, if we knew the true inwardness of the Japanese situation. For it is hard to believe that all the boys he loved and who quite obviously loved him — most of them are now old, distinguished, and retired professors — should have changed their civilized sentiments at the behest of a group of crazy warmongers.

My children were fascinated because Morse could draw a picture using both hands, doing the two sides of a butterfly at the same time perfectly symmetrically, or a snail coiled dexterously with one hand and sinistrally with the other. This ability derived from

his ambidexterity, which was revealed to him in his youth when he injured his right hand and, to save time, learned to use his left.

In my little foreword to this book I have told of going with a friend to Morse’s house during the great Salem fire. We found him, quite unconcerned, sitting on a white wooden box, with his feet on the table, playing a flute with his nose. He said, “The Solomon Islanders can do this. Why shouldn’t I learn?” He was utterly uninterested as we tried to gather together his Japanese decorations, some superb objects of art, books and manuscripts, for removal to a safe place. In a short time a policeman came and said the wind had changed and the house was no longer in danger.

Morse jumped up, patted the top of his head with one hand and rubbed his stomach with the other, using a quick circular motion. (Try this and see if you can do it. I bet you can’t.) Then he opened the box he had been sitting on. It contained a handsome engraved crystal jar, marked “The brain of Edward S. Morse. Born June 18, 1838. Died ________. Bequeathed by him to the Wistar Institute of Anatomy, Philadelphia.” He explained that as the notion spread that he could use his cerebral hemispheres independently one of the other, his old friend Bert Wilder, at Cornell, and the Wistar Institute had written in, asking for his brain. He tossed a coin, Wistar won, and the bequest of the crystal jar was the result.

Miss Wayman has done a first-rate, workmanlike job. She has gathered all the facts, arrayed them in an orderly and extremely accurate manner, and without ostentation has produced a book that ranks among the best biographies which have appeared in the last decade. All too many biographers of the present day want to step into the center of the stage themselves, and not infrequently they crowd to one side the person of whom they write. This, Miss Wayman never does. She is loyal to Morse first, last, and all the time, and one can see that she has developed a great affection for him. While her story is obviously inspired by great respect, her praise never becomes fulsome, and there is nothing sugary about what she writes.

THOMAS BARBOUR