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History of the Natural World by Oliver Goldsmith, Studio Editions, pp
256, 17.95 Pounds

It’s odd to think that had there been television in the 18th century,
Oliver Goldsmith might have been the David Attenborough of his day. Most
people connect Goldsmith with fine prose, poetry and The Vicar of Wakefield,
but he also applied his talents to natural history. His History of the Earth
and Animated Nature, published in 1771, was an attempt to inspire his readers
to take an interest in the world around them. I imagine that few failed
to fall under his spell.

This beautiful shortened version of Goldsmith’s enormous work has an
advantage over the original apart from its comparative brevity. It is peppered
with glorious illustrations from a later book, the Dictionnaire Universel
d’Histoire Naturelle by Charles d’Orbigny. The two are worthy partners.

Goldsmith’s writing is a model for today’s zoologists, clear, informative
and lively – if sometimes wrong. He weaves into his descriptions anecdotes
that conjure up colourful pictures of animals he and most of his readers
would never see. We may find them amusing today, with our superior knowledge
of the natural world, but two centuries ago they probably ssemed as believable
as cannibal chimps and dancing bees.

Goldsmith had a few of his own ideas about science. He had a healthy
contempt for taxonomists and their wares. Boring classifications could only
put people off the important business of natural history – studying the
fascinating habits of the animals, he maintained.

But he was well versed in some aspects of biology (he trained as a doctor),
and had a knack for explaining some of the finer points: ‘the bowels of
a ruminating animal may be considered a laboratory, with vessels in it,
fitted for various transmutations’ is a knowledgeable description. He was
aware of the fact that although the sheep is ‘servile .. divested of all
inclinations of its own’, this was the result of ‘Human industry .. to
improve its utility’.

On the other hand, he thought the capybara a fish-eating relative of
the pig. And he seemed quite prepared to believe that although its back
end might taste fishy, the head was good to eat ‘like the beaver, whose
fore parts taste like flesh, and the hind like the fish it feeds on’.

Goldsmith’s glowing words form wonderful descriptions of things his
readers will never see or hear. Better than any soundtrack, is this description
of the hyena’s cry: ‘This which I have often heard, is very peculiar; its
beginning resembles the voice of a man moaning, and its latter part as if
he were making a violent effort to vomit.’ He is good on smells too, especially
when tackling mustelids, or ‘stinkards’ as he calls them. ‘The smell of
our weasels and ermines, and polecats is fragrance itself when compared
to the skunk’, whose smell is ‘intolerably foetid and loathsome’. The scent
glands on a weasel are effective enough, but ‘these glands in the animal
now under consideration are much larger and furnish a matter sublimed to
a degree of putrescence that is truly amazing’ – Attenborough and Fungus
the Bogeyman make a potent combination.

Goldsmith seems to have been better on mammals than other types of animal,
although he places whales among the fishes. Even so, he knew that whales
were heading for extinction: ‘so great has been the slaughter of whales
for more than two ages, they begin to grow thinner every day.’ Tortoises
sit alongside crabs and garden snails, while less surprisingly amphibians
are grouped with reptiles.

Invertebrates tickled Goldsmith’s fancy rather less than the bigger
beasts. Worms, starfish and polypi are ‘nauseous and despicable creatures,
that excite our curiosity chiefly by their imperfections’. His colour returns
with an animal he probably knew more about – the bedbug, which ‘lurks like
a robber, in the most secret parts of the bed; takes advantage of every
chink and cranny, to make a secure lodgement .. but when darkness promises
security, it then issues from every corner of the bed, drops form the tester,
crawls from behind the arras and travels with great assiduity to the unhappy
patient ..’

In the preface to Goldsmith’s natural history, Gerald Durrell quotes
a passage from a scientific paper analysing the habits of a hermit crab
– a passage destined to be understood only by another specialist. If only
more biologists read Goldsmith.