Poetry In Larvae: The Love Songs of Walter Garstang

by Stephen J. Gertz

After dinner and drinks you've charmed your prospective lover to come up to your place for "a cup of coffee."

You dim the lights, ignite the fireplace, cue Miles Davis' Kind of Blue. The two of you settle down in front of the fire.  You make your move and open a volume of verse you keep nearby for such occasions and begin to read aloud.

The Veliger's a lively tar, the liveliest afloat,
A whirling wheel on either side propels his little boat;
But when the danger signal warns his bustling submarine,
He stops the engine, shuts the port, and drops below unseen.

Thus begins The Ballad of the Veliger or How the Gastropod Got Its Twist by Walter Garstang, and if you've invested your recitation with the seductive baritone verve of Barry White you'll be able to drop below unseen, work your bustling submarine,  get your gastropod's groove back, and win your heart's desire.

Perhaps her swoon was underwhelming. Double-down with this kinky paean to Eros:

Oikopleura, masquerading as larval Ascidian,

Spins a jelly-bubble-house about its meridian:

His tail, doubled under, creates a good draught,

that drives water forward and sucks it in aft.

If that ode to  Oikopleura doesn't warm her she's an invaginate gastrula, will flee like a gazelle chased by cheetah, and you'll sleep alone.

One of the more unusual volumes in the annals of poetry, Larval Forms by Walter Garstang (1868-1949), is a collection posthumously published in 1951 that includes these salutes to marine invertebrates:

• The Amphiblastula and the Origin of Sponges

• The Invaginate Gastrula and the Planula
• The Origin of Cnidoblasts and Cnidozoa
• Conaria and Co.
• Mülleria and the Ctenophore
• The Onchosphere
• The Trochophores
• Mitraria's Fan Dance
• The Ballad of the Veliger, or How the Gastropod got its Twist
• Echinospira's Double Shell
• The Nauplius and the Protaspis
• Kentrogon
• Isopod Phylogeny
• The Millipede's Egg-tooth
• Actinotrocha
• Cyphonautes
• Echinoderm Larvae and the Origin of Quinqueradial Symmetry
• The Pentacrinule
• Tornaria's Water-Works
• Oikopleura, Jelly-builder
• The Ancestry of Vertebrates
• Leptocephalus brevirostris, the Larva of the Eel
• The Axolotl and the Ammocoete
• An Oceanographer's Dream
• To a Herring Gull

The poems cleverly limn the form, function and development of various larval invertebrates as well as illustrate some of the contemporary controversies in evolutionary biology.  The Ballad of the Veliger is Garstang's most well-known poem, originally privately published in a small edition in 1928 and distributed to fellow members of the Marine Biological Association of the United Kingdom.

Walter Garstang.

 During his career "Garstang made fundamental contributions to biological theory...and for more than half a century was one of the outstanding personalities of British zoology" (Obituary, Journal of the Marine Biological Assoc. of the U.K., Vol 29, No. 3, 1951).

To a Herring Gull originally appeared in the Oxford Magazine, February 6, 1920. It is clearly not about a marine invertebrate; marine birds were another interest of Garstang's. It is not to be confused with To a Schmaltz Herring, Chaim Yonkel's ode to Clupeidae filleted and preserved in brine and brown sugar and rendered in chicken or goose fat; the Jewish food with magical aphrodisiac powers typically employed when The Ballad of the Veliger fails to inspire oomph when the Sabbath ends on Saturday night and foreplay begins.

Tornaria's Water-Works is, as you've likely guessed, Garstang's retelling of the myth of Niobe from the perspective of a marine invertebrate that eventually metamorphoses into a worm. Read it and weep.

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GARSTANG, Walter. Larval Forms, with Other Zoological Verses. Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1951. First edition. Octavo. 85 pp. Illustrated. 
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Knorr Shows Sea Shells By The Sea Shore

By Stephen J. Gertz

In Nuremberg, 1757 through 1772, Georg Wolfgang Knorr (1705-1761), an engraver of great skill who, through self-study, learned a great deal about art and the natural sciences, published Vergnügen der Augen und des Gemüths, in Vorstellung einer allgemeinen Sammlung von Muscheln und andern Geschöpfen welche im Meer gefunden werden (Pleasure of the Eyes and Mind in a General Collection of Shells and Other Creatures Which Are Found in the Sea).

In six parts containing 190 hand-colored copperplate engravings of great beauty the book was an artistic triumph if not one of science; Knorr's casual approach ignored scientific order. The book was a simple - albeit magnificent - record of sea shells found in collections in Holland and Germany, including that of Martin Houttuyn, a doctor in Amsterdam whose collection contained many rare species.

It was soon issued in a French translation, Delices des yeux et de l'esprit... (1760-1773) and, later, an edition in Dutch by the heirs of Houttuyn as Verlustiging der oogen en van den geest... (1770-1775), a copy of which has recently come into the marketplace offered by Shapero Rare Books of London.

Nuremberg was, at the time, the European center for finely illustrated natural history books, led by J. Trew, a wealthy Nuremberg physician who organized and encouraged a salon of artists and scientists, including Knorr who earned his first major success with his illustrations to  Johannes Jacob Scheuzer's Physica Sacra (1731-1735) in which he depicted the solar system with the zodiac as the sphere of stars. Many of the shells that Knorr depicted in Vergnügen der Augen und des Gemüths... came from Trew's personal collection in addition to Martin Houttuyn's.

Whether in German, French, or Dutch, Knorr's book of shells became an enormous popular success. It will come as no surprise that copies were broken up and the stunning hand-colored plates - which often exceeded the beauty of the shells in nature - sold separately. There is no shortage of modern reproductions currently offered for sale.

Curiously, Knorr, whether in German, French or Dutch, neglects to illustrate one of the Muscheln closely associated with him, the Creamy Garlic Shell found strewn upon the shores of grocery store shelves throughout the Western world. We rectify that omission here:

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KNORR, Georg Wofgang. Verlustiging der oogen en van den geest: of verzameling van allerley bekende hoorens en schulpen, die in haar eigen kleuren afgebeeld zyn. Amsterdam: By de Erven van F. Houttuyn, 1770-1775. First edition in Dutch. Six parts in two quarto volumes (26.1 x 20.5 cm). Six letterpress titles and 190 hand-colored copperplate engravings by J.A. Joniger, J.A. Eisenmann, A. Hoffer and others after Knorr, C. Dietsch, J. Wartenaar, and others.

Landwehr 96. Nissen ZBI 2236. Cf. Dance, Shell Collecting, pp. 156-157.

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Images courtesy of Shapero Rare Books, with our thanks.

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