Marshall & Hurst’s Practical Zoology: a textbook from the 1800s we used in the mid 1900s

It would be difficult for today’s students to comprehend that in the early 1960s students were using a textbook on practical zoology written by academics who both died before 1900. The book must have made a lot of money for its publishers, originally Smith, Elder & Co of London. The first edition of  A Junior Course of Practical Zoology appeared in 1887. Its authors were Arthur Milnes Marshall FRS and Charles Herbert Hurst, professor and lecturer respectively in Owens College, Manchester, part of the federal Victoria University which eventually morphed into the University of Manchester.

There is an excellent articles on Marshall (1852-1893) and his legacy online here* but much less has been published on his co-author, Charles Herbert Hurst.

Hurst was born in 1855 in Rochdale, Lancashire the son of a cotton spinner; a cotton spinner not in the sense of a man who spun cotton himself but of the owner of a factory for spinning cotton. He was educated at Manchester Grammar School and then went to the Royal College of Science in London (now Imperial College) as a science teacher in training. There he was influenced greatly by Thomas Henry Huxley. After a spell teaching at a boarding school in Yorkshire, he returned to Huxley for an honours degree in biology. His biographer is sketchy on what happened next other than that ‘he went abroad to continue his zoological studies’ after spending some time in Manchester working with Marshall. Around 1883 at Marshall’s invitation, he returned to Manchester as his assistant. In 1889, having taken advantage of a long period of leave, he graduated from the University of Leipzig with a PhD on the life-history of the gnat and subsequently published on the anatomy and sense organs of insects.

Arthur Milnes Marshall

The accidental death of his chief and friend Marshall in 1893 at the age of 41 saw Hurst running the department until the end of the academic session. However, he was greatly disappointed not be appointed in Marshall’s stead. Perhaps in a huff he moved to Ireland, as demonstrator in zoology at the Royal College of Science, Dublin (later absorbed by University College, Dublin) which was held together with a lectureship at the Ringsend Fishery School. Known for the accuracy of his work, he was uninterested in field work, considering his memory not suited to systematics. This is what his biographer wrote of his character:

With that sturdiness of character so marked in the people of the North of England he had, to a certain extent, the less amiable quality of outspokenness which is apt to offend the more sensitive southerner. Yet no one would give himself more trouble than he did to help a student,—time, knowledge, books, specimens were freely placed at anyone’s disposal.

Hurst worked on the fossil bird Archaeopteryx, and visited Berlin to examine a specimen. He believed the consensus of the time on the function of the wing bones to be wrong.

Hurst, known for the clarity of his drawings, was also an amateur artist. Somerset & Wood Fine Art Ltd have some of his drawings and watercolour landscapes for sale. This is one of them:

Like Marshall, Hurst had an unfortunate and early death. Around Christmas 1897 he had a number of teeth removed, followed by what is described as the loss of blood and then ‘blood-poisoning’. Dublin newspapers show he gave a very well attended series of public lectures in January 1898. However, his biographer^†, ’T.J.’, states that he was in a weakened state when he caught influenza and died on 10 May 1898, aged 42.

I have been unable to find a photograph of Hurst.

The textbook Marshall & Hurst was clearly an immediate success, several editions appearing while the authors were alive. Later editions were revised by Frederick William Gamble (1869-1926) who had an early career remarkably similar to that of Hurst: Manchester Grammar School, Owens College, University of Leipzig and then back to Manchester. He became Professor of Zoology in Birmingham in 1909. Editions bearing his name were published until 1928. A lecturer in Gamble’s department, Herbert Greenway Newth (1885-1940) then took on the job. The last edition I have found was published in 1937; by then John Murray had succeeded Smith, Elder. The later editions were in interesting hands. Newth and his wife were leading members of the Communist Party in Birmingham during the 1930s. After Newth’s death in 1940 after a long period of illness, Annie or Nan Newth, a schoolteacher and school librarian, became associated with what were described as ‘subversive’ activities first in Birmingham and then in London. A Security Service (MI5) dossier on the couple is held at the National Archives. David Richmond Newth (1921-1988), their son whom I knew distantly, was Professor of Zoology in Glasgow from 1965 until retirement in 1981. Maurice Wilkins in his book, The Third Man of the Double Helix (OUP 2003), describes lodging with the Newths in Birmingham (moving out when he left the Communist Party) and, later, with Nan after she moved to London.

Hurst's drawing of Vorticella

Marshall & Hurst, a book for laboratory practicals, was very much in the ‘types’ tradition of T.H. Huxley, with the student working through a series of representatives of the major groups of animals from an amoeba to a mammal and bird. My copy disappeared some years ago but the third edition can be found in its entirety online. Organisms described are: Amoeba, Paramecium, Opalina, Vorticella, Hydra, Fasciola, Hirudo, Lumbricus, Anodonta, Helix, Astacus, Periplaneta, Amphioxus, and then on to dogfish, rabbit and pigeon. There were sections on the tools needed for dissection and on microscopical techniques. There were few diagrams; the student had to work from the step-by-step description.

Absent from this book was the frog. This was because Marshall had published a book on this animal in 1882. Because the frog was a major type in most syllabuses, it cannot have escaped the publisher or the royalty-earning author that two books were needed by students rather than just one. Later editions of The Frog were again revised first by Gamble and then by Newth.

The book continued in use because the type system of instruction remained part of advanced school and university teaching for so long. But perhaps I should not have been so surprised to realise we had been using a book from the 1800s in the mid-1900s. After all I looked something up in the ever useful J.Z. Young the other day—the first edition of Life of Vertebrates, intended to replace the approach of old textbooks like Marshall & Hurst, was published 70 years ago!

Marshall's drawing of the cranial nerves and brain of the dogfish
Who can forget the mixed smell of fish and formalin and digging out the cranial nerves
from cartilage?

*Luck’s account of Marshall’s death (being hit by a falling rock) does not accord with detailed accounts of the inquest. It would seem that he was standing or sitting on a rock on Scafell in the Lake District which gave way and he then fell to his death. There is no mention of that he could have been struck by a falling rock (Maryport Advertiser, 6 January 1894). The possibility that he died of natural causes and then fell, dislodging a rock in the process, does not seem to have been considered by the coroner and no autopsy appears to have been done.

†T.J. is obviously Thomas Johnson (1863-1954), Professor of Botany for 36 years in the Catholic University of Ireland (from 1909 University College Dublin), an active contributor to the Irish Naturalist.

Johnson T. 1898. C. Herbert Hurst, Ph.D. The Irish Naturalist 7, 153-155.