Professor Amanda Callaghan of the University of Reading contacted me recently. She is Curator of the Cole Museum of Zoology which moved into new premises in 2020. The museum is unusual for a university departmental museum in that the collection has survived intact since its heyday in the 1906-1939 tenure of Francis Joseph Cole FRS (1872-1959) as professor of zoology. During the move Amanda had come across specimens and exhibits prepared or donated by Eric Thomas Brazil Francis (1900-1993). In wanting to know more about him she came across the articles I had written on this website (here, here and here). Francis was an undergraduate and postgraduate student in Reading who worked closely with Coles and Nellie Barbara Eales (1889-1989).
A search of the catalogue shows 59 specimens in the collection attributed to Eric Francis. Some relate directly to his doctoral work and book, The Anatomy of the Salamander, published in 1933 (reprinted by the Society for the Study of Amphibians and Reptiles in the USA in 2002), for example the hyoid of Salamandra salamandra (often known in the early decades of the 20th century by Schreiber’s name for the species, S. maculata). There are anatomical specimens from a number of birds and mammals and even a few invertebrates. A more unusual exhibit is shown in the photograph. It is a brass model of the fang-erecting mechanism of vipers, ‘made and presented by Mr Eric Thomas Brazil Francis’. The catalogue entry is shown in a footnote below.
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| Model of Fang-erecting Mechanism |
Francis left Reading to become Assistant Lecturer in Sheffield in 1933. John Ebling in his obituary of Francis (included here) wrote that he graduated from Reading in 1929 and received his PhD in 1933. Since he was referred to as Mr and not Dr in the museum catalogue, I think we can be pretty sure that the model was made sometime between the late 1920s and 1933.
I had assumed that Francis had been an undergraduate in Reading from shortly after the First World War (when it was a university college and had to award external London degrees). However, the 1921 Census is now available and shows that ETBF was working as a ‘Fruit and Poultry Farmer’ in the employment of his father at Hill Crest, Rotherfield Peppard, Oxfordshire. 4½ miles north of Reading. He was then 21. Since he graduated in 1929 it would seem that he was a late starter as a university student and that he was registered as an external student of London before Reading achieved university status in 1926. It would seem that although his first degree was awarded in 1929 he had to remain on London’s books until graduation.
My guess is that the dissections of pheasants in the collection, prepared by ETBF, were from his father’s farm since in the 1911 and 1921 censuses Thomas Brazil Francis is shown as Game Farm Manager as well as, in 1921, owning his own fruit and poultry farm.
The catalogue of specimens in the Cole Museum can be found here. There is also information about public opening hours and access to the collection:
The Cole Museum of Zoology represents a snapshot of animal diversity in the early 20th century and has always been used to teach zoology and comparative anatomy. The Museum is home to thousands of specimens of great zoological significance, including taxidermy, skeletons, histological preparations, fluid-preserved dissections, fossil material, casts, and some superb models of developmental stages and extinct animals.
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| Cole Museum of Zoology - from the website |
When I saw the photograph of the model of the snake’s jaw, I realised I had seen something very similar. More on this in the next article.
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The catalogue entry for the model:
The bones of one side only are represented. No teeth other than the poison-fang are shewn. All parts that would unnecessarily complicate the model have been omitted. The condition represented is that found in Crotalus and Ancistrodon. which have but a single fang. The Viperinae have a number of reserve fangs in addition, but the mechanism is essentially the same. The morphological changes that have occurred to bring about the movement of the maxillary bone and its associated teeth are: the great shortening of the maxilla from front to rear with the consequent elongation of the os transversum (ectopterygoid) and the extremely free horizontal articulation between these two bones; the abbreviation of the palatine bone. and the freely mobile joint between it and the pterygoid (endopterygoid); and the articulation of the maxilla and the prefrontal being such as to allow the former to be rotated and erected easily, while the prefronto-frontal joint is a limited one. The os transversum is firmly united to the pterygoid. The erection of the fang is effected by the spheno-pterygoid muscle (represented by the sliding vertical rod in the model) which originates in the sphenoid crest at the base of the cranium and, running backwards and outwards, is inserted into the moveable pterygoid plate. The fang is retracted by the contraction of the ectopterygoid muscle (represented by a spring) which arises from the quadrato-mandibular joint and is inserted into the maxillary bone. The squamosal and its articulation with the quadrate and the sliding-surface articulation of the squamosal with the parietal have been omitted, also the ligamentous attachment of the pterygoid to the quadrato-mandibular joint. The advantage to the animal of this elaborate mechanism is that it is enabled to grow a longer fang and so to implant its venom more deeply in its victim. Note that the orifices of the fang are not terminal. thus revealing the way in which the duct has arisen by a flattening of the fang and the curling over of the edges to meet and fuse and form a closed tube. Those front-fanged snakes exhibiting this type of fang are termed Solenoglypha, while those whose fangs shew an open groove are termed Proteroglypha. The connection between the duct in the fang and that in the maxilla is effected by a membranous sheath surrounding the base of the fang. Cf. No.
1744. See Noguchi. Snake Venoms. p. 64. Plates 21 and 22. Carnegie Inst. Wash. 1909
The Noguchi book can be found online in the Biodiversity Heritage Library here.
The use of ‘shew’ instead of ‘show’ reminds me that ETBF always this form in his notes. Contrary to statements online that ‘shew’ had become obsolete earlier, it was still in common use well into the 20th century and many academics would never have used ‘show’ in its place.
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