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| Ludwig Glauert (National Library of Australia) |
Ludwig Glauert was, I discovered when in The Kimberley of Western Australia, a kingpin of biological science in Western Australia in the early years of the 20th Century. For many years he was at the Western Australian Museum and for many of those years he was the only resident scientist in the state investigating the geology, particularly the palaeontology, and zoology of Western Australia. As well as his investigations of the extinct marsupial megafauna he became the expert on the reptiles of the state.
When I first saw the name Glauert I assumed he was a museum-minded German or Swiss national who had made his way to an opening in Australia. I was wrong. Glauert was born in Sheffield. Not only was he born in Sheffield he was educated at the precursors of the University of Sheffield—Firth College and the Technical School. Ludwig Glauert, fellow Sheffield graduates, was one of us.
Ludwig Glauert’s father, Johann Ernst Luis Heinrich, had been born in Germany in 1846. There he married a German-born Englishwoman, Amanda Watkinson, in 1877. They then moved to Sheffield where Ludwig was born on 5 May 1879. In the censuses Ludwig’s father is described as a hardware merchant and exporter of steel cutlery. In 1881 he was the employer of four men and three women. It would seem that Glauert senior, who was known as Louis, was known in the city before 1979 since he was admitted as a Freemason in 1872. He became a British subject in 1893.
The very short biographies of Ludwig state that he was trained as a geologist and spent four years as a demonstrator at Firth College. If I read the history correctly geology was taught as an offshoot of mining, possibly wholly by evening classes. Glauert then worked for his father (in the 1901 census he is listed as a ‘merchant’s clerk’).
Geology at the proto-university of Sheffield was driven by somebody special: Henry Clifton Sorby FRS (1826-1908). Sorby was born in Sheffield, the grandson of a Master Cutler and descendant of the first Master Cutler. He was largely self-taught and was active in research in chemistry, metallurgy and biology as well as in geology. At the age of 31 he was elected to the Royal Society. Sorby never married and lived with his widowed mother. After her death he bought a yacht to spend the summer months on the estuaries of rivers in eastern England, making observations and collecting samples.
Ludwig was not the only scientist in the family. His brother, Hermann Glauert FRS (1892-1934) was a mathematician and head of the aerodynamics department at the Royal Aircraft Establishment, Farnborough. His sister, Elsa, was a noted mathematician at Cambridge; she could sit the examinations but not, of course, being a she, receive a degree.
Ludwig Glauert was active in the Sheffield Naturalists’ Club, serving on its Council along with academics from the university (Alfred Denny (1860-1947), for example, the first Professor of Biology), amateur naturalists and geologists. The goings-on of the Club were reported in the local press.
Ludwig married Winifred Aimee Beresford in Sheffield in 1907. He then took a job with the geological survey of the Mines Department of Western Australia as palaeontologist based at the museum in Perth. Then, in 1910, he was appointed to the staff of the museum, as the director's scientific assistant. In 1914 he was promoted to Keeper of Geology and Ethnology.
For six years between 1909 and 1915 he worked in the field on the Pleistocene limestone of the Margaret River Caves, investigating the remains of several species of extinct marsupials and monotremes and of eastern Australian and Tasmanian mammals whose presence in Western Australia had never been suspected.
The story of the Margaret River Caves by Lindsay Hatcher includes the following description of how Glauert became involved as well as of the species and specimens found there:
Reports of the discovery of Mammoth Cave date back to as early as 1895. Mammoth Cave was located by Surveyor Mr Marmaduke Terry in September 1900, and explored by Tim Connelly and Ned Dawson, with Ned being the first to go through the cave and discover the “back door”. Tim conducted unofficial tours through the cave until 1904 when it was officially opened as a tourist cave. He also named the cave “The Dawn of Creation” perhaps due to the expanse of light reflecting off the stream in winter or maybe because of the abundance of fossils found in the cave.
In 1904 Edgar Robinson; superintendent of the caves and cave guide Tim Connelly were constructing a walkway roughly below the largest solution pipe some 50 metres into the cave (i.e. near the top platform). One of these gentlemen unearthed some rather odd bones. In the same year Connelly notified his good friend Colonel Le Souef of the find. At the time Le Souef had considerable standing within the scientific community as he had been responsible for establishing the Perth Zoological gardens in the 1890’s.
Le Souef in turn notified Mr Bernard Woodward – Director of the W.A. Museum. At this time no one was actively working in Palaeontology and very little work was being done in Archaeology. Bernard Woodward contacted his cousin Mr H.P. Woodward who was working in the Mines Dept., with the fledgling Geological Survey of W.A. It turned out that H.P. Woodward had on staff a young graduate, just out of university and freshly arrived from England, (the Midlands he believed) by the name of Ludwig Glauert.
Glauert was seconded from the Mines Dept. to the Museum with the brief of Palaeontological Research in the entire South-West. During the years of 1909-1915 two sites in Mammoth Cave; the “Le Souef” and the “Glauert” sites were excavated by the W.A. Museum. Many bones of extinct animals including megafauna bones were found; the fossil material was removed and is now stored in the W.A. Museum.
Glauert first completed the “Le Souef” dig – at the base of the old solution pipe. It was from this site that a Giant Echidna (Zaglossus hacketti), a Short-faced Kangaroo (Simosthenurus occidentalis) and a Wombat (Vombatus hacketti) were found. The almost complete wombat skeleton was found in the solution pipe, suggesting it perished in the original pipe which now lies on top of the rockpile. Glauert then moved to the north wall to what is known as the “Glauert” dig.
The material in which the bones were embedded comprised two groups; the lower series consisted of reddish coarse sand containing fragments of wood and gastropod shells in addition to the bones, with occasional bands of black loamy soil of 25mm thickness. Layers of stalagmite (flowstone) often enclosed the bones, wood fragments and bearing casts of eucalyptus leaves were not uncommon. One of these layers was completely covering the sediments, thus protecting the animal remains. The upper layer was a sandy bed which was yellowish in colour; the bones it contained were much fresher in appearance compared with the lower sediments.
Glauert believed that the bone bearing deposit was a remnant of a mass of bone breccia which at one time partly filled the large chamber. This remnant was protected by a coating of flowstone for many years until the protection was undermined by the stream flowing through the cave and much of the material with its priceless store of animal remains was washed away and lost to science.
Excavations produced a sizeable fossil collection, some 10,000 specimens; his total excavation amounted to 30 cubic metres of soil. Unfortunately the stratigraphical relationship was poorly documented, probably due to inadequate resources and time constraints, making any assessment of relative ages of the material extremely hard.
The assemblage contains 34 vertebrate species, most of which are small and typical of the south-west today. Several types of large extinct animals are represented i.e. Megafauna. These include the Giant Echidna (Zaglossus hacketti), Wombat (Vombatus hacketti), Wallaby (Wallabia kitcheneri), the giant extinct diprotodontid (Zygomaturus trilobus), extinct browsing kangaroos (Simosthenurus occidentalis and Simosthenurus brownei) and the Marsupial Lion (Thylacoleo carnifex). Other groups of animals represented are those which still occur in Eastern Australia or Tasmania: the Koala (Phascolarctos cinereus), Tasmanian Devil (Sarcophilus harrisii) and Tasmanian Tiger (Thylacinus cynocephalus). The south-west corner seems to have changed very little even though the giant marsupial fauna has disappeared.
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| Ludwig Glauert in the Western Australian Museum with remains of fossil marsupials from Mammoth Cave, Margaret River Photograph by EL Mitchell first published in the Western Mail 19 June 1914 National Library of Australia |
News of his work at Margaret River reached Sheffield. The Sheffield Daily Telegraph of Friday 8 April 1910 reported the findings under the headline, ‘Proves Useful in Australia, which reminded readers: ‘The matter is of interest in this district, apart from its scientific value, on account of the excellent work done in connection with it by Mr. Ludwig Glauert who will be remembered as a Sheffield student and as a demonstrator in geology at the University of Sheffield’.
Glauert’s interests extended far beyond paleontology. He studied aboriginal culture, publishing newspaper articles under the pen-name, ‘Jay Penne’ and studied the extant fauna of Western Australia as well as the extinct.
In October 1917 Glauert enlisted in the Australian Imperial Force for service in the latter stages of the First World War as a field company engineer in the 51st Infantry Battalion. The reinforcements for this Western Australian battalion sailed for Europe on the troopship HMAT Aeneas. 51st Battalion was part of the counter-attack at Villers Bretonneux on 24/25 April 1918 during which action the Battalion lost 389 men in two days.
After the war ended he lectured to servicemen and studied Australian material in the Natural History Museum in London. On his return to Perth and the museum in 1920, he became keeper of the biological collections. In 1927 he was appointed Curator and then, in 1954, Director.
In his spare time he acquired an arts degree from the University of Western Australia in 1928. He collected and he wrote extensively on the fauna. Building up the museum and its collections was impeded in the inter-war years by lack of money. For many years Glauert was the only scientist; he had one technician and a taxidermist. He used his private income to buy books for the museum.
Glauert’s enthusiasm encouraged interest in the general public and especially the young. He made the museum a meeting place for the professional and amateur societies and clubs with members interested in some or all aspects of natural history—mirroring in many cases the organisations that had existed in Sheffield at the turn of the century. His articles, books, lectures and broadcasts evoked interest which, in turn, brought in specimens, often caught and presented to its owner by that scourge of Australian wildlife, the domestic cat.
He continued to work on reptiles and scorpions after his retirement.
Ludwig Glauert died on 1 February 1963, aged 83.
