Science: Ward’s

Indubitable dinosaur, Atlantosaurus,hall!

Thou, gecko aggrandized into a quadrupedal whale;

I marvel at thy magnitude, I wonder at thy weight,

I bow me down before thee, thou organic ultimate!

Big, bulky Brobdingnaggian beast! Exceeding in thy size

All living things upon the land e’er seen by hitman eyes!—

Illimitable lizard, incommensurable newt,

Interminable tadpole, inexsuperable brute! . . .

The creature thus celebrated was a 60-ft. plant-feeding dinosaur, tentatively named Atlantosaurus montanus, discovered in Colorado. The verses were composed by an author-traveler named Frank Cowan of Greensburg, Pa., published in Vol. III, No. 1, of Ward’s Natural Science Bulletin, dated Jan. 1, 1884. The same issue contained a sketch of a brontosaurus, a facetiously polysyllabic and mildly risque poem about a mermaid and an octopus, articles on the musk ox and the flying fox of Australia; also included was a business-like list of catalogs for the sale of such natural history specimens as human skeletons. North American bird eggs, glass models of invertebrates. This periodical, published by Ward’s Natural Science Establishment of Rochester, N. Y. was probably the earliest scientific “house organ” in the U. S.

Last week Ward’s shipped a big consignment (value undisclosed) of rocks, fossils, insects, snake skulls, animal and human skeletons to the Exposition Nacional de 1936 at Barranquilla, Colombia. Last week also, with hundreds of small orders for fossils and other material coming in from school children the world over, Ward’s officials were basking in the knowledge that the establishment would show a year-end profit for the first time in its 74-year history. University of Rochester alumni were apprised of the present doings of Ward’s in the current issue of the Rochester Alumni Review.

Henry Augustus Ward was a zestful young scholar who studied at Williams and under the late great Jean Louis Rodolphe Agassiz, at Cambridge. He later attended the School of Mines at the University of Paris, paying his expenses by collecting and selling European fossils. In 1861, aged 27, he became a professor of natural science at the University of Rochester. He assembled a group of skilled preparators which, at one time or another, included Carl Akeley, Charles Livingston Bull, William T. Hornaday, Frederic Lucas. He sold a $20,000 collection of fossils to the university, but went ahead with his mail-order business on a high scientific plane. He was killed by an automobile in 1906.

Ward’s exhibit at the World’s Columbian Exposition in 1893 was purchased for $100,000 by Marshall Field and in time grew into the Field Museum of Natural History. Theodore Roosevelt sent some of his African trophies to Ward’s for mounting. The establishment was incorporated before the turn of the Century, but by 1928 only one Ward was active in the company. In that year the heirs turned it over to the University of Rochester. In 1930 the old building was ruined by fire and Ward’s moved into a four-story brick building which it rented from American Chicle Co. Among the pungent odors of formaldehyde and methyl alcohol, the smell of Chiclet chewing gum is still discernible. Most of the building is drab and dirty-windowed, but the administration offices, including that of President Dean L. Gamble, are cheerfully decorated in brown and tan. Bulky minerals and meteorites are kept in the cellar bones in bins or on the floor, small fossils and semiprecious stones in trays under glass.

Ward’s is capitalized at $115,000, has a current inventory close to $300,000. Gross business for 1936 up to last week was about $200,000. Until this year no profit ever showed on the books because surplus cash was promptly plowed back into stock, frequently for rare items which might be called for only once in a decade. Turnover in some lines is extremely slow. Not long ago the company sold a crane skeleton which it had had for 50 years and which still bore a label written by William Hornaday. A skeleton of the extinct passenger pigeon, bought for $1, was sold for $75—but someone figured out that a cash dollar deposited at compound interest at the time of purchase would have yielded a higher return.

Ward’s board chairman is Frank Hawley Ward (grandson), who has a keen eye for fossils, seldom sees one whose name and habitat he does not know. President Gamble, onetime Cornell zoologist, got commercial experience in a Chicago biological supply house. The staff numbers 35 employes of whom nine are women.

Head of the biology section is Oscar Kirchoff, whose father was brought by Founder Ward from Alsace, and who will mount any skeleton from a humming bird to a mastodon. Humming bird skeletons once cost $25, but Preparator Kirchoff now turns them out with such dispatch that the price has dropped to $10. John Santens, 60, Ward’s sole surviving taxidermist, is officially retired but keeps on working. So many schools and museums now teach taxidermy that Ward’s demand for stuffed animals has fallen almost to zero, and the antlers of moose, deer and caribou cluttering the biology department gather much dust, few orders.

Ward’s sends out no expeditions. It has lists of 11,000 collectors to whom it writes for needed items. Free-lancers send in material on speculation. Earthworms one foot long—for classroom dissection—come from Michigan, huge bullfrogs from Louisiana. France ships bushels of its edible snails, which are bigger than U. S. snails and therefore better for anatomical instruction. Rattlesnakes from Texas sometimes arrive alive, are slain on the premises. Cats are bought in the neighborhood, drowned and embalmed, but Ward’s does not advertise for cats lest owners of lost pets take umbrage. Few years ago when the Rochester zoo elephant died, Ward’s bought the carcass, macerated and stripped off the flesh, sold the skeleton piecemeal. .The best human skeletons now come from Mexico since he U. S. S. R. has forbidden their exportation. Inferior ones are bought from India and Japan.

Ward’s will sell a good human skeleton for $105. The company sends out catalogs to 20,000 select institutional and personal customers. Current lists show that a specimen board of 50 insect pests can be had for $12, a model of a Neanderthal skull or $2.50, a series of models illustrating seven stages in human embryology for $75, an ichthyosaurus paddle for $15, a nearly complete ichthyosaurus skeleton for $300. A 300,000,000-year-old trilobite may cost as little as 50¢, a collection of small Silurian fossils 65¢. Princeton University recently ordered a cat skeleton, Columbia University 25 Ib. of lead ore, the University of Illinois 18 bullfrog skeletons. A man in Jamaica who had failed in business four times and felt the need of a magic talisman wrote for “the head of a white weasel.” A medicine show proprietor asked for something that he could exhibit as human tapeworms, explaining that the egg noodles he had been using swelled and lost their shape. A woman wanted “a picture of all animals in the animal kingdom from protozone [sic] to mammal as soon as possible.” For a moth-proofing company Ward’s made up salesmen’s display kit’s showing the growth stages of moths and how they eat fabric. The research laboratories of General Electric and Westinghouse buy rare minerals. Amateur lapidaries order rough masses of aquamarine, rose quartz, agate.

Despite its fame among naturalists, Ward’s is almost unknown to laymen, even in Rochester, where it was once a landmark with two whale bones forming an arch at the entrance. Last week a newshawk queried ten policemen and two hotel clerks without finding one who knew where Ward’s was. Ward officials like to tell the story of an Australian scientist who registered at a Rochester hotel, asked how to proceed to Ward’s. The clerk confessed ignorance. “Young man,” the visitor bellowed indignantly, “I’ve come all the way from Australia and there are just two things in America I wanted to see. One was the Grand Canyon, and one was Ward’s!”