McCoy Special Issue Part One

Foreword

Doug McCann

This special two-part issue of The Victorian Naturalist has been produced in honour of the life and work of the nineteenth century Irish-Australian naturalist Sir Frederick McCoy. He died just over 100 years ago, on 13 May 1899, at about 77 years of age (his exact birth date remains uncertain). McCoy was the first President of The Field Naturalists Club of Victoria (1880-1883) and later, along with his renowned colleague Ferdinand von Mueller, was made a patron of the Club (1889). Although he was not directly involved in regular meetings and field excursions, the Club gained prestige and direction from his stewardship and he provided a useful link between the Club’s activities and that of the Melbourne Museum of which he was first Director.
   At the time of his death he was arguably Australia’s most distinguished scientist. In an obituary in The Geological Magazine, the editor Henry Woodward stated that ‘Professor McCoy was the acknowledged chief of the scientific world of Australasia’ – yet today he is little known outside the specialised areas of palaeontology and the history of science.
   McCoy made significant contributions to taxonomic and stratigraphical palaeontology in Ireland and England, and to palaeontology and zoology in Australia. He was the first to confirm that Australian stratigraphy correlated with that in the northern hemisphere and hence to demonstrate that the geological column was a global phenomenon. He was foundation Professor of Natural Science at the University of Melbourne and concurrently Government Palaeontologist for the Geological Survey of Victoria and Director of the National Museum of Victoria, where he built up one of the finest natural history collections outside Europe and North America.
   Why then is McCoy so little appreciated? The reasons are complex and varied. McCoy was, and remains, a somewhat controversial and contradictory figure. As well as making many worthy contributions to science he was also involved in some acrimonious and long-running scientific disputes, and in some of these he fared rather badly. Authors in this issue explore aspects of some of these debates. In a sense McCoy has had to endure a ‘bad press’ in which his negative qualities have been emphasised (i.e., one historian referred to him as that ‘bad tempered redheaded Irishman’) and his more positive contributions have frequently been ignored or forgotten.
   The breadth, and often the depth, of his work, however, were considerable. He was very much a product of the mid nineteenth century, when natural history enjoyed widespread popularity and standing. Taxonomy and classification were highly esteemed activities, in keeping with the then prevalent philosophy of Natural Theology. It was an era of geographical exploration and extensive collecting. There was much being discovered that was new to science and a need for it to be classified and described. McCoy was an accomplished naturalist and a very diligent taxonomic palaeontologist. Even in his day palaeontologists were beginning to specialise but the scope of McCoy’s work was remarkable; he covered virtually the whole of invertebrate palaeontology as well as being competent in vertebrate palaeontology and zoology. He was also well versed in geology, botany, mineralogy, chemistry, mining technology and many of the arts.
   A reassessment of McCoy’s life and work has been long overdue. The current collection of papers provides a variety of viewpoints and some general as well as some in-depth studies of many aspects of his life and work. This two-part issue of The Victorian Naturalist offers the first exhaustive critical study of McCoy and will provide an obligatory starting point for any future work on McCoy’s scientific contributions and of his life and times.
   Many people have contributed towards the success of this project, in particular, the individual authors and the dedicated and patient work of the editors Merilyn Grey, Anne Morton and Alistair Evans. Special thanks are due to Professor Neil Archbold for proposing and nurturing this project from the very beginning, and for his written contributions and generous material support. The end result of the combined work of all the contributors is a landmark in documenting, analysing and understanding a pioneering period in the history of natural science in the Colony of Victoria and of the contributions of Sir Frederick McCoy, an eminent nineteenth century Victorian naturalist.
(The Victorian Naturalist, 118 (5), 2001, 146.)
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Frederick McCoy and his Contributions to Stratigraphical Palaeontology

Doug McCann

Abstract
Sir Frederick McCoy made a significant contribution to the foundation of stratigraphical palaeontology. He carried out extensive taxonomic work sorting, naming and describing the Palaeozoic fossils of Ireland and Britain, and also played a decisive role in the debate between Adam Sedgwick and Roderick Murchison on where to draw the boundary between the Cambrian and Silurian systems. On his arrival in the Colony of Victoria in December 1854 he found that, contrary to the expectations of most European scientists, much of the stratigraphy and palaeontology paralleled that in the Northern Hemisphere. Hence McCoy was the first to confirm that the geological column was a global phenomenon.
(The Victorian Naturalist, 118 (5), 2001, 165-177.)
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Frederick McCoy and the Phylum Brachiopoda

N.W. Archbold

Abstract
Sir Frederick McCoy, during a long career involved with taxonomy, contributed extensively to the knowledge of the fossil record of the Phylum Brachiopoda. From his classic early monographs on the fossil faunas of the Carboniferous and Silurian of Ireland, to his later works in Victoria where important new species were described and illustrated, McCoy demonstrated the same care, meticulous rigour and quality of illustrations that typified all his work. His contributions on the Brachiopoda are of high and long-lasting significance but form only part of his much broader contribution to palaeontology.
(The Victorian Naturalist, 118 (5), 2001, 178-185.)
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Frederick McCoy and the University of Melbourne

Ian Wilkinson

Abstract
This article deals with some aspects of Frederick McCoy’s association with the University of Melbourne. McCoy’s early career is described in order to explain the circumstances that led to his appointment as the University of Melbourne’s first science professor. McCoy’s development of a national museum on the University grounds is noted and some assessment is made of his contribution to science teaching at the University.
(The Victorian Naturalist, 118 (5), 2001, 186-192.)
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McCoy’s ‘Living Museum’

Gwen Pascoe

Abstract
The System Garden, a specialised botanic garden, was established at the University of Melbourne under Professor Frederick McCoy. This paper is concerned with a description of the garden and its purpose, a (speculative) explanation of the botanical system it was designed to display, and the administrative problems relating to its maintenance and decline.
(The Victorian Naturalist, 118 (5), 2001, 193-199.)
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McCoy and Clarke: their Dispute Over the Age of Australia’s Black Coal

Roger Pierson

Abstract
From 1847 until his death in 1899, Professor Frederick McCoy, palaeontologist in Melbourne, maintained a war of words in the scientific literature with Rev. William Clarke, geologist in Sydney, concerning the age of Australia’s black coal deposits. McCoy was convinced that the coals were all of Mesozoic age and Clarke, during the period from 1847 to his death in 1878, maintained equally vehemently that they were Palaeozoic. In fact, Clarke was correct in placing the New South Wales coals in the Palaeozoic, and McCoy’s placing of the Victorian coals in the Mesozoic was also correct. The two men were both particularly stubborn and neither would admit that they might have been arguing about coals of differing ages. Both stood unbendingly by their Northern Hemisphere, European backgrounds, and neither would change their views in the face of new evidence from the Colonies.
(The Victorian Naturalist, 118 (5), 2001, 219-225.)
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McCoy and Sarcophilus harrisii Boitard, 1842 – a Diabolical Relationship

W.R. Gerdtz

Abstract
Frederick McCoy contributed to the knowledge of the fossil record of the Tasmanian Devil Sarcophilus harrisii Boitard, 1842 in Victoria by including a number of figured specimens in the Prodromus of the Palaeontology of Victoria (McCoy 1882). However, an article McCoy wrote under the pseudonym ‘Microzoon’ highlighted his anti-Darwinian thoughts and embraced a successionist viewpoint. The article, entitled ‘Pre-historic Tasmanian Devils’, is an interesting account of zoogeography from a successionist perspective, and is used here to contrast McCoy’s anti-evolutionary viewpoint with modern Darwinian thought. A number of fossil sarcophilines discovered since McCoy’s death illustrate the shortcomings of McCoy’s favoured anti-Darwinian viewpoint when discussing the nature of evolution and extinction.
(The Victorian Naturalist, 118 (5), 2001, 231-233.)
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