Thrills and Spills and Just another Day at the Races – Motion Studies, Breeding and Cloning in Horse Racing

Posted on April 19, 2013 by towardsdolly

Now that spring has arrived and with National Hunt season ending and Flat Season beginning, I thought I’d show you some horse racing images we have in the Roslin glass plate slide collection.

Horse racing and animal genetics go well together since issues of genetic traits and physiology are of interest to both breeders and scientists. These images illustrate the ‘body in motion’ – from Muybridge’s film still of a horse running at a gallop to a race horse in the midst of a fall during a steeplechase – they can illustrate how race horse breeding has developed by being able to compare the points of the horse in the slides.

Looking over the slides I found that they fell into three sub-genres within horse racing :

The first, ‘Racehorses at Rest,’ shows various individual well-known horses in profile which is very useful to see and compare favourable traits found in winners. Additionally, the text beneath the image provides a bit of history on the particular horse.

The second, ‘Racehorses during a Race,’ shows the horse and jockey in motion on a flat-track or jumping over fences during steeplechases. These images are very useful to see the physiology of the horse in motion.

The third, ‘Racehorses – Accidents’ – is just that- from showing suffragette, Emily Davison’s pulling down George V’s horse at the Epsom Derby in 1913 to horses falling after taking a jump during a steeplechase. Just as a caution – these particular photographs are not particularly pleasant to view; however, they are fascinating to see how the camera has captured the moment and to see how the horses’ body moves.

Another issue arising is the one on cloning racehorses – can it be done (yes); is it done (yes); are cloned racehorses allowed to race (no); and why clone racehorses (to preserve winning horses genetic lines). Mike Bunker wrote in his article, “Cloning may be Horse Racing’s Next Horizon” on the 2007 Centre of Genetics and Society website,

Although cloning of food animals has become relatively common since 1996, when Scottish scientists made a DNA duplicate of a sheep named Dolly, the notion of copying racehorses for entertainment purposes is a controversial one. The Jockey Club, which writes and enforces thoroughbred racing’s rulebook, and the American Quarter Horse Association both prohibit the practice.

The first horse cloned was “Prometea,” in 2003 by Cesare Galli, at the University of Bologna in Cremona, Italy, though it was considered to be mostly a ‘scientific experiment’; then, in 2005, – the first champion racehorse, “Pieraz2,” was cloned by the same scientist to preserve its genetic lines. In 2008, Charlotte Kearsley (supervised by John Woolliams) wrote her PhD thesis for the University of Edinburgh on Genetic Evaluation of Sport Horses in Britain in which her “aim of this project was to derive models for predicting breeding values for British bred sport horses and hence develop procedures for their evaluation.”

There are more articles and websites on the genetics of breeding and cloning racehorses and there are more slides in the collection as well, so I hope that this has provided some interesting insight!

Letters in the Limelight: Rowland Ward, taxidermist

Posted on April 12, 2013 by towardsdolly

Cataloguing the correspondence of zoologist/animal breeder James Cossar Ewart (1851-1933), I have been intrigued by the various ‘life stories’ which emerge from the letters. Periodically I will be including some highlights in a series of posts entitled ‘letters in the limelight’ .

For anyone seriously interested in studying the various physical and biological characteristics of animals in James Cossar Ewart’s time, taxidermy played an important role. Ewart’s correspondence reveal that he travelled extensively around the world observing or seeking out various breeds of animals (for instance in 1905 he went to Mexico to study mustangs). He was also able to acquire various breeds or hybrids at his home in Penicuik (most usually sheep, ponies and his famous zebra/horse hybrids). We also know that his correspondents sent him photographs or glass slides depicting various interesting specimens. However, sometimes travel or photography was not possible, or a particular animal Ewart wished to inspect died before he could visit, or he wanted to preserve one of his own animals for future research use, such as examining colouration or markings. This is where taxidermy came into its own. The picture shows a bill from the renowned taxidermist Rowland Ward. Dated 4 July 1904, it summarises the services Ewart had received since 1902, including ‘skinning Przewalski’s horse [a species of wild horse], preserving and dressing skin, making artificial skull’, ‘preserving and macerating skeleton’ and ‘skinning zebra hybrid.’ During the course of his research, Ewart amassed quite a collection of zebra and horse skins, skulls and bones, which allowed him to compare variations in markings, bone structure and other characteristics.

Born in London in 1847, Rowland Ward left school at 14 to begin work at his father Henry Ward’s taxidermy studio. His gift for taxidermy and sculpture soon became clear, and his hard work and entrepreneurship soon made him established. His final premises, The Jungle, was situated in London’s fashionable Piccadilly district and largely catered for wealthy sportsmen and game hunters, as well as naturalists like Ewart. He became widely known for his hugely detailed dioramas, often used at large exhibitions, depicting, for example, scenes of jungle life, as well as fashionable ‘animal furniture’. However, he also pioneered techniques in taxidermy which are still employed today, and his books on taxidermy and extensive compilation of horn measurements are still consulted. The business continued to flourish after Ward’s death in 1912, its subsidiary company finally closing in 1983.

You can see examples of Rowland Ward’s work here: http://taxidermyemporium.co.uk/15.html

Roslin Glass Slides on Display in Masterpieces III Exhibition

Posted on April 5, 2013 by towardsdolly

An exciting exhibition has just opened here in the Main Library at the University of Edinburgh – Masterpieces III – highlighting items from the University’s collection from the perspective of science and medicine. It’s open from April 5th to July 6th, 2013 at University of Edinburgh’s Main Library on George Square on the lower ground floor with hours from 10am to 5pm Monday through Saturday. See the blog for even more information and images.

Since the themes of the exhibition are ‘Science as Art’, ‘Science as Innovation’ and ‘Science as Statement’, it was a perfect opportunity to showcase some of the Roslin Glass Slide collection. So, in the exhibition you can see 26 of the glass slides on display illustrating the diversity of the collection and highlighting the scientific and research interests of James Cossar Ewart and Professor Robert Wallace.

Hopefully you can visit the exhibition and see the slides and other items on display for yourselves. Enjoy!

Letters in the Limelight: stolen birds’ eggs and ‘the curse of ornithology’

Posted on March 29, 2013 by towardsdolly

As the Easter weekend approaches, we have eggs on the mind (albeit mostly of the chocolate variety) so this week’s ‘Letters in the Limelight’ follows this theme (eggs that is, not chocolate). A letter sent to James Cossar Ewart on 8^th September 1904 from J. Kirkland Galloway, Procurator-Fiscal of Zetland (Shetland), concerns the prosecution taking place in Shetland under the Wild Birds Protection Act. Kirkland-Galloway describes the taking of two eggs of the Great Skua and one egg of the Sea Eagle and writes that he has been instructed to send the eggs to Ewart ‘to dispose of as you may best in the interest of science’. The ornithologist William Eagle Clarke wrote earlier to Ewart (28^th July 1904) to suggest that the Edinburgh Museum of Science and Art, where he worked, might be the best place for the eggs. He angrily comments that egg-lifting ‘is a senseless business and is the curse of ornithology.’

Historically, the effective protection of birds and their eggs was a gradual process. The Wild Bird Protection Act (1880) was a start but it fell short in many areas: it failed, for example, to stop the collection of eggs. This was an activity which became highly organised during the Victorian era, where specimen collecting in various forms was all the rage. The 1896 Wild Birds Protection Act which Kirkland-Galloway mentions gave county councils the right to apply for orders to protect particular areas or species of birds, while an Act of 1902 allowed birds or eggs taken illegally to be confiscated. The Society for the Protection of Birds (which got its Royal Charter in 1904) was obviously a driving force in this legislation, culminating in the Protection of Birds Act of 1925. However, the legislation didn’t stop everyone: in 1916 a vicar stole the last native White-tailed Sea Eagle eggs on Skye and the last adult bird was shot on Shetland two years later (although the species was successfully reintroduced to Scotland in 1975).

The details of the prosecution mentioned in Kirkland-Galloway’s letter are not known and neither is the ultimate fate of the eggs, but it is sobering to see a snapshot in time where the eggs of wild birds did not enjoy the same protection as they do today.

Art of the Animal

Posted on March 22, 2013 by towardsdolly

The illustrated artistic representations of animals in the slides that I’ve been cataloguing have shown both an artistic romanticization and an attempted realistic depiction. Additionally, in pre-photography days it was important for breeders and scientists to have artists depict the high quality animals to show the traits of the best of the breed. It’s been interesting to see how the physicality of the animal compares between an illustration from the 19th century and a photograph from the 20th century. http://www.societyofanimalartists.com/

From bulls:

To cows:

Buffaloes…:

And boars!:

Letters in the Limelight: Susanna Carson Rijnhart

Posted on March 14, 2013 by towardsdolly

This week’s ‘Letters in the Limelight’ focuses on a postcard dated 14 February 1902 which was sent to Ewart from the American naturalist Theodore Dru Alison Cockerell (1866-1948). Cockerell is worthy of a blog post in himself, but here we will focus on the name of a woman who Cockerell mentions quite casually: Susanna Carson Rijnhart. Cockerell writes:

We have been staying in Las Vegas at present [with] Dr (Mrs) Rijnhart, a Canadian lady who has spent a number of years in Tibet. She tells me that male yellow dun horses, with dark dorsal stripe and dark mane and tail…are very common in Tibet. She says they are quite like those we have here in New Mexico. This may not be new, but it is interesting.

Ewart’s abiding research interest at this time was studying those breeds of horses which bear the marks of being of more ancient stock than the popular Arabian horse, which emerged at a later date. Dr Rijnhart was obviously able to provide some information on possible examples of this ‘ancient breed’ from her experiences in Tibet, but there is no indication here of exactly how harrowing that experience was…

Born in Ontario in 1868, Rijnhart graduated as a medical doctor from Toronto at the age of 20 and practised for 6 years. But it was her meeting and marriage to the controversial Petrus Rijnhart, a Dutch-born missionary, that really sent her life on its turbulent course. Before they had been married more than a few months, the couple set out to work as independent missionaries in Tibet. Life was hard, particularly considering the Muslim revolt which broke out in 1896 in Kumbum, where the couple worked. They tended to the wounded and sick and opened a medical dispensary nearby, but their ultimate aim was to reach Lhasa, the Tibetan capital unvisited by Westerners since 1846 and which lay 800 miles away across a series of mountain ranges. In May 1898, Susanna and Petrus left for Lhasa on horseback with their baby Charles and three local hired men, but things swiftly went wrong for them. After two months, two of their hired men deserted, their pack animals were stolen and the baby Charles died suddenly. Determined, the couple pressed on, but it wasn’t long before their caravan was attacked by bandits, leaving them helpless and completely alone. Petrus left Susanna behind to seek help and was never seen or heard of again. A revolver and a little money was all Susanna had left. Still she pressed on across the mountains, bribing a series of local guides, until she reached Kangding (then the most remote outpost of Chinese missionaries) in rags and with frost-bitten feet. There she made her way to the China Inland Mission, where she met James Moyes, who would become her second husband. In 1900 Susanna returned to Canada with failing health and wrote a book about her experiences With the Tibetans in Tent and Temple (Edinburgh, 1901). She bore a son to James in January 1908 but died a month later.

From small names on postcards do big stories come…

A Trick of the Eye…

Posted on March 8, 2013 by towardsdolly

One of the joys of working with older forms of visual resources is stumbling across a wide array of images from the banal to the fantastic. Two images in particular have caught my eye – the first depicts men shearing sheep in a shed at Burrawang Station in New South Wales, Australia in the late 19^th or early 20^th century: The second depicts a bridge and a cathedral and simply labelled: ‘Zambesi Bridge and Cathedral’:

Can you spot what makes both of them unusual?

The first image – while it is a photograph several of the men shearing sheep some of those standing in the front have been painted in–possibly to cover up or make clearer a blurred image. The second image is slightly trickier – hint – it’s an early form of Photoshop! The photographer has placed a cut-out of St. Paul’s Cathedral in London underneath the Victoria Falls Bridge in the gorge at Victoria Falls, Zimbabwe in the early 20^th century.

While one might also wonder how these fit into ‘animal genetics’, as I’ve written before in a post, the slides images cover a wide range of natural and anthropological sciences, besides it’s great to see scientists have a bit of fun!

Happy Birthday to Crew!

Posted on March 1, 2013 by towardsdolly

Tomorrow (2^nd March) marks the birthday of Professor F.A.E Crew (1886-1973), who was the first Director of what became known as the Institute of Animal Genetics in Edinburgh from 1921 until 1944. It would be a long blog post indeed to try and do justice to this remarkable man. Crew, medically qualified but with a lifelong interest in breeding fowl, steered the Institute from its penniless early days into its heyday as a world renowned research centre, attracting such individuals as Nobel winner H.J Muller. The image above shows Crew (second from the right in the natty cravat) with a group of similarly renowned visitors to the Institute including Dame Honor Fell (Director of Strangeways Laboratory, Cambridge) and zoologist/medical statistician Lancelot Hogben. However, Crew’s influence was by no means confined to the sphere of genetics. He fought in both world wars, attaining the rank of Major in the First War, then Brigadier in the Second. By the time the Second War was at a close, Crew gave up the Directorship of the Institute in order to take up the Chair of Public Health and Social Medicine at Edinburgh University. He also established the Polish School of Medicine in Edinburgh (which awarded medical degrees recognised by the Polish government in exile until its closure in 1949), wrote the impressive six-volume official Army Medical History of the War, was World Health Organisation Visiting professor at Rangoon and Bombay (he also set up the first medical genetics clinic in India) and was happily driving around Turkey in a caravan well into his seventies.

Charismatic, handsome, a beautiful writer and renowned as a public speaker (his friend Hogben remarked that ‘he had a histrionic talent worthy of a Shakespearean actor’) Crew nevertheless remained self effacing all his life, always claiming that his career moves were down to ‘pure luck’ and that ‘mine has not been a very distinguished career’. Crew left no traceable personal archive, but treasures such as a photocopied draft of an autobiography and an endlessly colourful 8 hour interview recording with Margaret Deacon of the Science Studies Unit helps to fill out the picture. The latter recording captures Crew’s wry humour, compassion and humility perfectly whilst also providing such memorable anecdotes as his keeping of tame goats in his office at the Institute (whose constant grazing apparently saved him from having to be bothered by any official correspondence) and the experimental cocks which Crew trained to walk down to the cellar each night so as not to disturb the neighbours!

He remained eloquent and witty right up until his death aged 87. As he was also a committed humanist, his conclusion to his essay ‘On the Meaning of Death’ published in A.J Ayers’ The Humanist Outlook (1968), is a fitting epithet: ‘In a world so organized that everyone equipped to do so would be able to enjoy life at least as much as I have done, there would be very few who would hanker after an existence beyond the grave for the life lived on this earth would be complete in itself.’

Zebra Crossing – James Cossar Ewart, Romulus and the Penicuik Experiments

Posted on February 22, 2013 by towardsdolly

“Zebroid, zedonk, zorse, zebra mule, zonkey, and zebrule” – these are the names of the offspring of any cross between a zebra, usually the stallion, and any other equine; however, the offspring of a donkey sire and zebra dam is called a “zebra hinny” or “donkra”, but are rare.

It was around the years 1894-95, when Scottish zoologist, James Cossar Ewart began his Penicuick Experiments in animal breeding on his private experimental farm where he conducted many pioneering investigations in genetics. His most famous experiments were related to telegony, which is the theory, accepted at the time by most scientists and breeders, that ‘a previous sire may so “infect” the dam served by him as to impress certain of his characters upon her subsequent offspring by other sires.’ Ewart’s experiments with a variety of species; however, were uniformly negative. One of the most famous experiments with telegony was Darwin’s lengthy citation of ‘Lord Morton’s Arab mare which first being served by a quagga produced a striped hybrid foal, and subsequently gave birth to an Arab foal as a result of mating with Sir Gore Ouseley’s Arab stallion. This foal, which is figured by Darwin, had striped markings that were said to resemble those of the quagga with which the mare had first mated.’ Ewart attempted to repeat this experiment; however, the quagga species had become extinct by that time, so he decided to use a Burchell’s zebra stallion which served several different breeds of mares which produced striped hybrid foals, called “Tartan Cuddies” by the people in the Midlothian area. One particularly fine hybrid of this pairing was “Romulus”. The mares were then bred to horses of their own breeds, but the resulting ‘subsequent foals’ never showed any evidence of The mares were then bred to horses of their own breeds, but the resulting ‘subsequent foals’ never showed markings or traits of the previous zebra sire. Ewart collected these findings into a book entitled The Penycuick Experiments (1899).

In addition to these lovely images of Ewart and Romulus, I found a couple of images of a zorse and a zonkey!

Letters in the Limelight: E.A. Clemens

Posted on February 14, 2013 by towardsdolly

E.A. Clemens (d. 1924) is perhaps one of Ewart’s more ‘exotic’ correspondents – not least due to his being the nephew of Samuel Clemens (aka Mark Twain). Earnest Allen (‘Al’) Clemens owned a ranch in Magdalena, New Mexico, and so owned a fair number of horses, which were Ewart’s primary focus of study at this time. In a letter dated 21 June 1902, Clemens tells Ewart that he would happily supply him with any horses from his own herd for experimental purposes, as well as any required skulls and other anatomical parts for analysis. One important motive behind breeding and cross-breeding at this time was the production of animals hardy enough to cope with heavy work or difficult conditions. In a letter to a mutual friend, American naturalist Theo Cockerell, Clemens reports that he was aiming to set up an experimental breeding station on his ranch to breed hardy ponies adapted for life in the prairie or desert. Whether or not he achieved this is as yet unknown (maybe this will emerge in later correspondence), but he was clearly a man with ambition.

Fascinated by this exchange of letters between a ranch in New Mexico and a rural bungalow south of Edinburgh, I did a bit of rooting around for any more information on Clemens. And what a story! His home, now named Clemens Ranch House, is now a registered cultural property and the current owners have created this informative website:

http://clemensranchhouse.com/briefhistory.html

It is interesting to read about how Clemens’ personality manifested itself in the building of his ranch house. He was obviously a perfectionist: he reputedly ordered stonemasons from Italy to cut the locally quarried stone for the ranch house and ordered his back porch to be ripped out and remade three times before he was happy with the height. He was also cautious: after apparently being held hostage for three days by desperados, Clemens designed numerous trap doors, tunnels and escape routes from each room of the house!

Join us again for more ‘letters in the limelight’…

Towards Dolly

Edinburgh, Roslin and the Birth of Modern Genetics