A Zoological Curiosity at the Town Hall 1877

"The head and body and voice are decidedly pussy's; but there the relationship with that useful domestic animal ceases..."

Courtesy of Museum Victoria
John Gould print image of the Long-nosed PotorooPotorous tridactylus(formerly known as Hypsiprymnus apicalis)
Photo from Mammals of Australia, Vol. II Plate 68
Part of the 3 Volumes by John Gould, F.R.S.
Published by the author, 26 Charlotte Street, Bedford Square, London, 1863

The Waywardness of Nature
Photographer Thomas J. Nevin began exhibiting stereoscopic views and carte-de-visite portraits at Hobart Town Hall shows in the late 1860s. Once he became the Town Hall Keeper in 1876, and Office-Keeper in 1877, he not only managed a busy calendar of show events, he staged a few of his own. This newspaper article, published on 8 May 1877, invited the public to visit the Town Hall where he was displaying a mutant kangaroo rat, the only one in a litter of kittens bred from a domestic cat by Thomas' father John Nevin at Kangaroo Valley (near New Town, Hobart Tasmania).



A Zoological Curiosity at the Hobart Town Hall
Thomas Nevin's mutant kangaroo rat
Report in The Mercury 8 May 1877

TRANSCRIPT

"A ZOOLOGICAL CURIOSITY. -- Mr. Nevin, Town Hall keeper, yesterday brought to our office what Artemus Ward would undoubtedly have christened "an interesting little cus." It is of the feline order, and has a perfect black coat. The head and body and voice are decidedly pussy's; but there the relationship with that useful domestic animal ceases. The legs belong to the order of kangaroo rat, and it is quite amusing to see the little stranger perch himself up on his haunches, or drag himself slowly along by the aid of the fore part of the fore legs, which instead of being erect, as in the cat, falls flat on the ground, and so produces that roundness of the body which is the marked feature in the kangaroo. The animal is one of a litter of kittens bred by Mr. Nevin's father, at Kangaroo Valley, and strange to say it is the only one in which are present the singular malformations which we have attempted to describe. Mr. Nevin will gladly show his curiosity to anyone who may call upon him during the next two or three days, and if there are many people in Hobart Town who take an interest in the waywardness of nature, he may expect to have quite an influx of visitors before he closes his show. " (The Mercury, 8 May 1877)

Artemus Ward
John Nevin would have been familiar with the writings of American humorist Artemus Ward  from his time spent in the Californian gold mines ca. 1854-1858, a lonely episode in his life which he remembered with bitterness in his poem, "My Cottage in the Wilderness" published in 1868. Read the full version of the poem in this article here.



"A. Ward and his grate show" (from the original sketch by George Hoyt
Source: Non Solus blog

John Nevin probably owned a copy of the works of American humorist Charles Farrar Browne (aka Artemus Ward), with this passage in mind when he spoke to the Mercury reporter:



TRANSCRIPT

ONE OF MR. WARD'S BUSINESS LETTERS.
To the Editor of the——
Sir—I'm movin along—slowly along—down tords your place. I want you should rite me a letter, sayin how is the show bizniss in your place. My show at present consists of three moral Bares, a Kangaroo (a amoozin little Raskal—t'would make you larf yerself to deth to see the little cuss jump up and squeal) wax figgers of G. Washington Gen. Tayler John Bunyan Capt Kidd and Dr. Webster in the act of killin Dr. Parkman, besides several miscellanyus moral wax statoots of celebrated piruts & murderers, &c., ekalled by few & exceld by none. Now Mr. Editor, scratch orf a few lines sayin how is the show bizniss down to your place. I shall hav my hanbills dun at your offiss. Depend upon it. I want you should git my hanbills up in flamin stile. Also git up a tremenjus excitemunt in yr. paper 'bowt my onparaleld Show. We must fetch the public sumhow. We must wurk on their feelins. Cum the moral on 'em strong. If it's a temperancecommunity tell 'em I sined the pledge fifteen minits arter Ise born, but on the contery ef your peple take their tods, say Mister Ward is as Jenial a feller as we ever met, full of conwiviality, &the life an sole of the Soshul Bored. Take, don't you? If you say anythin abowt my show say my snaiks is as harmliss as the new-born Babe. What a interestin study it is to see a zewological animil like a snaik under perfeck subjecshun! My kangaroo is the most larfable little cuss I ever saw. All for 15 cents. I am anxyus to skewer your infloounce. I repeet in regard to them hanbills that I shall git 'em struck orf up to your printin office. My perlitercal sentiments agree with yourn exackly. I know thay do, becawz I never saw a man whoos didn't.
Respectively yures,
A. Ward.
P.S.—You scratch my back &Ile scratch your back.
ARTEMUS WARD (1834-1867)Title: The Complete Works of Artemus WardAuthor: Charles Farrar Browne (AKA Artemus Ward)

Thomas Nevin and his father brought another specimen from Kangaroo Valley into the newspaper offices six months after putting on display their mutant kangaroo rat. This time it was a wounded white Tasmanian goshawk which The Mercury duly noted in an article of 22 January 1878. The detailed references in that article to John Gould's Handbook of Australian Birds (1865) would indicate the family's keen interest in native fauna and ownership of several volumes of Gould's handsome books on birds and mammals. The Public Library housed in the upstairs rooms of the Town Hall was also part of Nevin's purview as Keeper, giving him ready access to such gloriously illustrated tomes. And out the back of the Town Hall was a paddock where he kept an emu, possibly a rare native specimen which died in 1878, also reported by The Mercury on 22 July 1878 as an Ornithological Disaster , another zoological item belonging to Mr. Nevin.

DISTRIBUTION and REFERENCE:
Tasmanian Rat-Kangaroo (Potorous tridactylis apicalis)



The Red List
PAPER
The Chromosomes of the Tasmanian Rat-Kangaroo (Potorous tridactylis apicalis)
Margery W. Shaw, R.S. Krooth
Department of Human Genetics, The University of Michigan Ann Arbor MichiganCytogenetics 1964;3:19-33 (DOI: 10.1159/000129795)



The Kangaroo Rat, 1790
Creator Stone, Sarah, ca. 1760 - 1844
Poto Roo or Kangaroo Rat ca. 1790
State Library of NSW Call no. PXA 909/27

An Ornithological Disaster: Thomas Nevin's emu 1878

TASMANIAN EMU
THOMAS J. NEVIN at the HOBART TOWN HALL
ANIMAL ICONOGRAPHY



Hand coloured lithograph from The Birds of Australia (1910-28) by Gregory Macalister Mathews (1876-1949).
Artwork by John Gerrard Keulemans (1842-1912) a Danish bird illustrator.

How Thomas Nevin's emu died at the Hobart Town Hall
Acquisition of an emu by Thomas J. Nevin, while resident keeper at the Hobart Town Hall, was noted in the press, January 1878. Six months later, it died.

Mr Nevin has an emu in his yard at the Town Hall, keeping amicable company with the other domestic animals.

Source: Tasmanian Evening Herald (Launceston, Tas. : 1878), Tuesday 29 January 1878, page 3

Was it the Dromaius novaehollandiae diemenensis? And if Thomas Nevin gave it to the Royal Society's Museum, now the Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery, have they still got it?



Thomas Nevin's emu dies at the Town Hall,
Hobart Mercury 22 July 1878

TRANSCRIPT

AN ORNITHOLOGICAL DISASTER.--
A young Emu the property of Mr. Nevin keeper of the Town Hall, came to an untimely end last week by being strangled in trying to force itself through the fence of the paddock in which it was kept at the rear of the Town Hall. The owner states his intention to present the Emu to the Royal Society's Museum.

This report appeared in the Mercury of 22 July 1878. Was it the Tasmanian Emu, the Dromaius novaehollandiae diemenensis, now extinct? Possibly, because the death of this emu was reported as an ornithological disaster, suggesting it may have been one of the few remaining of the species and rare enough to warrant its presentation to the Museum.

The yard at rear when Thomas Nevin kept the emu is visible at right in this photo taken ca, 1878:



Town Hall & Public Library
Anson Bros Date: ca. 1878
Description: 1 photograph : sepia toned ; 105 X 180 mm.
Notes: View taken from the corner of Macquarie and Elizabeth Streets.
Location: W.L. Crowther Library
ADRI: AUTAS001127111730

Bounty for emu flesh
Reports of the Tasmanian emu's extinction in subsequent decades cited accounts of a bounty paid for its flesh to provision prisoners as the principal reason for its extermination, and dated its hybridisation with the introduction of the mainland Australian emu from 1845. Details were published in the ornithological magazine, The Emu, 1926:



The Emu, XXIII, p. 221: 1926: How Tasmania Lost The Emu.

Additional early accounts 
*Dromaius novaehollandiae diemenensis + {sAustralia:Tas.Extinct.}
*Van Diemen's Land Cassowary Latham,1823, A general history of birds,8,p.384,pl.138.
*Dromiceius novaehollandiae diemenensis Mathews,1913, A List of the Birds of Australia,p.2.
*Dromiceius novaehollandiae gunni Mathews,1922, Austral Avian Record,4,p.175. New name for Dromaeus diemenensis Le Souef,1907.
*Dromiceius novæhollandiæ diemenensis Mathews,1927, Systema Avium Australasianarum,1,p.2.
*Dromiceus novaehollandiae diemenensis [as n.hollandiae] Peters,1931,Checklist of Birds of the World,1,p.10.
*Dromaius novaehollandiae diemenensis Mayr,1979,in Mayr & Cottrell (eds.),Checklist of the Birds of the World, 2nd ed.,1,p.10

Reports of this species' extinction today date the death of the last known emu in captivity ca. 1873, for example:

WIKIPEDIA

The Tasmanian emu was, as the mainland birds, hunted as a pest. In addition, the practice of setting fire to grassland and shrubland to aid in claiming land for agriculture deprived the birds of habitat. It is known that in 1838, 2 skin specimens were received by the British Museum. The subspecies became extinct around 1850, but this date is not very precise: Mainland birds were introduced after diemenensis' disappearance (and possibly even when the last birds of the Tasmanian subspecies were still around, hybridizing them out of existence), but the history of emu introductions on Tasmania is not sufficiently documented to allow a more precise dating of the disappearance of diemenensis. Whether a sight record in 1865 and captive specimens that died in 1873 were of this subspecies is not known with certainty. The specimens on the British Museum belonged to a collection which was suffering from bad preparation and/or storage in 1906 already, and they could not be located in 1959. A supposed third specimen in Frankfurt is erroneously attributed to this subspecies (Steinbacher, 1959).

Courtesy State Library of Tasmania
Title: Emu and young / by Louisa A. Meredith
Author: Meredith, Louisa Anne, 1812-1895
In:Tasmanian friends and foes : feathered, furred and finned P. 155
Publisher:London, Day & Son, 1880
Description:1 picture : b&w ; 17 x 11 cm.
Format: [picture] / Print
ADRI:AUTAS001126076652
Source: Tasmaniana Library
Notes: Footnote: Dromaius novaehollandiae
Exact measurements: 165 X 106 mm.

Studio Stamp Iconography
Competing symbologies in 19th century Tasmania used native animal iconography to underscore the imperative to nationalism, and reinvestments of traditional British animal iconography to herald the coming postcolonial State. Adrian Franklin expanded on this paradox in 2006:

" Although native animals were to be the new icons of Australian identity, part of the problematic nature of post-colonial cultures is precisely that they are neither colonial nor yet free from their colonial past. While Australia wanted to embrace indigenous animals and mantle itself with their authenticity and natural belonging, it was still tied in countless ways to its other animals ..."

From: ANIMAL NATION The True Story of Animals and Australia, Adrian Franklin (UNSW Press 2006, p.108)

With movements such as the lobby to end transportation in 1853, and the later Acclimatisation Societies which organised the introduction of species and flora from Europe, the symbology of the colony vascillated between the traditional emblems of the British, and the new native fauna and flora. This medal, for example, pre-empted the official adoption of native fauna for statehood by 50 years:



Medal Source: State Library of Tasmania
Description: 1 medal : silver coloured metal ; diam. 58 cm.
Notes: This medal was struck to commemorate the end of transportation of convicts to Tasmania in 1853. 9000 white metal medals were struck, and 100 were produced in bronze for members of committees. One gold medal was presented to Queen Victoria., Obverse Head of a young Queen Victoria with the legend VICTORIA QUEEN above, and below, MDCCCLIII [1853] : Reverse Shield of arms below a rising sun supported by an emu and a kangaroo. Above the shield is CESSATION OF TRANSPORTATION 1853.



Left: Cover of a nationalistic song from 1860s with emu and kangaroo (SLTas)
Right: The 1868 Law Reform Act Tasmanian Government with British Royal Coat of Arms

This dual affiliation was also evident in Belfast-born Thomas J. Nevin's studio stamps: between 1868 and 1876 he used the official insignia of the Royal Coat of Arms with the lion and unicorn for important events in his life such as the government commission to document official records with photographs of prisoners at the Port Arthur prison and Hobart Gaol, and in his everyday studio portraiture, his most common commercial stamp featured a kangaroo looking back over its shoulder, beneath a Latin inscription: "AD ALTIORA" (To the Highest):



Verso of studio portrait by Nevin with kangaroo 1871 (Safier Collection)



Left: the weekly police gazette, produced for the Municipal Police Office, Town Hall
Right and below: Thomas Nevin's "mugshots" of prisoners with his stamp featuring the Royal Arms insignia printed on verso (Mitchell Library SLNSW).





The seal of the Supreme Court of Tasmania (Mitchell Library SLNSW)

The official stamp which Thomas Nevin printed on the verso of his photographs of Tasmanian convicts was the same as the insignia of the Supreme Court and Prisons Department where he photographed prisoners whose images survive today in public and private collections numbering more than 350 photographs.



Charles A. Woolley 42 Macquarie St. Hobart 1860-1870
Verso of unidentified man with top hat and cane.
Copyright © Private Collection KLW NFC ARR

This rare studio stamp from Charles A. Woolley carries the nationalistic exhortation "Advance Tasmania." His use of animal iconography differs again from his cohort's: his emu and kangaroo face outwards away from the coat of arms, unlike Alfred Winter's which face inwards in reverse positions.

When commercial photographer Alfred Winter relocated his business from Melbourne to Hobart ca. 1870, he changed the design of his studio stamp to include an emu and kangaroo. Although similar to the design used on the 1853 medal issued to commemorate the cessation of transportation of convicts to Tasmania, the positions of the emu and kangaroo were reversed on Winter's design. By 1884, however, he had replaced the emu and kangaroo with a lion and unicorn, encircled with the words " By Appointment to His Excellency The Governor". This example is the verso of a commercial portrait of a private patron, Anne Delaware (from The McCullagh Collection):



Left: Alfred Winter stamp 1874 with kangaroo and emu (SLVic)
Right: Alfred Winter stamp 1884 with lion and unicorn (Private Collection)