Cabinet of curiosities: a kid's guide to collecting and understanding the wonders of the natural world

199 Pages·2015·43.983 MB·English

by  Grice, Gordon

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Collecting And
Understanding
Wonders
The of The
Natural World
Gordon Grice
WORKMAN PUBLISHING • NEW YORK
For Tracy, Parker, Beckett, Griffin, and Abby
Copyright © 2015 by Gordon Grice
All rights reserved. No portion of this book may be reproduced —mechanically,
electronically, or by any other means, including photocopying—without
written permission of the publisher. Published simultaneously in Canada
by Thomas Allen & Son, Limited.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available.
ISBN 978-0-7611-6927-7
Cover design by Raquel Jaramillo and Colleen AF Venable
Interior design by Raquel Jaramillo and Gordon Whiteside
Front cover photo by Raquel Jaramillo
Back cover photos: Picsfive/Shutterstock.com (vintage papers);
Bertrand Benoit/CGtextures (wood background); Dover Publications, Inc.
(octopus and beetle)
Photo research by Raquel Jaramillo
For additional photo and art credits, please see page 188,
which constitutes a continuation of the copyright page.
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WORKMAN is a registered trademark of Workman Publishing Co., Inc.
Printed in China
First printing September 2015
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contents
1 Introduction: My First Cabinet
14 Part one: Classifying Life on Earth {How to Organize All Living Things}
17 Chapter One: Classification
34 Part two: Animalia {The Animal Kingdom}
37 Chapter Two: Phylum Chordata
77 Chapter Three: Phylum Arthropoda
125 Chapter Four: Phylum Mollusca
135 Chapter Five: Phyla Echinodermata, Cnidaria, and Porifera
144 Part three: Plantae {The Plant Kingdom}
147 Chapter Six: Divisions Magnoliophyta, Pinophyta, Ginkgophyta,
and Lycophyta
162 Part four: Mineralium
165 Chapter Seven: Minerals, Gemstones, and Rocks (Plus Fossils)
182 Afterword: Curiosities
187 Acknowledgments
187 About the Author
188 Photo and Art Credits
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INTRODUCTION
MY FIRST CABINET
W hen I was about six, I started my first cabinet of curi-
osities. The first thing I put in it was a skunk’s skull
I found in our backyard. The skull fit perfectly in my palm.
It had sharp little teeth. I was surprised to notice that they
looked like my dogs’, with long, jagged canines on the sides.
Without its lips, the skull seemed stuck in a snarl. Fur still
clung to it—black with a stripe of white down the forehead.
I put the skull in a red cigar box my dad gave me. The box
was made of sturdy cardboard with a hinged lid. I was soon
using it to collect all sorts of things I found outdoors, from
old coins to corncobs.
Over the years I found many items to add to my cigar box.
One day our dogs came home with porcupine quills stuck in
their mouths and snouts. They had fought a porcupine and
lost. My dad pulled the quills out with pliers and gave them
to me. They were about the size of toothpicks. The stuff they
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were made of felt like fingernails. Into
my cigar box they went. Another time,
THE WORD CABINET ITSELF
WAS PROBABLY DERIVED my sister and I found some wooden seed
FROM THE LATIN WORD
CAVEA. THESE WERE THE pods called devil’s claws. Into the box
UNDERGROUND STALLS IN
WHICH THE ANIMALS THAT they went. When my pet tarantula died,
WOULD BE FIGHTING AGAINST
GLADIATORS WERE KEPT. into the box he went.
That cigar box became my first cabinet
of curiosities. I didn’t call it that at the
time. I only learned that term later.
THE AGE OF EXPLORATION
People have been keeping collections like the one I started in my cigar box for more
than two thousand years. In ancient times, collections of curiosities were kept in
temples. In the city of Carthage, for example, the temple for the goddess Astarte was
said to house many strange things for people to look at—even the skin of a chimpan-
zee. A whalebone was displayed in the temple of Asclepius in Sicyon, and a temple
in Naples kept an elephant skull. In ancient Rome, temples held vast collections of
curiosities from all over the empire, plus paintings, sculptures, jewelry, and books.
(In those days, books were rare and extremely valuable.)
It wasn’t until much later that collections started to be kept in special cabinets.
Nowadays, we think of cabinets as pieces of furniture. Kitchen cabinets. Toy cabinets.
Storage cabinets. Basically, any piece of furniture that has shelves, or drawers, and
maybe doors is called a cabinet. But the word cabinet goes back to the Middle Ages.
In France, a cabinet was a “small room.” In time it came to mean any place where
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