At 6:05 pm President Barbara Saunders called the meeting of the Society to order. Vice-President Lydia Thomas introduced Mike Bryant, renowned underwater photographer and Linnaean Society member, whose talk “Diving in the Coral Triangle” illustrated some of the fish, cephalopods and crustacea to be found in the area bordered by the Philippines, Indonesia, and Papua New Guinea, an area with the most diverse marine life in the world. Mike described the style of diving as “muck diving” whose aim is to seek out bottom dwellers at a depth up to forty feet, preferably with a dark sandy or shingle background for optimal photography of the well-camouflaged species found there. Most of the fish species, many of which belong to the lionfish, scorpion fish and anglerfish families, are best described as “lurkers” waiting for their prey and ingesting them with a sudden opening of their very wide mouths. Although many species mimic their backgrounds, others have spectacular coloration, well-documented in Mike’s photographs. He warned that many species, for example the various scorpion fishes, have poisonous spines so that great care must be exercised in searching for them. Turning to invertebrates, Mike showed the wonderful color and shape changes of the cephalopods and their ability to use human discards such as cans and plastic cups as homes. Among the crustacea, he highlighted crabs that carry sea urchins, jelly fish, or seaweed on their carapaces and mosaic boxer crabs which attach sea anemones to their pincers. In a remarkable example of convergent evolution, mantis shrimps have an uncanny resemblance to the similarly named terrestrial insects, with the same method of catching their prey. Mike’s beautiful photographs clearly demonstrated the amazing diversity and adaptability in this underwater world.
At 7:30 pm President Saunders reconvened the meeting. Recording Secretary Hamish Young read the Minutes of the January 8th, 2019 meeting. They were approved as read. Vice-President Thomas announced three new candidates for membership: Alice McInerney sponsored by Debbie Mullins, and Kaitlyn Parkins and Susan Elbin sponsored jointly by Council Member Gabriel Willow, Claude Bloch, Kelley Rosenheim and Kathryn Heintz. The nominations were approved unanimously. President Saunders regretted to inform the membership of the death of Joyce Hyon, former member and botany expert. President Saunders reminded members of the need for new Field Trips organizers for the 2019-2020 season, that members who have not done so should pay their dues to Treasurer Ruth Hart, before the Annual Dinner on March 12th, and that contributions to the fund for Archive cabinets are tax-deductible. She also announced the slate of officers of the Society for the upcoming year, approved by Council, to be voted on at the Annual Dinner. The candidates included: Barbara Saunders for President, Ken Chaya for Vice-President, Lydia Thomas for Secretary, Ruth Hart for Treasurer, Hamish Young for Recording Secretary, and Jon Hyman for Editor. Other nominations should be sent by mail to the Secretary by the end of February. Rochelle Thomas, Conservation Committee chair, announced a public meeting on March 1st of the City Parks Department for comments concerning a new rule forbidding feeding of wild life in any city park. The aim of the new rule is to reduce the rat population, and to reduce transmission of infectious diseases among the wild life in the parks. Details will be found on the Society’s website.
After the business section of the meeting, President Saunders introduced Victoria Johnson, Associate Professor at Hunter College. Her talk “American Eden: David Hosack, Botany, and Medicine in the Garden of the Early Republic” described the life and work of the man best known as the physician present at the duel between Aaron Burr and Alexander Hamilton. To his contemporaries however, he was the driving force behind the establishment of the first botanical garden in the new United States. Hosack was convinced that the new republic needed to emulate the great gardens of Europe such as the Jardin des Plantes in Paris and the various physic gardens in England, which collected plants from far and wide for potential medicinal uses. Hosack enrolled in Columbia Medical School in 1786 but after the doctor’s riot of 1788 he transferred to Philadelphia to study with Benjamin Rush. Later he travelled to Edinburgh, one of the premier medical schools of its day, where he pursued his passion for both medicine and botany. In 1793 he travelled to London to study at the Linnaean Society where he met botanical luminaries and apothecaries such as Joseph Banks, James Edward Smith, and William Curtis, director of the Chelsea Physic Garden. Returning to the USA in 1794, to take up a position as Professor of Botany and Medicine at Columbia University, he set about establishing a similar botanical garden in New York City. Although many of his efforts met with scant success, as in his request to President Jefferson to have the Lewis and Clark Expedition of Discovery collect plants for his garden, he was able to establish a garden complete with conservatory on the “middle road” near present day Radio City Music Hall. He named it the Elgin Botanical Garden in honor of this father’s birthplace in Scotland. Here he planted a wide variety of potentially medicinal plants, with contributions from many famous botanists world-wide. He in turn sent specimens to several renowned institutions including the Jardin des Plantes, and became famous himself, culminating in the naming of a new genus Hosackia by David Douglas. As well as his pioneering efforts to establish the garden, he contributed to the founding of the New York Historical Society among other civic institutions. In its later years the Elgin Botanical Garden fell into disrepair for lack of adequate funding and Hosack established a new collection at a site near Hyde Park. Turning to Hosack’s relations with Hamilton and Burr, Victoria pointed out that even though he was a close friend of the former, having saved his son Philip from a case of typhus, he maintained close relations with Burr as the latter fled south and then to Europe after the death of Hamilton. Burr kept him abreast of botanical news. Although Hosack was a true pioneer in the field of medical botany and much admired in his time, he did not find a curative treatment for any disease and after he died in 1835, his reputation declined until now he is remembered as the physician who attended to the dying Hamilton. Dr. Johnson’s book about David Hosack should help to rescue his reputation as an important early botanist in the new Republic.
The meeting was adjourned at 8:41 pm.
Respectfully submitted by
Hamish Young, Recording Secretary