The Platypus Quarrel

00:00:01
Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class, a production of I Heart Radio. Hello, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Tracy the Wilson and I'm Holly Frying. A while back, I was wishing I had an episode to work on that was something along the lines of the pilt Down Man. The pilt Down Man was a case of scientific fraud. It was a skull that was purportedly fossil evidence of an evolutionary missing link, but really it was a total fabrication. Threw a ranch into the study of human evolution. But researching that one involved reading a lot of old science writing in which people were very authoritatively saying stuff that was totally wrong, and I just I enjoyed that research process. I even talk in the episode of how I enjoyed that process thanks to a totally random Jeopardy rerun that I saw while I was visiting my parents. I had an an idea for an episode that's almost the opposite of The pilt Down Man, because it's about how when European naturalists saw a platypus for the first time, it was so bizarre to them that they thought it was fake. Then they argued about how to classify the platypus in the taxonomy of animals for almost a century. This was happening in tandem with similar discussions about another Australian mammal, which is the kidna or spiny ant eater, and it was part of just discussions of the scientific taxonomy in general. That's what we're going to talk about today. And just as a heads up, European research into the anatomy and morphology of these animals included shooting a lot of them. Just be aware. So, the platypus is a mammal native to Eastern Australia, Tasmania and the surrounding islands. They're fairly unique in the animal world. And if you've never seen one, but you have seen lots of more typical mammals, I think it's seem incredibly weird. Yeah, if you're if you're animal experience with mammals is like bears and cats and dogs, you look at a platypus and you're like, what is this? Yeah, I'll tell a story in our behind the scenes about the first time I saw a platypus or an image of a platypus. I should say, Okay, they have for like a mammal, but a bill that looks like it belongs on a bird, thus the name duck build platypus, although that bill is really a sensory organ that's a lot more flexible than a duck's bill. Males have spurs on their hind legs that are equipped with venom glands, something that's way more common among reptiles. Platypuses produce milk to feed their young like other mammals do, but they also lay eggs, which is something the overwhelming majority of other mammals do not do. It's a quite a while for European naturalists to figure out the whole milk production and egg laying situation, which is going to be a big part of this episode. But even without those details, the platypus just seemed bizarre. In British Royal Navy officer John Hunter, who would later become Governor of New South Wales Colony, wrote that the platypus had come to be thanks to quote a promiscuous intercourse between the different sexes of all these different animals. In other words, lots of different animals had mated with one another, and the platypus was the result That sounds kind of cookie today. But this was not just a random colonial officials rambling on the subject. Hunter was a naturalist himself. He was a member of the Royal Society. I mean I could see where there's no other explanations. I probable my child logic for where such animals came from, right, that would lead you to that sort of conclusion. But of course Australia's first people's have known about these animals for thousands of years. The platypus has a role in the Aboriginal religious and cultural knowledge that early anthropologists described as the dreaming or the dream time. These stories and traditions from all across the continent are deeply sacred to Aboriginal and tourist straight islander people's, so they aren't really ours to share in the podcast. But what we do want to stress here is that a lot of what Europeans were arguing about and trying to prove in the nineteenth century was already commonly known among many Aboriginal communities. Scientists simultaneously relied on Aboriginal people to help them find platypuses to study, and also disregarded their knowledge about their physiology. One of the reasons why the platypus was so baffling to Europeans and the nineteenth century was that naturalists and anatomists and other such specialists had been methodically cataloging and categorizing life on Earth, starting primarily with Swedish naturalist Carlinaeus in his System and a Tire or System of Nature. In seventeen thirty five, Linnaeus created a taxonomy that arranged life into a hierarchy. And this was a hierarchy that was based on observable characteristics and traits. And this was not the world's first attempt to classify and categorize life on Earth by any means. There's evidence of classification systems in ancient Chinese and Egyptian texts, and Aristotle and his contemporaries created basic taxonomies around the third and four centuries b C. But Linnaeus established a system that's at the heart of what's still used today. It initially described three kingdoms, animal, vegetable and mineral, with life in the plant and animal kingdoms arranged by class order, genus, species, and variety. And as I said earlier, there was a hierarchy to all of this. Animals were of the highest rank, and then plants, and then minerals. This idea of a hierarchy then carried through each of the kingdoms, so, for example, well mammals were up at the top of the animals, humans were up at the top of the mammals. These hierarchical ideas also went on to form the basis of scientific racism when they were used to categorize groups of people from different parts of the world. In the tenth edition of Systeminature, Linnaeus divided the animal world into mammalia or mammals a vis or birds, amphibia or amphibians, which also included reptiles, pisces or fish, insecta or insects, and vermes, which translates to worms but was kind of a catch all for invertebrate animals that also didn't have an exo skeleton. Warm blooded animals whose hearts had to atrea and two ventricles were mammals if they gave birth to live young, and birds if they lay eggs. Cold blooded animals whose hearts had one atrium and one ventricle were amphibians if they breathe through lungs, and fish if they breathe through gills. As he described each class in more detail. Linnaeus also noted that mammals fed their young through lactiferous teets. The Latin word mamma or breast, is the root of the word mammal, So this all suggest that in Lenaeus's mind, the key features of mammals what was worth naming them after was milk production and females. Generally speaking, today's scientific taxonomy has more categories at every level and more precise methods for determining what goes where than Linnaeus's original work did. But this progression has been about more than just adding more specific and accurate factual details. Linnaeus and his contemporaries were also working from the idea that life was just as it had always been. The idea of evolution over time did not really enter into it for more than a century. Instead, Linnaeus framed his work as the categorization of God's creations as God had made them, with that work reflecting God's intentions. God had created all these plants and animals. They had been in their present state from the time of their creation, so by carefully examining them in Linnaeus's mind, you could find an observable, sortable pattern that demonstrated the will of God. So with that worldview in mind, when Europeans started encountering some of Australia's more unique wildlife, they really just did not know what to make of it. They defied categorization. You can see this confusion in one of the earliest written descriptions of the platypus in English, in an Account of the English Colony in New South Wales from its first settlement in seventy eight to August eighteen o one, with remarks on the dispositions, customs, manners, etcetera of the native inhabitants of that country, to which are added some particulars of New Zealand. That was written by David Collins. Collins had been born in London, had arrived in Australia with the first fleet in seventeen eighties six, and he served as Deputy Judge Advocate and eventually became Lieutenant Governor of New South Wales. He published this book in eighteen o two, and in volume two he listed a number of the different animals that had been observed in the colonies earliest years, before going on to say that more recently, quote an amphibious animal of the mole species had been spotted on the shore of a lake. Collins went on to describe this animal, and that was accompanied by a drawing of it by Captain John Hunter, who by this point had become Governor of New South Wales. Collins described the animal's small eyes and clawed, webbed feet before saying quote, the tail of this animal was thick, short, and very fat. But the most extraordinary circumstance observed in its structure was its having, instead of the mouth of an animal, the upper and lower mandibles of a duck. By these it was enabled to supply it self with food like that bird in muddy places or on the banks of the lakes, in which its webbed feet enabled it to swim. While on shore it's long and sharp claws were employed in burrowing nature, thus providing for it in its double or amphibious character. These little animals had been frequently noticed rising to the surface of the water and blowing like the turtle. So this was a mole and a duck and a turtle. It's just not what people were expecting when they showed up in Australia. When naturalists in Europe received specimens of the platypus from Hunter, They were similarly perplexed by what they were looking at, and we will have more on that. After a quick sponsor break in, Captain John Hunter sent a sketch of the water mole to the Literary and Philosophical Society d in Newcastle upon time, along with a preserved skin from one of the animals. This made its way to George Shaw, keeper of the Natural History collections at the British Museum which is now the Natural History Museum, but at first Show was really not convinced that the skin that he had received was authentic. He very carefully started looking for signs of stitching, thinking that maybe had somebody had sowed a duck's bill onto a mole's body. Of course, he found no such evidence, because it was a platypus in se Shaw teamed up with illustrator Frederick P. Noder to produce the Naturalist's Miscellany, or colored figures of natural objects drawn and described immediately from nature. In this Shaw wrote, quote, of all the mammalia yet known, it seems the most extraordinary in its confirmation, exhibiting the perfect resemblance of the beak of a duck engrafted on the head of a quadruped. So accurate is the similitude that, at first view it naturally excites the idea of some deceptive preparation by artificial means. The very epidermist proportions seratures, manner of opening, and other particulars, is the beak of a shoveler or other broad builled species of duck presenting themselves to the view. Nor is it, without the most minute and rigid examination, that we can persuade ourselves of its being the real beak or snout of a quadruped. This work goes on to say, quote, the body is depressed and has some resemblance to that of an otter in miniature. It is covered with a very thick, soft and beaver like fur, and is of a moderately dark brown above subfruginous white beneath. The head is flattish and rather small than large. The mouth or snout, as before observed, so exactly resembles that of some broad build species of duck, that it might be mistaken for such. Shaw's doubts about what he's looking at are clear. He wrote quote on a subject so extraordinarily as the present, A degree of skepticism is not only pardonable but laudable. And I ought, perhaps to acknowledge that I almost doubt the testimony of my own eyes with respect to the structure of this animal's beak. Yet must confess that I can perceive no appearance of any deceptive preparation. And the edges of the rictus, the insertion, etcetera, when tried by the test of maceration in water, so as to render every part completely movable, seemed perfectly natural. Nor can the most accurate examination of expert anatomists discover any deception in this particular. Shaw's work here predated David Collins's account of the English colony that we read from earlier, so this was the first thorough description of a platypus and English writing. Shaw also made the first attempt at giving this animal a name, which was Platypus anatoust which roughly translated to flat footed duck. In eighteen hundred, Thomas Buick published a wood engraving of a platypus in the adenda to the fourth edition of A General History of Quadrupeds. He didn't name the animal, though the engraving was just titled an amphibious Animal. In the adenda, he described both the amphibious animal and the wombat, which he calls a wombatch. With ach ending. He says the aquatic animal quote seems to be an animal, Suey Gennaris. It appears to possess a threefold nature, that of a fish, a bird, and a quadruped, and it is related to nothing that we have hitherto seen. We shall not attempt to arrange it in any of the useful modes of classification, but content ourselves with giving the description of both these curious animals as they have been transmitted to us. Suey Gennaris means unique. In eighteen hundred, also German physician and naturalist Johann Friedrich Blumenbach received a platypus skin from Hunter as well. He did his own study of it, and since he knew the name platypus had already been used on a type of beetle in, he chose a different name, Ornithoryncus paradoxus, or paradoxical bird snout. Eventually this became Ornithoryncus anatinus, combining the genus that Blumenbach had coined with the species from Shaw's name. Even though platypus was only briefly part of the proposed scientific name for this animal. It really stuck around as the common name it outlasted. Lots of other names were things like water mole. It just don't have the same beautiful ring. These were by far not the only Europeans trying to study the platypus, something that was inherently challenging. Most of them could not personally make the trip to Australia, and they were practically on the other side of the planet from where platypuses were, so they had to rely on specimens scent by but living in Australia or procured by expeditions to the continent. In addition to the time and effort involved with that, specimens were often damaged in transit. The first skin that George Shaw received was pretty badly desiccated by the time he got it. Plus, the ships that carried these specimens to Europe typically traveled through waters that were also home to ships from Eastern Asia, where people were known to use taxidermy to create really convincing representations of hybrid animals. These included things like P. T. Barnum's Fiji Mermaid, which was the head and torso of a monkey sewn to the tail of a fish and was reportedly purchased from Japanese sailors. The platypus itself already seemed like an improbable animal, so the existence of these Taxi Army specimens at it just a whole layer of complication and skepticism. Whenever people received do specimens, and when researchers did get their hands on equality specimen to study, sometimes their findings just made things even more confusing. Outwardly, the platypus looked mostly like a mammal except for that bird like bill. But in eighteen o two, British surgeon and Royal Society fellow Sir Everard Home dissected a platypus and found that the male had internal testes, that is a trait that's common to reptiles, not mammals. He also found that both males and females had a cloaca, that is, one orifice to the outside of the body for both digestive waste and for reproductive products. That was again something that had been found in birds, reptiles, amphibians, and fish, but not in mammals. Not long after Home published work on these discoveries, Etienne Jeffroy Saint Hilaire of France coined the term monetary to describe both the platypus and the Echidnea, deriving the name from Home's discovery of these animals having a cloaca. He suggested the monotreams belonged in their own class, which he named monotrema. The presence of a cloaca raised lots of questions about platypus reproduction. Sir Joseph Banks tasked botanical collector George Kayley with going to Australia to look into these questions for both the platypus and the Achidna. Kayley developed relationships with Aboriginal people to try to learn what they already knew. In a eight O three he wrote to Banks to say that one man had told him that the platypus laid eggs deep underground, but he had no physical evidence to prove it. And another pressing question was whether platypus is produced milk to feed their young. According to scientific understanding at the time, only mammals did that. But if platypus has laid eggs, as Kaylee's source had reported, then, according to the then current understanding, no mammals did that. As a side note, there are some birds that produce a milk like substance in a part of their esophagus known as the crop. It's no as crop milk or pigeon milk, and it plays a similar role to mammals milk and nourishing young in the earliest days of their life. But that is not what we're talking about here. Now. That is a different thing. Because of these questions about eggs and milk, though, various experts took the same approach as Etienne Geoffroy Saint Hilaire had done, proposing that the platypus belonged in the entirely new category. Jehan Baptiste la Barc of France proposed the new class called proto Heria in eighteen o nine for both platypuses and a kidneys, and French zoologist Johann Carl Wilhelm Illiger proposed one called Reptantia in eighteen eleven. In eighteen seventeen, French scientist George Cuvier placed the platypus and the echidna in a new genus within the order eden Tata, which was already home to ant eaters and splats, but Cuvier also noted there still needed to be an examination of these purported eggs. We have mostly been talking about people working from Europe, but researchers were at work in Australia as well. Botanical collector Sir John Jamison was born in Ireland and moved to Australia after inheriting property there in eighteen eleven. In eighteen sixteen, he wrote of the platypus quote the female is oviparous and lives in burrows in the ground, so that it is seldom seen either on shore or in the water. This was based on his own observations and he was both respected and trained in medicine. But the scientific community still wanted proof, and that was challenging because those burrows which did exist were hard to find and hard to get into. In the eighteen twenties, German anatomus Johann Meckel published four influential studies on the platypus. He described the venom gland in males and the mammary glands and females, although he didn't see any signs of those mammary glands being connected to nipples. Then, in eighteen thirty two, Lauderdale Maud of Scotland published two papers describing both the mammary glands and the milk production in a live platypus British comparative. Anatomist Richard Owen, who would go on to coin the term dinosaur, confirmed the presence of mammary glands in his own paper in eighteen thirty two, including noting that they seemed to be enlarged in specimens that also showed evidence of having recent activity in their ovaries. That in eighteen thirty three, biologist George Bennett discovered that platypus milk left the body through pores, sort of like sweat does, and then it collected on the abdomen for the young to drink. For some naturalists, this added up to conclusive evidence that the platypus lactated, and only mammals lactate, so platypuses were definitely mammals, and at least for some, that was also enough to answer the question of platypuses laid eggs, because mammals do not lay eggs, so if platypuses were mammals, they did not lay eggs. But others, including Etienne Jeffrey, concluded that Michael and mad had to be mistaken. Maybe those glands were producing some kind of skin lubricant rather than milk. This is kind of the same logic, only in reverse. Jeffrey had concluded that platypuses lay eggs, and that meant that they simply could not produce milk. It was impossible your if then statements are all messy. This led to a lot of division and dispute among naturalists, as various men who had published work on platypuses tried to defend their reputations in the face of other seemingly contradictory work, and of course most of this was ignoring the observations of Aboriginal people and at this point some European colonists who reported the platypuses definitely laid eggs. To be clear, this testimony was not always consistent. There were language and cultural barriers at work, among other things. But overall, besides just wanting physical evidences proof, the scientific community was generally dismissive of anything Aboriginal people reported. Charles Darwin stopped in Sydney in eighteen thirty six at the end of his voyage aboard the Beagle. While in Australia, he saw platypuses for himself, including one that had been shot by a member of his expedition, and in the years that followed, Platypuss came up in his letters to his colleagues as he was sort of thinking through his ideas on natural selection. Darwin later used the platypus as an example in on the Origin of Species in eighteen fifty nine, in a discussion of how animals traits influenced how people classified them, even if those traits were not necessarily the most important ones. Quote if the orna thorncas had been covered with feathers instead of hair, this external and trifling character would I think have been considered by naturalists as important an aid in determining the degree of affinity of this strange creature to birds and reptiles, as an approach instructure in anyone internal and important organ The work of Darwin and his successors would eventually put the platypus in context based on how it evolved over time and how that was related to the evolution of other animals. But in eighteen thirty six, when he was in Sydney, there were still far more questions than answers and we'll talk more about that after we pause for a sponsor break. As we said earlier, some nineteenth century researchers saw lactation and egg laying as mutually exclusive animals simply could not do both of those things. But for others establishing that the platypus did lactate, that didn't rule out egg laying. Instead, it made this an e been more important question to definitively answer. But eyewitness testimony of platypuses with eggs was not enough, because it's like, what if those were some other animals eggs and the platypus just happened to be near them. I mean, that's a sure that could happen. Sometimes people found egg fragments in platypus burrows, but that also wasn't conclusive, because theoretically a platypus might eat eggs, those could be the remnants of its food. So researchers wanted to find a pregnant platypus or one in the process of laying an egg, or an egg that contained what was clearly a developing platypus embryo. Researchers had already killed a lot of platypuses for research in the first decades of the nineteenth century, but attempts to meet these specific criteria led them to kill a lot more Yeah, and it was more specifically destructive because they were specifically looking for females. We mentioned earlier that cleverly made East Asian taxid army specimens had led to some skepticism about whether platypus specimens were genuine, and when it came to this question of whether platypuses lay eggs, incorrect eggs specimens had the same effect. Both Aboriginal people and colonists submitted samples that were purportedly platypus eggs, but they turned out to belong to completely different animals, including tortoises, lizards, and snakes. It's really not clear whether any of this was intentional or just a case of mistaken identity. Also, the question wasn't just do platypuses lay eggs or do they give birth to live young. Some animals are ovo viviparous, meaning they produce eggs, but the eggs develop inside the mother's body, either hatching inside the body or immediately after the egg is laid. So did the platypus give birth to live young that had been nourished through a placenta like a mammal, or did the platypus produce eggs? And if eggs were involved, did they develop and hatch inside or outside the body? Past podcast subject Jules Verreaux is going to be an upcoming Saturday Classic spent fifteen months in Tasmania, much of that time studying platypuses. Based on this research, he concluded that the platypus was over viviparous in He also wrote, quote the order the rincus as an animal bizarre of structure and offers numerous analogies with a host of different species and even classes. And its external form it resembles in some degree the mole as to its body, the beaver as to its tail, and the duck as to its beak. Its internal structure, more astonishing, still resembles that of certain reptiles and appears to form a link between mammals and lizards. Richard Owen directed George Bennett of the Australian Museum to hunt for female platypuses either pregnant or with eggs. Bennett had previously dissected female platypuses and found eggs in their uteruses, but none of those eggs contained any embryos, so they didn't offer any insight into whether the young might hatch from eggs or be born alive. But Bennett was concerned about this idea, fearing for the future of the species if researchers indiscriminately killed females to try to answer this egg question. Bennett was also concerned about the killing of Australian animals more generally. In eighteen sixty he wrote Gatherings of a Naturalist in Australasia being observations principally on the animal and vegetable productions of New South Wales, New Zealand and some of the austral Islands, And in the preface to this he said, quote, unless the hand of man be stayed from their destruction, the ornitho ryncus and the echidna, the emu and the megapodius, like the dodo moa, and no tortoise will shortly exist only in the pages of the natural list. The effort to find platypus eggs or pregnant platypus is continued for decades without clear success. Then in eighteen sixty four, two miners brought a female platypus to gold receiver George Rumby. Rumby reported that she laid two eggs while closed up in a gin create, but he wasn't sure that this was normal for the platypus. He thought that the fear involved with being shut up in that gin create may have caused her to essentially miscarry her eggs. In eighteen eighty two, British biologist and embryologist Francis Maitland Balfour, known as Frank, suggested that William Hay Calledwell traveled to Australia to study the egg question. Caldwell had graduated from Cambridge in eighteen eighty and had been teaching comparative anatomy. Not long after Balfour made this suggestion, he died while mountain climbing in the Swiss Alps. A Traveling Studentship was named in his honor, and Caldwell became its first recipient. Caldwell used the money and prestige that came with the studentship, along with the backing of the Royal Society, to travel to Australia and to study several of its animals, including platypus, is kidneas and lungfish. On August nine four, after a four months search assisted by Aboriginal people, Calledwell shot a female platypus. There was an egg nearby, one that was presumably hers. He also found an egg in the mouth of her uterus, which he described as being at a stage equal to a thirty six hour chick. Caldwell reported his findings through a telegram that read quote monotreums oviparous ovum merro blastic. Merro Blastic is a term used to describe an egg's cleavage after it's been fertilized, So in lay terms, this essentially said monotreams lay eggs, and their eggs contain lots of yolk. Caldwell's message was passed along to a professor he knew at Sydney University, and from there to the British Association for the Advancement of Science meeting that was convening in Montreal, and then just a day after Calledwell's find, William Hawk, who was curator of the South Australian Museum, also found an eggshell in an achidnas pouch that led to confirmation that a kidnas also lay eggs. Pack presented his observation to the Royal Society of South Australia and Adelaide on the same day that Calledwell's discovery was announced at the British Association of the Advancement of Science meeting. Both those things happened on September two four. This finally conclusively answered the question of whether platypuses lay eggs. Yes, they do, and so do a kidnas. Today there are only five species of mammal known to lay eggs, which are platypuses, and then four different species of a kidnam. All of them are native to the Australian continent and it surrounding islands, and from an evolutionary standpoint, it's likely that they split off from other mammals more than two hundred million years ago. It was only after that point that other mammals evolved to give birth to live young. After his discovery of platypus eggs, Caldwell went on to do some incredibly destructive research into a kidness. He employed a huge team of Aboriginal people who captured and killed and estimated twelve hundred to four hundred kidnap between July and August of five. Caldwell's writing suggests that at least some of these were being used for food, but he was definitely encouraging this by paying them half a crown for each female specimen that they brought to him. He also wrote about this aboriginal crew in a really disparaging way, and he exploited them by raising the prices on the flour, sugar and tea that he sold to them based on how much he had paid them for a kidneys specimens. So if you brought him more specimens, he would will sell you the same amount of tea or sugar or whatever, but at a higher price based on how much he had paid for those animals. What a gym uh. This research into the nature of the platypus had taken ninety five years and an enormous amount of effort. In the words of George Bennett, quote of all the Australian mammalia, none has excited so much attention as the platypus or water mole, both from its peculiar form and the great desire events to ascertain the habits and economy of so singular a creature. He went on to say, quote, perhaps no animal in its first introduction into Europe, ever, gave rise to greater doubts as to its classification or excited deeper interests among naturalists, and interest fully maintained to the present day respecting its habits and economy than this enigmatical creature, which, from its external appearance as well as internal anatomy, may correctly be described as forming a connecting link between quadruped the bird and the reptile. Bennett wrote that in eighteen sixty, but that part about quote an interest fully maintained to the present day is still true. There's still a ton of ongoing research into the platypus, including the discovery that the platypus has biofluorescent fur that was announced in so As. We noted a lot of platypuses were killed during this research and also through hunting, habitat loss, and other factors in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Eventually, though every Australian state passed conservation laws to protect the platypus. The last of those laws went into effect in nineteen twelve. So today platypuses are listed as near threatened on the International Union for Conservation of Nature Red List of Threatened Species. Not the most upbeat place to land an episode, no, but I mean it's better than they're being think. I don't know if that uh. My point being, do you have a beat listener mail to accompany this? I do have listener mail. I have listener mail that is about Australia. UM something. I didn't make the connection until just now because I had two different listener mails to go with two different episodes, and I did not pay attention to which I put with which. So thanks for nota for this email that turned out to be super related to this episode. UH this says this was written back in August after an earlier Unearthed episode, and I flagged it to read on the show, and then I didn't read it, so nada said Dear Holly and Tracy, I hope this email finds you both well during these strange and unusual times. I've just caught up on the July Unearthed episodes, as I usually listen to podcasts while i'm driving, but I'm in lockdown in Melbourne, Australia and haven't really been going many places. I came across this interesting talk about archaeological digs taking place in Melbourne, and I thought it might be interesting for the Edibles Impotable section of the next Unearthed. Uh. I forgot to come back to it in time for the next on Earth, so I'm reading it now. There's a big infrastructure project currently on the go, and as part of the excavations for a new train station, the Victorian government conducted archaeological digs on the site prior to commencing construction work. This particular site was right at the heart of early Melbourne, including a cottage owned by the man who founded the city, John Batman. Side note Melbourne was almost called bat Mania after him. One of the places they were excavating had been a general store in the eighteen fifties, but suffered a catastrophic fire in eighteen fifty five. The shop was destroyed and much of the remains fell into the underground cellar, which was also full of stock. The fire was so destructive that they pretty much just covered over the seller and built over the top. The excavations revealed to look at an eighteen fifties grocery store, with everything in the cellar base sickly untouched since the night of the fire. This allowed insight into how grocery stores arranged their stock and also what kinds of items they were stalking Melbourne in the eighteen fifties was a frontier town, having only been established twenty years prior. Yet the shop with stocking a range of foods, including relatively exotic fruits, as well as luxury goods from England. The dig analysis included our Chao botanical research to determine the contents of pots and bottles, some of which still contained the bird remains of food and drinks. There's also remains of a cat, possibly kept in the store to catch mice that would otherwise spoil the goods. Uh. And then there was a link to the talk about all of this. Thank you for all the hard work that goes into researching and writing the shows. They're always interesting, even when it isn't a topic with which I'm familiar, which is lots ha ha. Take here and stay safe or not to thank you so much for this email. I'm sorry that I flagged it for follow up, and then I didn't look at my follow up flags for a very long time. Uh, and then I thought I need to I need to make sure I haven't missed anything which I had. So thank you so much for this note and for telling us about these spines. If you would like to send us a note, we're at History podcast that I heart radio dot com and we're all over social media at Missed in History. That's where you'll find our Facebook and Twitter, and Pinterest in Instagram, and you can subscribe to our show on the I heart radio app and wherever else you like to take your podcasts. Stuff you Missed in History Class is a production of I heart Radio. For more podcasts from I heart Radio, visit the i heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.