21st Century Scientists Have it So Easy

After several years of collecting specimens and keeping journals in the Amazon, AR Wallace was on his way back to England when his ship caught fire and sank. He ended up spending 10 days on an open boat before being picked up by another ship. He notes in the November, 1852 issue of Zoologist that "The only things which I saved were my watch, my drawings of fishes, and a portion of my notes and journals. Most of my journals, notes on the habits of animals, and drawings of the transformations of insects, were lost."

A few pages down, I started reading about another naturalist named Julian Deby. The account is that "suddenly he was himself seized with the malignant fever of the country, and had his whole body covered with tumours. He was for six weeks completely laid up, and nearly all the time unconscious; when he came to himself, his first thought was for his collections: alas! his Indian servant had forgotten to fill up with tar the plates laid under the bench which supported his boxes, and the ants (a small red species) had devoured every specimen in his collection."

I love that whoever wrote up that second report paused to specify what type of servant failed to protect the research, and what type of ant ate Deby's collection. A true scientist.