When the imposing natural historian Louis Agassiz established a summer camp for fledgling biologists on Penikese Island off the coast of Massachusetts in 1873, he set out to provide his underlings with proper guidance. Every species is a “thought of God,” the towering Swiss told the first cohort of aspirants, and nature is a sacred text. It is therefore the job of the taxonomist to “translate into human language . . . the thoughts of the Creator.” These thoughts convey a clear hierarchy in nature, with the white European man at the top, but other creatures had their place as well. If only students would pay attention, even a dandelion could offer them moral guidance.
Among the first cohort on the island was twenty-two-year-old David Starr Jordan of Gainesville, New York, and he was hooked. He would go on to make the naming of new species of fish his lifetime...
