A FIRST GLIMPSE OF THE FUTURE
1918- 1922
While no longer curator at the Tasmania Museum, Flynn continued to work with the Australian Museum in Sydney. [Regular exchange of specimens with his Sydney colleagues continued. In June 1918 they sent him a cast of the Talgai skull and in November Flynn sent them some Tasmanian eels. Flynn also had on loan the museum’s collection of spider crabs. (In 1927 Flynn was to exchange skins and skeletons of a bettong and potoroo in return for the cast of a Queensland lungfish.) Late in 1918 Flynn began to take an interest in beaked whales and asked the Australian Museum whether it had the specimen of Mesoplodon described in their Annals Series 4 Volume VII. Earlier in that year he thanked it for the use of their specimens and facilities during the previous summer and ‘in return would like to invite Mr Hedley to attend an expedition under the management of the Tasmanian Museum to Table Cape.’[Flynn to Aust Museum 4 April 1918.] Flynn planned to explore area’s the famous fossil beds with W L May and hoped Charles Hedley would make another trip to Tasmania. Probably due to their dispute with Flynn caused the Trustees of the Museum ‘to postpone the expedition’.
In December 1918 he sought further records of these whales. Some fourteen months later Flynn went to the fossil beds at Table Cape, near Wynyard. While walking along the shore of Table Cape Flynn noticed bones protruding from the cliff face. After much effort, including construction of a substantial scaffold on boulders at the foot of the cliff, he excavated the 56 cm fossil. It was extremely well preserved in the Miocene sediments and Flynn soon identified it as the skull of a whale of the Squalodont group. On 9 September 1920 he wrote to Nature saying ‘a detailed description will be published later, but I have thought a preliminary notice might be of interest to British naturalists’.[Squalodont Remains from the Tertiary Strata of Tasmania. (London, Nature, 1921, figs. 1-2.)]
Without specialist advice Flynn could not be sure whether his find was just a new species or a new genus. He also needed a major museum to display his find. The Australian Museum was happy to use of its facilities to study the skull, in return for a colour photograph. Flynn shipped the skull to Sydney in time for his summer stay but when he unpacked it he saw some damage. Another deal was struck where in return for the Museum’s expertise in repairing the specimen, six casts would be made and the Museum retain the mould.
The author examines the fossil whale collected by Flynn in the Geology Dept of Univ of Tasmania.
Throughout the winter Flynn organised a group of trappers to collect Potoroos, Bettongs and Possums in order the further elucidate the structure and functions of the placenta and its relationship with the embryo. He was pleased to find among the embryos ‘two late stages of Perameles gunni. One just before birth, one just after showing the placenta in position’ he told Haswell.[Flynn to Haswell 18 July 1921 Aust Mus. ] He also sought Haswell’s advice on how to get rid of the superfluous yolk in the very early stages (about 2-cell) of the marsupial ovum. He had seventeen blastocysts and intra-uterine embryos from potoroos, possums and bettongs. The previous year ‘he was lucky enough’ to find a Tasmanian Devil that had just ovulated and he was writing a short note on his find.[Flynn to Haswell 14 May 1921 Aust Mus.]
Flynn’s academic research on marsupials was acknowledged this year with the awarding of a DSc. from the University of Sydney. His thesis ran to 86 pages together with a booklet of 56 photographs.[Univ of Sydney library 378.94 SO] The significance of this work grew as his discoveries were acknowledged by other experts in embryology. In the first major publication on the subject Flynn’s mentor, JP Hill, had maintained that the development of the placenta in marsupials was quite distinct from that of other mammals, making a substantial divergence in the evolutionary path of the two groups. Flynn showed that this aspect of Hill’s work was wrong and in fact marsupial embryology was consistent with that of other mammals. In placental development the embryonic tissue attacks the maternal tissue and not vice versa. Furthermore by studying the placenta in these more primitive mammals it was possible to throw new light on the embryology of the higher mammals including man and domestic animals. Such detailed interpretation of this aspect of reproduction demanded a continuous series of dissected embryos and meticulous sectioning and illustration.
In the introduction to the thesis Flynn describes his efforts over the past ten years to put together a comprehensive collection that will allow him to describe marsupial development before some key members became extinct.
“In the not very distant future, with the spread of settlement and the almost incredible devastation caused among these animals by fur hunters and trappers, a depletion but little compensated for by restrictive legislation, it may be considered certain that the connected stages necessary for the elucidation of the intra-uterine development will be practically unobtainable.
…it is to be fervently hoped that these genera that that are rapidly diminishing in their native land, some even on the verge of disappearance, may yet be fully investigated before they have been exterminated.”
The genera he referred to were Thylacinus and Sarcophilus, the tiger and the devil. From his observations both were ‘absolutely on the verge of extinction’. He believed that were it not for the largesse of the Ralston Trust and support from the BAAS the development of these animals and their place in the evolution of mammals would never have been known.
A Working Visit to England
Flynn’s friend and mentor James Peter Hill now had a personal Chair as Professor of Embryology and Histology in the newly formed Department of Anatomy at University College London and he invited Flynn to come to England. Earlier Hill had been awarded a D.Sc from UCL and a gold medal for a thesis of high excellence. He was elected to fellowship of the Royal Society in 1913 and had just relinquished the Jodrell Chair to take the new position. Flynn left for London in October 1921. His aspiration was to have the Royal Society publish his thesis and to discuss future research with other scientists. He planned to see Hill in London, Hubrectht and van Brock in Utrecht, Bouvier in Paris and Keibel in Berlin with object of getting European finance to widen his work on the development ‘of the fast disappearing fauna’ of Tasmania. He also hoped to get support from the Royal Society or elsewhere further to explore the Wynyard fossil deposit. ‘In addition I hope to look into the scientific on fisheries for sooner or later the University will have to take an active part in this area’, he told Tasmanian confreres.[Flynn Staff file 9 Oct 1921.]
Errol (and some platypus) travelled with his father on the trip “home”, as both of them referred to England despite neither of them having been there before. Later Marelle and Rosemary followed them. While his father worked and his mother and sister went to France to live with Marelle’s sister, Errol was sent to boarding school.[Norman Errol Flynn in Hobart p10. Meyers says it was St Paul’s School, p246] Betty had been in New York at the end of World War I where she met and married George Glover.
When Flynn arrived at University College London he renewed a friendship with Prof DMS Watson. Watson had come to Tasmania in 1914 as part of the BAAS delegation in 1914. The two had later visited the northwest coast where FA Callaway of Wynyard had drawn their attention to a shaded pool formed by the damming of a creek to drive the wheels of a flour mill. Callaway believed it contained a freshwater sponge. Flynn and Watson found the pale yellow encrustation together with ‘a plentiful supply of the interesting fresh-water hydrozoan, Cordylophora.’ Like the sponge this had not been previously recorded in Tasmania. When Flynn sent the specimens to ‘Dr. N Annadale of the Indian Biological Survey’ he discovered that the sponge was identical to one discovered near Subiaco in Western Australia, but not elsewhere in Australia.[Flynn TT, On a freshwater Sponge from Tasmania. Pap & Proc Roy Soc Tas 1922 p.58-59.]
The Australian Museum sent one of the Wynyard whales skull casts to London and Flynn showed it to a meeting of the Zoological Society. ‘It aroused much complimentary comment, reported Flynn to one correspondent,[Flynn to Aust Museum 13 June 1922] and to another that ‘There was a most interesting discussion but the evening stands out in my mind particularly for the excellent dinner we had afterwards.[Flynn to Haswell. 13 June 1922 Aust Museum] He spent a month at the British Museum working on the whale skull. ‘My find has proved to be much more interesting even than I thought. It proves to be the same genus as a badly described whale from Patagonia. Watson and I have been able to put these things in order and the find forms an interesting way of correlating the geological beds of Tertiary age in Patagonia and Australia.’ Watson and Flynn started work on a full description but decided that to have a paper published they needed to work from the original specimen. After London Theo went to Belgium to look at Hubrecht’s embryological collection and was so impressed that he planned to return for a much longer stay. To facilitate this he arranged to give a course of lectures on the placental relationships in the marsupials. He had a short stay in Brussels ‘where I saw Dollo and Brachet and then to Paris where I only stayed a few hours’. The second visit to Berlin did not eventuate.
His time with Hill included robust discussions about Flynn’s new interpretation of the Perameles placenta that was part of his DSc thesis.
“Hill fought hard for his interpretation but admitted at last that he must allow for some foetal penetration which is all I wanted. I think he is prepared to admit that some of my conclusions are correct. He has a slide, earlier than mine, which we both examined. This shows diplokaryocytes similar to those found by Aspheton in the sheep. Hill has therefore not a leg to stand on.
He was very good in going carefully over all I had written, in pointing out some necessary alterations and smoothing the way for publication.’
At this point the relationship between Hill and Flynn changes from teacher and gifted student to professional colleagues as well as friends. The trip left a lasting impression on Theo and probably planted the thought that he could one day work in Europe and not have to stay in Tasmania. ‘You can imagine what a stimulus it is for me to meet men of this type’ he wrote to Haswell. He was pleased and proud that his linkage of the embryology of marsupials and other mammals had been so well regarded.
It was his first taste of the world that would be his future.