Millmoss & Ponsonby

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As a sequel to my previous Post: ‘To Cite or not to Cite’, I am reminded of Thurber who, more than 60 years ago, parodied a fierce ongoing feud between two renowned Paleontologists. Below are extracts from his ‘Prehistoric Animals of the Middle West’ (from: ‘The Beast in Me and Other Animals’, Penguin, 1976 reprint):

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------- I lay my failure directly at the door of Dr Wilfred Ponsonby who, at the Meeting of the American Scientific Society in Baltimore in 1929, made the remark, "The old boy (Dr Millmoss) never dug of half as many specimens as he has dreamed up."

Although Dr Millmoss, quite naturally, was unable to perceive the wit in this damaging observation, which hung like a cloud over his last days, he was not without a sense of humor, and I believe, if he were alive today, he would take no little satisfaction in the fact that in the last five years Dr Ponsonby has labored under the delusion that he is married to a large South African butterfly.

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=========These models were all destroyed in fire in 1930. "All that I have to show for them ", the good Doctor (Millmoss) once told a friend, "is two divorces".

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==========The creature's eye was an integral part of its shell, a mistake made by Mother Nature, and not, as has been claimed by Ponsonby, "a bit of Millmoss butchery-botchery". The Mound Dweller is of interest today, even to me, principally because it was my friend’s first reconstruction, and led to his divorce from Alma Albrecht Millmoss.

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===========Dr Millmoss estimated that the Thake had inhabited the prairies of Illinois approximately three million years before the advent of the Christian era. Shortly after Dr Millmoss gave his model of the Thake to the world, Dr Ponsonby, in a lecture at William College that was notable for its lack of courtesy, asserted that the Thake bones that Dr Millmoss had found were in reality those of a pet Airedale and a pet pony buried together in one grave by their owner , c 1907. My own confidence in the authenticity of the Thake has never been shaken, although occasionally it becomes a figure in my nightmares, barking and neighing.

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============Like so many of Dr Millmoss’s restorations, the Queech was made the object of a particularly unfriendly and uncalled-for remark by Dr Ponsonby. At a dinner of the New York Society of Zoologists, held at the old Waldorf-Astoria some fifteen years ago, Ponsonby observed, "There is no doubt in my mind that this pussy cat belongs to the Great Plasticine Age."

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=============The final plate (Plate VIII) was one of the last things that Wesley Millmoss did, more for relaxation, I think, than in the interests of science. It shows his idea, admittedly a little fanciful, of the Middle-Western Man and Woman, three and half million years before the dawn of history. When I asked him if it was his conviction that Man had got up off all fours before Woman did, he gave me a pale, grave look and said simply, "He had to. He needed the head start."

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Even in death, Dr Wesley Millmoss did not escape the sharp and envious tongue of Dr Wilfred Ponsonby. Commenting upon the untimely passing of my great employer and friend, the New York Times observed that explorers in Africa might one day come upon the remains of a large, piano-shaped animal that ate Dr Millmoss, together with the bones of its distinguished and unfortunate prey. Upon reading this, Ponsonby turned to a group of his friends at the Explorers Club and said, "Too bad the old boy didn’t live to reconstruct that."

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