Homage To Santa Rosalia

Homage to Santa Rosalia or Why Are There So Many Kinds of Animals? G. E. Hutchinson The American Naturalist, Vol. 93, No. 870. (May - Jun., 1959), pp. 145-159.
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http://www.jstor.org Thu Apr 5 22:05:25 2007

THE

AMERICAN NATURALIST

Vol. XCIII May-June, 1 9 5 9 No. 870

HOMAGE T O SANTA ROSALIA
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WHY A R E T H E R E SO MANY KINDS O F ANIMALS?*
G . E. HUTCHINSON
Department of Zoology, Yale University, New Haven, Connecticut

When you did me thehonor of asking me t o fill your presidential chair, I accepted perhaps without duly considering the d u t i e s of the president of a s o c i e t y , founded largely to further the study of evolution, a t the c l o s e of the year t h a t marks the centenary of Darwin and Wallace's initial presentation of the theory of natural s e l e c t i o n . It seemed to me t h a t most of the signific a n t as p e c t s of modern evolutionary theory have come either from genetic i s t s , or from those heroic museum workers who suffering through y e a r s of neglect, were a b l e t o e s t a b l i s h about 20 years a g o what h a s come to be called the "new systematics." You had, however, c h o s e n a n ecologist a s your president and one of that school a t times supposed t o study the e nvironment without any relation t o t h e organism. A few months later I happened t o be i n Sicily. An early interest in zoogeography and in aquatic i n s e c t s led me t o attempt t o collect near Palermo, certain s p e c i e s of water-bugs, of the genus Cprixa, described a century a g o by F i e b e r and supposed t o occur i n the region, but never fully reinvestigated. It i s hard t o find suitablel o c a l i t i e s i n s o highly cultivated a lands c a p e a s the Concha d'oro. Fortunately, I was driven up Monte Pellegrino, the hill that r i s e s t o the w e s t of the c i t y , t o admire the view. A little below the summit, a church with a simple baroque facade s t a n d s i n front of a c a v e i n the limestone of the hill. Here in the 16th century a s t a l a c t i t e encrusted sk e l e t o n a s s o c i a t e d with a c r o s s and twelve beads w a s discovered. Of t h i s s k e l e t o n nothing i s certainly known s a v e that i t is t h a t of Santa R o s a l i a , a s a i n t of whom little is reliably reported s a v e that s h e s e e m s t o have lived i n the 12th century, that her skeleton w a s found in t h i s c a v e , and t h a t s h e h a s been the chiefpatroness of Palermo ever s i n c e . Other limestone cave r n s on Monte Pellegrino had ~ i e l d e dbones of extinct pleistocene E q u u s , and on the w a l l s of one of the rock s h e l t e r s a t the bottom of the hill there a r e beautiful Gravettian engravings. Moreover, a s m a l l relic of the s a i n t that I s a w in the treasury of the Cathedral of Monreale h a s a venerable and...