The idea for this study of the life of John Scouler, a hitherto obscure nineteenth-century Scottish naturalist, fittingly arose when a trove of forgotten natural-history specimens was discovered within a miscellaneous cupboard in the biological department of Glasgow's Royal Technical College. Blodwen Lloyd Binns, a professor in the department and member of the Glasgow Natural History Society, demonstrated shrewd judgement in her decision to delve further into the likewise forgotten history of the specimens’ collector, Scouler, whose extensive and varied employment as a naval surgeon, scientific explorer, professor of mineralogy and curator at the Andersonian University and Museum offered a promising line of enquiry. Binns completed an early draft of the biography, and is responsible for the book's prologue and introduction, but left the task of its completion to E. Charles Nelson, whose work forms the subject of this review.

Nelson's John Scouler fits within a growing literature on the peculiar contribution of Scottish-born naturalists to nineteenth-century collecting and scientific discovery. Gwen Chessell's Alexander Collie: Colonial Surgeon, Naturalist & Explorer (2008) offers an obvious comparison in its similarly investigative approach to the life of a superficially unimportant nineteenth-century Scottish medical graduate and naval surgeon. Whereas Chessell's detailed account of Collie's life allows the reader to seize upon its more remarkable aspects almost independently, Nelson's study is briefer and much constrained by the remit that Binns set out for her successor to follow. This was to ape studies of Scouler's more famous contemporaries, especially Charles Darwin, by investigating his ‘significance’ on three counts. These were Scouler's ‘contribution to science’; ‘His contribution to the scientific thought of his time’; and ‘His collections, notably his herbarium’ (p. 4).

The book begins with Scouler's early life and his relationship with Robert Graham and William Jackson Hooker, both influential tutors at the University of Glasgow. We follow Scouler's medical studies and his move to Paris in 1823, and after his return to Scotland his growing acquaintance with a host of famous names, including the surgeon and naturalist Archibald Menzies. In 1824, Scouler was appointed to a naval expedition to north-west America aboard the Hudson's Bay Company ship William and Ann. Nelson's diligent research reveals that Scouler was recommended for the role by Hooker to John Richardson, the arctic explorer and noted ichthyologist, who sought a ship's surgeon capable of investigating the region's natural history. A similar attention to detail is apparent in Nelson's analysis of the William and Ann’s logbooks, and in his use of the journal of Scouler's fellow naturalist and companion, David Douglas, to compensate for the former's reticence in recording his experiences. In similar fashion, the narrative of Scouler's subsequent 1827–1828 voyage to India aboard the Clyde, about which very little was previously known, is considerably enlivened by extracts from the journal of Paul Schaffter, a missionary who accompanied Scouler on the journey. While these accounts sometimes distract attention from Scouler, their use is a necessary and imaginative response to an otherwise limited range of primary evidence.

Nelson's work is strongest when discussing Scouler's life on land. The second half of the book explores Scouler's work at the Andersonian University, Glasgow, and as a professor at the Royal Dublin Society. Nelson does well to highlight Scouler's ambivalence about these institutions, occasionally leading the reader to consider Scouler as something of a scientific antihero. The text's simultaneous effort to pay homage to Binns by outlining Scouler's intellectual ‘significances’ therefore sits somewhat uncomfortably with its narrative. This is the main weakness of an otherwise effective study; Nelson's exploration of Scouler's scientific legacy composes the book's main critical offering, but is frustrated by the latter's disinclination to publish as well as his more general insignificance to scientific debate at the time. Scouler's critique of the theory of evolution, Nelson admits, was not even ‘a minuscule irritant in Darwin's world’ (p. 79).

Nevertheless, it does not follow that the study of marginal figures makes only for marginal histories; there is much of interest to historians of science and exploration in Nelson's study of Scouler's life. The reader is offered a glimpse into numerous intriguing episodes which might profitably have been developed further. These include Scouler's 1825 encounter with Maquinna, the indigenous chieftain of Nootka Sound on the Pacific north-west coast. Nelson's evidence of Scouler's trade with Maquinna and other Nuu-chah-nulth people, and the ethnographic objects acquired in result, is of significant utility to those engaged in the growing study of indigenous intermediaries and their participation in imperial collecting, as is the text's discussion of Scouler's theft of indigenous skulls. Likewise, Scouler's unsuccessful machinations in 1841 for the job of his well-known friend and acquaintance, Hooker, then the outgoing chair of botany at the University of Glasgow, provide a fascinating insight into the acrimonious politics of contemporary scientific patronage.

In summary, Nelson's John Scouler is generally effective in navigating the tricky terrain between the interests of the Glasgow Natural History Society, which sought to discern the life and legacy of one of its notable progenitors, and the rather broader question of what Scouler's life and collections tell us about the inner workings of the nineteenth-century scientific world. Nelson concludes that Scouler's legacy is most obvious in the flora and fauna of north-western North America, where his name survives among the species he discovered. Scouler's contribution to the intellectual life and development of Victorian Glasgow is also now fully recognized. For the general academic reader or historian of science, Nelson's work is most valuable for its fresh insights into a well-trampled world, and its discovery of new paths to explore.