Editorial: Garth Underwood - Dedication 



This issue, the last of the Zoology series of the Bulletin of the Natural 

 History Museum, is dedicated to Dr Garth Underwood. Garth has had 

 a long association with the Natural History Museum. In 1 964, he was 

 appointed Principal Research Fellow to work on snake systematics, a 

 project which culminated in the modestly titled "'A contribution to the 

 classification of snakes" (Underwood, 1967). This book had a major 

 impact on snake classification, pioneering the use of soft anatomy as 

 a source of systematic characters. Its importance may be readily 

 appreciated from the many references made to it in many of the papers 

 in this special issue of the Bulletin (see especially Kochva in the 

 introduction to his paper on burrowing asps, Atractaspis). In a more 

 informal sense. Garth's association with the Natural History Museum 

 started much earlier than 1964; a visit to the Museum in the late 1930's 

 apparently gave him useful information for answering his Higher 

 School Certificate papers in Zoology! Like many zoologists, an 

 interest in natural history was something that was ingrained, and it 

 seems that Garth always was seeking explanations for biological 

 phenomena. His father, Leon Underwood, an eminent British sculp- 

 tor and painter, dedicated a book called Animalia, subtitled Fibs 

 about Beasts to Garth, showing him as a baby, thoughtfully looking at 

 a frog. The book offers poetic or fanciful explanations about the 

 animals within its pages, rather than scientific ones. The dedication 



reads: "To Garth, For whom cleaving facts asunder fall, And fancy 

 sheds a healing light on all". Garth, if not then, certainly now seeks 

 more objective, scientific interpretations in the biological sciences, 

 particularly of snake relationships. 



Even a brief dedication such as this would be seriously deficient 

 if it did not mention the contribution Garth has made to herpetology, 

 not just in terms of his published work but through his encourage- 

 ment and supervision of the studies of others. "A contribution to the 

 classification of snakes" was a starting point; Garth has always 

 sought new characters to shed new light on snake relationships, 

 devised new ways of looking at data, and has never been afraid to 

 revisit previous work to improve upon and revise earlier results. He 

 has passed on these ideas to others; within the Museum alone he has 

 supervised no less than 6 PhD's, most relating to snakes, but also 

 encompassing frog and insect systematics. He has also run under- 

 graduate and postgraduate courses in taxonomy, through times when 

 systematics was less appreciated than formerly or even today. 



Many people owe Garth a considerable debt of gratitude for his 

 help, guidance and support. He has been an inspiration to genera- 

 tions of undergraduates, postgraduates and scientific colleagues 

 worldwide; we hope he will be pleased with this token of our 

 appreciation. 



Editors for this issue: 

 Barry Clarke and Mark Wilkinson 



Sadly, Garth died on 15th October 2002 before this issue came out. He had seen or was aware of much of its contents. 



Photograph showing Garth Underwood in May 1966 when he was working on his "Contribution to the classification snakes". © The Natural History Museum 



