Charles Melville Scammon (1825-1911) wrote one book, and it has fascinated seafaring men, historians, and naturalists for 94 years. I am told by Joel W. Hedgpeth that the book was a financial failure, and that Scammon used to buy copies from the San Francisco printer at cost of the paper to give to his friends. The unsold copies were lost in the earthquake and fire of 1906. Today the book is very rare; it seldoms appears on the book market, where it commands a price of $100 or more...
Where else can one find a picture like the frontispiece "Whaling Scene in the California Lagoons" or (Plate V) California Grays among the Ice"?
With respect to the zoological content of the book, information far more accurate and more comprehensive has been obtained since 1874. Nonetheless, Scammon wrote of populations, like the sea otters of Washington and Oregon, which were later exterminated. We can see them now through his eyes. When he hunted the the gray whales in their breeding waters, they numbered 25,000; a century later they were nearly gone. Though they are now recovering under strict protection, the shores of Scammon's Lagoon will never again resound to the cries of the whalesmen as he heard them in the 1850s.
Dr. Victor B. Scheffer, Biologist, U.S. Bureau of Commercial Fisheries, U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service, Seattle, Washington.
Notes: Resident Director, Marine Science Laboratory, Oregon State University, and a keen student of the history of science. Some years ago he interviewed the late L.N. Scammon, son of Charles Melville Scammon. I thank Dr. Hedgpeth for help with this introduction.
Joel Hedgpeth 1952 Foreward in BETWEEN PACIFIC TIDES
Joel Hedgpeth 1953 Pacific Discovery article (magazine now called Wild California)
Joel Hedgpeth 1956 Note in BETWEEN PACIFIC TIDES
Joel Hedgpeth 1962 Foreward in BETWEEN PACIFIC TIDES
Joel Hedgpeth 1971: De Mirabili Maris - in - Royal Society of Edinburgh Proceedings
