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![By Rodrigo Pérez Ortega
S
ince the 19th century, scientists at
the Smithsonian Institution have
obtained, studied, and stored more
than 30,000 human remains, one of
the largest such collections in the
United States. In the past, many re-
mains were studied in order to justify sci-
entific racism. Now, the institution should
rapidly offer to return most of these re-
mains to lineal descendants or descen-
dant communities, according to a report
released last month by an institutional
task force.
“It’s important to face this past and try to
repair the harms caused by our institution
and so many others,” says Sabrina Sholts,
curator of biological
anthropology at the Smith-
sonian’s National Museum
of Natural History and
member of the task force.
Most of the Smithson-
ian’s human remains were
collected without proper
consent in the early
20th century, and many
acquisitions were part
of an attempt to prove
now-debunked notions of white superior-
ity. “It’s a collection that should have never
been amassed, and we’re committed to dis-
mantling as much of it as possible,” wrote
Secretary of the Smithsonian Lonnie Bunch
III last year in an editorial.
The Smithsonian already has a process
for repatriating its 15,000 Native American
remains, as a 1989 federal law requires; it
has returned more than 5000. Now, the
report urges that the collection’s Indig-
enous remains be returned more quickly
and that the effort extend to all human re-
mains. It also suggests prioritizing the re-
mains of other marginalized groups, such
as the collection’s 2100 African American
remains, as well as the nearly 6000 re-
mains of people whose names are at least
partially known.
The task force applies a bedrock princi-
ple of research on living humans—the need
for informed consent—to the remains, a
first for the Smithsonian. It advises that no
research should be done without consent
from the deceased or their descendants.
Research would be permitted without
consent on ancient remains that cannot
be linked to any of today’s communities,
which are a small percentage of the total.
Other new recommendations in-
clude returning as many remains as pos-
sible by 2030 and barring destructive
sampling—to analyze DNA, for example—to
identify descendants.
Studies of the remains, such as DNA anal-
ysis of dental calculus to study pathogens,
might be harder to carry out under the new
recommendations. Although there’s no of-
ficial moratorium, no new human remains
research has been approved in recent years
because of stricter re-
quirements, Sholts says.
She expects a pause on
approvals while the new
policy is established, but
notes the report antici-
pates positive outcomes
from future research.
The 15-member task
force, including both
Smithsonian staff and
outsiders, says the insti-
tution should ramp up its efforts to identify
both lineal descendants and communities
of descent and then initiate contact, rather
than waiting for repatriation requests. The
report recommends the Smithsonian re-
quest new funds and staff for the massive
repatriation effort, but does not say how
much would be needed.
“I’m impressed,” says Carlina de la Cova,
a biological anthropologist at the Univer-
sity of South Carolina who is not on the
task force. The recommendations “will
force scholars working with the dead to
think about how they engage with [re-
mains] and what that means for the living.”
She adds that it’s the first time a museum
has made such recommendations public,
and she expects other institutions to fol-
low the Smithsonian’s steps.
Sholts agrees: “This first step towards
a long-overdue reckoning makes it more
likely that others will do the same.” j
NEWS | IN DEPTH
1040 8 MARCH 2024 • VOL 383 ISSUE 6687 science.org SCIENCE
Come fall, especially in the U.S. East, the
light brown wings of buckeyes darken to
a deep red, enabling them to absorb heat
more efficiently. When Cornell evolution-
ary biologists Robert Reed and Richard
Fandino used CRISPR to knock out differ-
ent parts of the lncRNA in these butter-
flies, they were born with little or no color
and their fall reddening was altered, the
team reported on 19 February on bioRxiv.
A white butterfly mutant posted on the
social media platform X (formerly Twit-
ter) alerted Livraghi to the team behind
the third new preprint: evolutionary de-
velopmental biologists Antónia Monteiro
and Shen Tian at the National University
of Singapore. They were focused on short
RNA sequences, microRNAs, known to reg-
ulate gene activity in plants, animals, and
other eukaryotes—organisms that pack
their DNA in a nucleus. In the squinting
bush brown butterfly (Bicyclus anynana),
a well-studied tropical species, they found
that a microRNA was active in the black
wing pattern, just as Livraghi had found
for the ivory lncRNA.
When the Singapore team disabled the
DNA encoding this microRNA, mir-193,
bush brown wings became lighter, the
team reported on 12 February in a bioRxiv
preprint. Knocking out mir-193 also had
dramatic effects in a distant relative, the
Indian cabbage white (Pieris canidia),
changing its black-patterned wings to
completely white. After learning about
the lncRNA identified by the two other
groups, Monteiro and Tian concluded that
the longer RNA is broken down to produce
these microRNA.
“A lot is happening within this small part
of the genome,” says Violaine Llaurens,
an evolutionary biologist at the College of
France. She cautions that other regulatory
elements probably play a role in butterfly
wing patterns. But the fact that the same
microRNA fine-tunes coloration in very
distantly related species is “amazing,”
says Anyi Mazo-Vargas, an evolutionary
bio-logist at Duke who worked with Reed.
She suspects similar RNAs color wings in
most, if not all, of the 180,000 species of
moths and butterflies. And because mir-193
is conserved across the animal kingdom,
Monteiro and Tian think noninsects may
also make use of these regulatory RNAs.
Small RNAs derived from parent
lncRNAs affect traits in plants, too, says
Yaowu Yuan, an evolutionary biologist at
the University of Connecticut whose team
last year reported that so-called siRNAs
determine color in monkeyflowers. The
RNA realm is expanding, Yuan says. “I
am quite positive that many more similar
studies will come soon.” j
Smithsonian urged to speed
repatriation of human remains
Task force says museum should return many of its 30,000
remains and seek descendants’ consent for research
MUSEUM COLLECTIONS
“Thisfirststeptowards
along-overduereckoning
makesitmorelikely
otherswilldothesame.”
Sabrina Sholts,
National Museum of Natural History](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/28041834-250512155906-f39f8450/75/Science-Trouble-Blow-6687th-Edition-Science-Editors-16-2048.jpg)
![By Amanda Heidt
I
n 1859 Charles Darwin coined the term
“living fossil” to describe lineages that
have looked the same for tens of millions
of years, such as the coelacanth, sturgeon,
and horseshoe crab. The term captured
the popular imagination, but scientists
have struggled to understand whether such
species just resemble their long-ago ances-
tors or have truly evolved little over the eons.
Now, in a study published this week in Evo-
lution, researchers confirm that in some—but
not all—living fossils, evolution is at a virtual
standstill. The most striking examples are
prehistoric-looking fish called gars, which
have the slowest rate of molecular evolution
of all jawed vertebrates. The team also pro-
poses a mechanism to explain gars’ timeless-
ness: superb DNA repair machinery. That
repair has likely kept gar genomes so stable
that species whose last common ancestor
lived more than 100 million years ago have
diverged very little, and some can still hybrid-
ize today to produce viable offspring.
“That’s amazing,” says Tetsuya Nakamura,
an evolutionary developmental biologist at
Rutgers University. “This paper has a lot of
interesting work into this question of what
makes a living fossil, but when I read that, I
was shocked.”
To see whether several putative living fos-
sils evolve more slowly than other vertebrate
groups, the team gathered published se-
quences from more than 1100 exons (the cod-
ing regions of the genome) across 478 species.
Using existing family trees for each group,
they created a massive evolutionary tree. For
each lineage, the researchers estimated the
rate at which each DNA base changed over
time—the so-called substitution rate.
Surprisingly, they found evolution was
not on pause in all living fossils. The coel-
acanth, the elephant shark, and a bird called
the hoatzin—all considered ancient—have
faster than expected mutation rates of about
0.0005 mutations at each site per million
years, although that was still slower than the
average rate for amphibians (0.007 mutations
per million years) and placental mammals
(0.02 mutations per million years). The find-
ings support the idea that some species that
still resemble their ancient ancestors have
nevertheless changed at a molecular level.
But gars, big freshwater fish with long,
toothy snouts, were different: In almost every
exon, gars had the slowest rates of molecular
substitution, often by several orders of mag-
nitude; they averaged only 0.00009 muta-
tions per million years at each site. Indeed,
two genera that diverged roughly 20 million
years ago had identical sequences at nearly
all the sites analyzed—a finding the team at
first attributed to sequencing error. “I came
into this project cautious about using the
term living fossil,” says study co-author Chase
Brownstein, an evolutionary biology Ph.D.
student at Yale University. “But for gars at
least, it’s an appropriate term.”
The authors posit that because gar mu-
tation rates seem consistently low across
sites—including in genomic regions un-
likely to be under selective pressure to stay
the same—a global mechanism likely drives
the slow substitution. They suggest gars
are extremely efficient at repairing DNA
after mutations or damage, keeping the
animals from evolving even as the conti-
nents have shifted around them. A similar
hypothesis has previously been proposed by
other researchers for sturgeon, which had
the second-lowest substitution rates among
vertebrates in the study.
DNA repair is “a reasonable hypothesis,
but there’s probably more than just one ex-
planation,” says Elise Parey, an evolutionary
genomicist at University College London.
For example, gars have slow metabolic rates
and long generation times, features that
could reduce mutation rates. Gars have also
preserved the arrangement of DNA in their
chromosomes and dampened the effects of
so-called jumping genes that can cause ge-
netic reshuffling as they move from place to
place in the genome. “This goes not just to
sequence changes, but also to chromosome
evolution, which would be an interesting av-
enue to explore,” Parey says.
To test their findings, the authors followed
up on reports of unusual gars that might
be natural hybrids in rivers throughout
Oklahoma and Texas. They analyzed tissue
samples from dozens of these fish to trace
their ancestry, finding that two gar genera—
Atractosteus and Lepisosteus—are crossing to
produce fertile, hybrid young. These groups
last shared a common ancestor roughly
105 million years ago, a record separation
time for eukaryotes that can produce viable
offspring. The gars beat the previous re-
cord holders—two species of fern—by about
60 million years. (Keen minds may re-
call reports of the sturddlefish, a hybrid of
paddlefish and sturgeon, which diverged
even longer ago, but those accidental hybrids
were likely sterile and don’t occur naturally.)
A next step will be to prove that gars’ DNA
repair mechanisms are indeed slowing their
genetic change. By equipping zebrafish—a
standard model animal—with gar DNA repair
genes, investigators might be able to observe
the genes at work. “This will be a challeng-
ing experiment though, because [DNA repair
genes] are fundamental,” Nakamura says.
But the authors say understanding how
gars keep their mutation rate so low could
have additional payoffs. For example, such
insights might help humans better under-
stand our own DNA repair pathways, which
can lead to cancer when they fail. j
Amanda Heidt is a science journalist in Utah.
8 MARCH 2024 • VOL 383 ISSUE 6687 1041
SCIENCE science.org
PHOTO:
SOLOMON
DAVID
Gars truly are‘living fossils,’
massive DNAdata set shows
The fish’s genomes change so slowly that species separated
since the dinosaurs can produce fertile hybrids today
EVOLUTION
This fish is the hybrid offspring of an alligator gar and
a spotted gar—members of genera that last shared a
common ancestor at least 100 million years ago.](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/28041834-250512155906-f39f8450/75/Science-Trouble-Blow-6687th-Edition-Science-Editors-17-2048.jpg)
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- 5. Deepwater sharks threatened byharvest p. 1135 TROUBLE BELOW $15 8 MARCH 2024 science.org Using ultrasound to monitor tissue health pp. 1058 & 1096 Sundance film picks for scientists p. 1052 A French science colossus faces a reckoning p. 1046
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- 8. science.org SCIENCE CREDITS: (ILLUSTRATION) HEDOF; (PHOTO) NICOLAS TUCAT/AFP VIA GETTY IMAGES NEWS IN BRIEF 1036News at a glance IN DEPTH 1038 U.S. giant telescopes imperiled by funding limit NSF faces choice between multibillion-dollar projects after board sets cost cap By D. Clery 1039 Surprise RNA paints colorful patterns on butterfly wings Understudied means of regulating genes is likely widespread in butterflies— and perhaps other animals By E. Pennisi 1040 Smithsonian urged to speed repatriation of human remains Task force says museum should return many of its 30,000 remains and seek descendants’consent for research By R. Pérez Ortega INSIGHTS BOOKS ET AL. 1052 Review roundup Science at Sundance 2024 PERSPECTIVES 1057 Two rings to rule them all A single photonic device accommodates three different modes of operation By A. Rolland and B. M. Heffernan RESEARCH ARTICLE p. 1080 1058 Monitoring homeostasis with ultrasound An implant could allow at-home monitoring of deep-tissue changes after surgery By S. N. Sharma and Y. Lee RESEARCH ARTICLE p. 1096 1059 Breathing control of vocalization A crucial brainstem circuit for vocal- respiratory coordination of the larynx is revealed By S. R. Hage RESEARCH ARTICLE p. 1074 1060 Amphibian hatchlings find mother’s milk Egg-laying amphibian females produce lipid-rich“milk”to feed offspring after hatching By M. H.Wake RESEARCH ARTICLE p. 1092 POLICY FORUM 1062 Accounting for the increasing benefits from scarce ecosystems As people get richer, and ecosystem services scarcer, policy-relevant estimates of ecosystem value must rise By M.A. Drupp et al. 1052 8 MARCH 2024 • VOLUME 383 • ISSUE 6687 CONTENTS 1041 Gars truly are ‘living fossils,’ massive DNA data set shows The fish’s genomes change so slowly that species separated since the dinosaurs can produce fertile hybrids today By A. Heidt 1042 Brazil is hoping and waiting for a new vaccine as dengue rages A locally produced vaccine did well in a phase 3 clinical trial but won’t be available until at least 2025 By M.Triunfol 1043 Final spending bills offer gloomy outlook for science Congress makes sizable cuts at key funding agencies By Science News Staff 1044 Skin side effects stymie advance of HIV vaccine Strategy of using multiple mRNA shots to hone powerful antibodies hits a pothole By J. Cohen 1032 At the height of his fame, French microbiologist Didier Raoult inspired a nativity figurine. FEATURES 1046 The reckoning Didier Raoult and his institute found fame during the pandemic.Then,a group of dogged critics exposed major ethical failings By C.O’Grady b
- 9. 8 MARCH 2024• VOL 383 ISSUE 6687 1033 SCIENCE science.org PHOTO: RUPINDER KAUR/PENNSYLVANIA STATE UNIVERSITY DEPARTMENTS 1035 Editorial Collections are truly priceless By C. C. Davis 1150 Working Life Writing my ticket By V.J. Rodriguez RESEARCH IN BRIEF 1068 From Science and other journals REVIEW 1071 Neuroscience Structure, biophysics, and circuit function of a“giant”cortical presynaptic terminal D.Vandael and P.Jonas REVIEW SUMMARY; FOR FULL TEXT: DOI.ORG/10.1126/SCIENCE.ADG6757 RESEARCH ARTICLES 1072 Adult stem cells Vitamin A resolves lineage plasticity to orchestrate stem cell lineage choices M.T.Tierney et al. RESEARCH ARTICLE SUMMARY; FOR FULL TEXT: DOI.ORG/10.1126/SCIENCE.ADI7342 PODCAST 1073 Plant science Enhancing rice panicle branching and grain yield through tissue-specific brassinosteroid inhibition X.Zhang et al. RESEARCH ARTICLE SUMMARY; FOR FULL TEXT: DOI.ORG/10.1126/SCIENCE.ADK8838 1074 Neuroscience Brainstem control of vocalization and its coordination with respiration J. Park et al. RESEARCH ARTICLE SUMMARY; FOR FULL TEXT: DOI.ORG/10.1126/SCIENCE.ADI8081 PERSPECTIVE p. 1059 1075 Geology CO2 drawdown from weathering is maximized at moderate erosion rates A. Bufe et al. 1080 Photonics Multimodality integrated microresonators using the Moiré speedup effect Q.-X.Ji et al. PERSPECTIVE p. 1057 1084 Neuroscience Axonal self-sorting without target guidance in Drosophila visual map formation E.Agi et al. 1092 Life history Milk provisioning in oviparous caecilian amphibians P. L. Mailho-Fontana et al. PERSPECTIVE p. 1060 1096 Biomedicine Bioresorbable shape-adaptive structures for ultrasonic monitoring of deep-tissue homeostasis J. Liu et al. PERSPECTIVE p. 1058 1104 HIV Induction of durable remission by dual immunotherapy in SHIV-infected ART-suppressed macaques S.-Y. Lim et al. 1111 Symbiosis Prophage proteins alter long noncoding RNA and DNA of developing sperm to induce a paternal-effect lethality R. Kaur et al. 1118 Attosecond science Attosecond-pump attosecond-probe x-ray spectroscopy of liquid water S. Li et al. 1122 Cell biology Sister chromatid cohesion is mediated by individual cohesin complexes F. Ochs et al. 1130 Paleoecology Climate change is an important predictor of extinction risk on macroevolutionary timescales C. M. Malanoski et al. 1135 Conservation Fishing for oil and meat drives irreversible defaunation of deepwater sharks and rays B. Finucci et al. 1142 Quantum imaging Adaptive optical imaging with entangled photons P. Cameron et al. ON THE COVER Rough sharks (Oxynotidae) are a small family of deepwater sharks consisting of five species. Three species are threatened with extinction from overfishing.Their slow growth and few young, combined with an unusual diet of shark eggs,make this group of deepwater sharks susceptible to over- fishing,which highlights the need to provide refuge from human activities.See page 1135. Photo:Jordi Chias/ NPL/Minden Pictures SCIENCE (ISSN 0036-8075) is published weekly on Friday, except last week in December, by the American Association for the Advancement of Science, 1200 New York Avenue, NW, Washington, DC 20005. Periodicals mail postage (publication No. 484460) paid at Washington, DC, and additional mailing offices. Copyright © 2024 by the American Association for the Advancement of Science.The title SCIENCE is a registered trademark of the AAAS. Domestic individual membership, including subscription (12 months): $165 ($74 allocated to subscription). Domestic institutional subscription (51 issues): $2627; Foreign postage extra: Air assist delivery: $107. 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Science Staff ............................................1034 Science Careers........................................1149 1111 The bacterium Wolbachia blocks sperm development in the primary spermatocytes of its insect host by targeting a long noncoding RNA (shown in cyan in this fluorescence confocal image; nuclei are yellow). LETTERS 1066 Reform wildlife trade in the European Union By P. Cardoso et al. 1066 Incorporate ethics into US public health plans By R.Anthony et al. 1067 Mangrove forest decline on Iran’s Gulf coast By H.Yarahmadi and Z. Khorsandi
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Accordingly, all articles published in Science—including editorials, news and comment, and book reviews—are signed and reflect the individual views of the authors and not official points of view adopted by AAAS or the institutions with which the authors are affiliated. 1034 8 MARCH 2024 • VOL 383 ISSUE 6687 science.org SCIENCE Erin Adams,U.ofChicago Takuzo Aida,U.ofTokyo Leslie Aiello, Wenner-GrenFdn. Deji Akinwande, UTAustin James Analytis,UCBerkeley Paola Arlotta,HarvardU. Delia Baldassarri,NYU Nenad Ban,ETHZürich Christopher Barratt,U.ofDundee Franz Bauer, PontificiaU.CatólicadeChile Ray H. Baughman,UTDallas Carlo Beenakker,LeidenU. Yasmine Belkaid,NIAID,NIH Kiros T. Berhane, ColumbiaU. Joseph J. Berry,NREL Chris Bowler, ÉcoleNormaleSupérieure Ian Boyd,U.ofSt.Andrews Malcolm Brenner, BaylorColl.ofMed. Emily Brodsky,UCSantaCruz Ron Brookmeyer, UCLA(S) Christian Büchel,UKEHamburg Johannes Buchner,TUM Dennis Burton,ScrippsRes. Carter Tribley Butts,UCIrvine György Buzsáki, NYUSchoolofMed. Mariana Byndloss, VanderbiltU.Med.Ctr. Annmarie Carlton, UCIrvine Simon Cauchemez, Inst.Pasteur Ling-Ling Chen, SIBCB,CAS Wendy Cho,UIUC Ib Chorkendorff,DenmarkTU Chunaram Choudhary, KøbenhavnsU. Karlene Cimprich, StanfordU. Laura Colgin,UTAustin James J. Collins,MIT Robert Cook-Deegan, ArizonaStateU. Virginia Cornish, ColumbiaU. Carolyn Coyne, DukeU. Roberta Croce,VUAmsterdam Molly Crocket,PrincetonU. Christina Curtis,StanfordU. Ismaila Dabo,PennStateU. Jeff L. Dangl,UNC Nicolas Dauphas,U.ofChicago Frans de Waal,EmoryU. Claude Desplan,NYU Sandra DÍaz, U.NacionaldeCÓrdoba Samuel Díaz-Muñoz,UCDavis Ulrike Diebold,TUWien Stefanie Dimmeler, Goethe-U.Frankfurt Hong Ding,Inst.ofPhysics,CAS Dennis Discher,UPenn Jennifer A. Doudna,UCBerkeley Ruth Drdla-Schutting, Med.U.Vienna Raissa M. D'Souza, UCDavis Bruce Dunn,UCLA William Dunphy,Caltech Scott Edwards, HarvardU. Todd A. Ehlers,U.ofGlasgow Nader Engheta,UPenn Tobias Erb, MPS,MPITerrestrialMicrobiology Karen Ersche,U.ofCambridge Beate Escher, UFZ&U.ofTübingen Barry Everitt,U.ofCambridge Vanessa Ezenwa,U.ofGeorgia Toren Finkel, U.ofPitt.Med.Ctr. Natascha Förster Schreiber, MPIExtraterrestrialPhys. Peter Fratzl,MPIPotsdam Elaine Fuchs,RockefellerU. Caixia Gao,Inst.ofGeneticsand DevelopmentalBio.,CAS Daniel Geschwind,UCLA Lindsey Gillson,U.ofCapeTown Gillian Griffiths,U.ofCambridge Simon Greenhill, U.ofAuckland Nicolas Gruber,ETHZürich Hua Guo, U.ofNewMexico Taekjip Ha,JohnsHopkinsU. Daniel Haber,Mass.GeneralHos. Sharon Hammes-Schiffer,YaleU. Wolf-Dietrich Hardt,ETHZürich Kelley Harris,U.ofWash Carl-Philipp Heisenberg, ISTAustria Christoph Hess, U.ofBasel&U.ofCambridge Heather Hickman,NIAID,NIH Hans Hilgenkamp,U.ofTwente Janneke Hille Ris Lambers, ETHZürich Kai-Uwe Hinrichs,U.ofBremen Deirdre Hollingsworth, U.ofOxford Christina Hulbe,U.ofOtago, NewZealand Randall Hulet,RiceU. Auke Ijspeert,EPFL Gwyneth Ingram,ENSLyon Darrell Irvine,MIT Akiko Iwasaki,YaleU. Erich Jarvis, RockefellerU. Peter Jonas,ISTAustria Sheena Josselyn,U.ofToronto Matt Kaeberlein,U.ofWash. Daniel Kammen,UCBerkeley Kisuk Kang, SeoulNat.U. V. Narry Kim, SeoulNat.U. Nancy Knowlton, Smithsonian Etienne Koechlin, ÉcoleNormaleSupérieure Alex L. Kolodkin, JohnsHopkinsU. LaShanda Korley, U.ofDelaware Paul Kubes,U.ofCalgary Chris Kuzawa,NorthwesternU. Laura Lackner,NorthwesternU. Gabriel Lander,ScrippsRes.(S) Mitchell A. Lazar,UPenn Hedwig Lee,DukeU. Fei Li,Xi'anJiaotongU. Ryan Lively,GeorgiaTech Luis Liz-Marzán,CICbiomaGUNE Omar Lizardo,UCLA Jonathan Losos,WUSTL Ke Lu,Inst.ofMetalRes.,CAS Christian Lüscher,U.ofGeneva Jean Lynch-Stieglitz,GeorgiaTech David Lyons,U.ofEdinburgh Fabienne Mackay,QIMRBerghofer Zeynep Madak-Erdogan,UIUC Vidya Madhavan,UIUC Anne Magurran,U.ofSt.Andrews Ari Pekka Mähönen,U.ofHelsinki Asifa Majid,U.ofOxford Oscar Marín,King’sColl.London Charles Marshall, UCBerkeley Christopher Marx, U.ofIdaho David Masopust, U.ofMinnesota Geraldine Masson,CNRS Jennifer McElwain, TrinityCollegeDublin Scott McIntosh,NCAR Rodrigo Medellín, U.NacionalAutónomadeMéxico Mayank Mehta, UCLA C.Jessica Metcalf,PrincetonU. Tom Misteli, NCI,NIH Jeffery Molkentin,Cincinnati Children'sHospitalMedicalCenter Alison Motsinger-Reif, NIEHS,NIH(S) Danielle Navarro, U.ofNewSouthWales Daniel Neumark, UCBerkeley Thi Hoang Duong Nguyen, MRCLMB Beatriz Noheda,U.ofGroningen Helga Nowotny, ViennaSci.&Tech.Fund Pilar Ossorio,U.ofWisconsin Andrew Oswald,U.ofWarwick Isabella Pagano, IstitutoNazionalediAstrofisica Giovanni Parmigiani, Dana-Farber(S) Sergiu Pasca,StandfordU. Ana Pêgo,U.doPorto Julie Pfeiffer, UTSouthwesternMed.Ctr. Philip Phillips,UIUC Matthieu Piel,Inst.Curie Kathrin Plath,UCLA Martin Plenio,UlmU. Katherine Pollard,UCSF Elvira Poloczanska, Alfred-Wegener-Inst. Julia Pongratz, LudwigMaximiliansU. Philippe Poulin,CNRS Suzie Pun,U.ofWash Lei Stanley Qi,StanfordU. Simona Radutoiu, AarhusU. Trevor Robbins,U.ofCambridge Joeri Rogelj,ImperialColl.London John Rubenstein,SickKids Mike Ryan,UTAustin Miquel Salmeron, LawrenceBerkeleyNat.Lab Nitin Samarth,PennStateU. Erica Ollmann Saphire, LaJollaInst. Joachim Saur,U.zuKöln Alexander Schier,HarvardU. Wolfram Schlenker,ColumbiaU. Susannah Scott,UCSantaBarbara Anuj Shah,U.ofChicago Vladimir Shalaev,PurdueU. Jie Shan, CornellU. Beth Shapiro,UCSantaCruz Jay Shendure,U.ofWash. Steve Sherwood, U.ofNewSouthWales Brian Shoichet,UCSF Robert Siliciano,JHUSchoolofMed. Lucia Sivilotti, UCL Emma Slack, ETHZürich&U.ofOxford Richard Smith, UNC(S) John Speakman,U.ofAberdeen Allan C. Spradling, CarnegieInstitutionforSci. V. S. Subrahmanian, NorthwesternU. Sandip Sukhtankar, U.ofVirginia Naomi Tague,UCSantaBarbara Eriko Takano,U.ofManchester A.Alec Talin,SandiaNatl.Labs Patrick Tan,Duke-NUSMed.School Sarah Teichmann, WellcomeSangerInst. Rocio Titiunik,PrincetonU. Shubha Tole, TataInst.ofFundamentalRes. Maria-Elena Torres Padilla, HelmholtzZentrumMünchen Kimani Toussaint,BrownU. Barbara Treutlein,ETHZürich Li-Huei Tsai, MIT Jason Tylianakis,U.ofCanterbury Matthew Vander Heiden,MIT Wim van der Putten,Netherlands Inst.ofEcology Ivo Vankelecom,KULeuven Henrique Veiga-Fernandes, ChampalimaudFdn. Reinhilde Veugelers, KULeuven Bert Vogelstein,JohnsHopkinsU. Julia Von Blume,YaleSchoolofMed. David Wallach, WeizmannInst. Jane-Ling Wang, UCDavis(S) Jessica Ware, Amer.Mus.ofNaturalHist. David Waxman,FudanU. Alex Webb,U.ofCambridge Chris Wikle, U.ofMissouri(S) Terrie Williams, UCSantaCruz Ian A.Wilson, ScrippsRes.(S) Hao Wu,HarvardU. Li Wu,TsinghuaU. Amir Yacoby,HarvardU. Benjamin Youngblood,St.Jude Yu Xie,PrincetonU. Jan Zaanen,LeidenU. Kenneth Zaret,UPennSchoolofMed. Lidong Zhao,BeihangU. Bing Zhu,Inst.ofBiophysics,CAS Xiaowei Zhuang,HarvardU. 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- 11. 8 MARCH 2024• VOL 383 ISSUE 6687 1035 SCIENCE science.org EDITORIAL PHOTO: KRIS SNIBBE/HARVARD UNIVERSITY L ast month, Duke University in North Carolina an- nounced that it was shuttering its herbarium. The collection consists of nearly 1 million specimens representing the most comprehensive and his- toric set of plants from the southeastern United States. It also includes extensive holdings from other regions of the world, especially Mexico, Central America, and the West Indies. Duke plans to disperse these samples to other institutions for use or storage over the next 2 to 3 years, but this decision re- flects a lack of awareness by academia that such col- lections are being leveraged as never before. With modern technologies spanning multiple fields of study, the holdings in herbaria and other natural history col- lections are not only facilitating a deeper and broader understanding of the past and pres- ent world but are also providing tools to meet both known and unforeseen challenges facing humanity. Science and society can hardly risk the loss of such an important resource. Sadly, Duke is not the first world- class institution to withdraw support from, and cease the operation of, its natural history collections. In the late 1970s and early 1980s, Prince- ton and Stanford Universities did the same. Ostensibly, the decisions to close those collections were made to shift priority to research programs in molecular biology and biochemistry, which were con- sidered closer to science’s cutting edge of discovery and able to attract more external funding. Ironically, nearly half a century on, biological sciences depart- ments at these institutions and comparable ones in China, Brazil, some regions in Africa, and in most of Western Europe are filled with world-class schol- ars who—knowingly or unknowingly—use herbaria, zoological collections, and their derivatives every day for transformative research published in the highest- impact journals. Herbaria have long been a critical resource for eco- logical and evolutionary research but have recently be- come relevant to many more fields, including climate science, anthropology, genetics, computer science, chemistry, and medicine. Specimens are being mobi- lized to investigate plant–animal and plant–pathogen interactions, crop domestication, compounds with po- tential applications in agriculture and pharmaceutics, and human migration over time and space. Advances in genome sequencing and machine learning are guiding biodiversity monitoring efforts and revealing knowl- edge gaps where specimen sampling is needed. The decision by Duke comes at a time when wide- spread awareness of and access to herbaria are growing in tandem. This is principally a result of the large-scale digitization of natural history collections, an endeavor that has been extensively supported by governmental agencies and philanthropic organizations worldwide. This innovation is arguably one of the greatest trans- formations in biodiversity science since DNA sequenc- ing. In short, creation of the Global Metaherbarium—an open-access, global interlinked virtual resource—makes physical herbaria discoverable and is attracting new in- terest in the utility of these collections for sophisticated multiomic investigations (genomics, transcriptomics, metabolomics, proteomics, and mi- crobiomics) and for research that con- nects science with the broader society. Closure of the Duke Herbarium also points to changes needed in for- mally recognizing herbaria and other natural history collections in research initiatives and agendas. Collections in- creasingly have become the first line of genetic and genomic sampling for investigators who otherwise eschew conventional field work. Requests to destructively sample specimens are often central to rapidly expanding big data initiatives. These requests place enormous demands on the institutions and staff who support collections but who largely go unrecognized for their crucial work. In turn, users of these collections, many of whom are not based at these institutions, benefit from grants and high-profile papers in which herbaria are only briefly acknowledged, if they are men- tioned at all. Scientists who oversee collections should be fully funded partners in research initiatives. Insti- tutions, herbarium curators, and support staff should be coauthors of studies, with contributions indicated through the Contributor Roles Taxonomy (CRediT) system, for example. Such recognition could help more directly measure the impact and influence of natural history collections on scholarly research. Universities should support the priceless resources and heritage represented in natural history collections. They also should have the vision to provide for, and commit to, the long-term stewardship and robust intel- lectual environment for open inquiry and deep research that these collections provide across generations. –Charles C. Davis Collections are truly priceless Charles C. Davis is a professor in the Department of Organismic and Evolutionary Biology, and Curator of Vascular Plants, Harvard University Herbaria, Cambridge, MA, USA. cdavis@oeb. harvard.edu 10.1126/science.ado9732 “…societycan hardlyriskthe lossofsuch animportant resource.”
- 12. 1036 8 MARCH2024 • VOL 383 ISSUE 6687 science.org SCIENCE PHOTO: NNSA/NEVADA FIELD OFFICE/SCIENCE SOURCE U.S.deports Chinese students SECURITY | An unusual town hall last week at Yale University highlighted a recent spate of incidents in which immigration authorities blocked Chinese graduate students from returning to U.S. universities after visiting family in China. More than a dozen students in Ph.D. science programs at Yale, John Hopkins University, and other major U.S. research institutions had their visas revoked and were immediately sent back home. U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) declined to discuss spe- cific cases. Immigration lawyers suspect the influence of a 2020 presidential direc- tive that gives CBP agents the authority to deny entry to Chinese graduate students and postdocs who have received support from entities suspected of stealing U.S. technology. Yale’s graduate school of arts and sciences hosted the 26 February event for its international students, who make up nearly half the school’s enrollment. Methane satellite begins work CLIMATE SCIENCE | The Environmental Defense Fund (EDF) this week became the first nonprofit group to launch a satel- lite to track methane emission sources. MethaneSAT, funded by EDF donors, is designed to detect methane emissions in high resolution above known oil-and-gas facilities, filling a gap in coverage. Its data will support efforts to regulate and reduce leaks and other sources of the potent greenhouse gas. The group plans to pro- vide the data for free, in nearly real time, at www.MethaneSAT.org. U.K.funder clears diversity panel POLITICS | The United Kingdom’s national funding agency has reinstated its advisory panel on diversity, equity, and inclusion, which was suspended in October 2023 after science minister Michelle Donelan said members of the newly created panel had posted “extremist” views on social media about the Israel-Hamas conflict. This week, UK Research and Innovation (UKRI) reported the results of its investiga- tion into the matter, concluding that the panel members had not violated a code NEWS IN BRIEF Edited by Jeffrey Brainard A group of two dozen geologists has turned down a proposal to classify the Anthropocene as an “epoch” that would mark human- ity’s overwhelming influence on the planet, a tally released this week indicates. For 15 years, researchers had considered desig- nating this formal unit of geologic time, and in 2023 they chose a marker of when it started, a layered sediment core from Canada’s Crawford Lake that shows a global acceleration in carbon dioxide emis- sions and atmospheric nuclear weapons testing during the 1950s. But over the past month, the proposal failed to win a supermajority of votes from a panel of the International Commission on Stratigraphy, with some members stating that the proposed start date failed to account for earlier human influences. Barring an unexpected reversal, the for- mal classification cannot be reconsidered for another decade. But even opponents of the proposal acknowledge humanity’s potent, transfor- mative effects on Earth and the power of the term Anthropocene, and some suggest considering it, like some other great changes in the plan- et’s history, a geologic “event”—a usage that requires no formal ratifica- tion or exact start date. A 1953 nuclear test in Nevada was among the human activities that could have marked the Anthropocene. STRATIGRAPHY Anthropocene epoch gets voted down Increase since 2009 in the share price of scientific publishing giant Elsevier’s parent company RELX and its predecessor.The stock is the top performer on the U.K.’s FTSE 100 index in its 40-year history. In 2023, RELX’s scientific division reaped a profit margin of 38%. (Financial Times, RELX annual report) 650%
- 13. 8 MARCH 2024• VOL 383 ISSUE 6687 1037 SCIENCE science.org IMAGE: OPENVERTEBRATE of conduct for public servants or posted problematic views. Although Donelan had asked UKRI to shut down the diversity panel, UKRI’s statement said the inves- tigation concluded the panel’s work is necessary, and it will reconvene. Separately, a lawyer for a panel member, Heriot-Watt University gender studies professor Kate Sang, announced on 5 March that Donelan had agreed to pay Sang an undisclosed settlement and retract her “false” state- ment about Sang’s social media post. Trustees protect Kinsey Institute POLITICS | The Kinsey Institute, the famed research center on human sexuality, will remain part of Indiana University (IU), despite a 2023 state law that blocks the institute from receiving taxpayer dollars. Conservative lawmakers targeted the institute after one claimed its research promotes sexual abuse, an allega- tion Kinsey’s defenders call baseless. Last week, IU’s board of trustees voted unanimously to develop a plan ensuring the institute is funded only by nonstate sources, including its own endow- ment and the university’s foundation. A proposal floated earlier would have created a new nonprofit organization to fund and manage some of the institute’s administrative functions while allow- ing its faculty and collections to remain within the university. But some research- ers worried the split would expose the institute to future legislative crackdowns, The Guardian reported. Finding new uses for drugs CLINICAL RESEARCH | A nonprofit that seeks to repurpose approved drugs for new indications will receive more than $48 million from the U.S. Advanced Research Projects Agency for Health to supercharge its work, the agency said on 28 February. Every Cure plans to use artificial intelligence to predict the power of more than 3000 approved drugs against more than 10,000 rare diseases, most without effective treatments. The Philadelphia-based nonprofit was co- founded by University of Pennsylvania immunologist David Fajgenbaum, who a decade ago identified a treatment— sirolimus, which prevents organ rejection—for his own rare, life-threaten- ing immune condition, Castleman disease. Pesticide database restored AGRICULTURE | The U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) has backtracked on cuts to a widely used database of approximately 400 agricultural pesticides after pleas from scientists. The agency had reduced the number of compounds tracked in 2019 by the Pesticide National Synthesis Project, which documents estimated annual application rates, from 400 to 72, citing budget constraints. Then last year, USGS halted the annual release of pre- liminary data, opting instead to publish final data every 5 years. Last week, the agency said it will restore the database’s pre-2019 scope, and data for 2018 to 2022 will be published in 2025. NATURAL HISTORY Scanning project creates huge digital menagerie B iologists have completed a free, online repository contain- ing x-ray scans of vertebrate specimens from 16 museum collections across the United States. The openVertebrate collection, one of the largest of its kind, covers more than 13,000 specimens, including more than half the genera of amphibians, reptiles, fishes, and mammals. Led by the Florida Museum of Natural History, researchers spent 5 years making computer tomography scans and creating 3D reconstructions; most show only the animals’ skeletons, but some samples were stained before being scanned to reveal internal organs. As of December 2023, the database had received more than 1 million views and nearly 100,000 downloads. The digital collection has already led to new research findings, including unusual bones in African spiny mice (pictured, with tail colored red) and evidence that frogs have lost and regained teeth more than 20 times during their evolution. Project organizers also trained secondary school teachers to use the images for science education. The project’s impact is described in the 6 March issue of BioScience.
- 14. By Daniel Clery F orseveral years, U.S. astronomers have hoped the government would help build a pair of giant ground-based telescopes. But the National Science Board (NSB), the panel of scientists that oversees the National Science Foundation (NSF), says the field can only afford one. At a meet- ing on 22 February, NSB capped the budget of the U.S. Extremely Large Telescope Program (US-ELTP) at $1.6 billion and gave the agency until May to come up with a process to choose one of the two 30-meter class telescopes. With a rival European telescope rapidly taking shape on a mountaintop in Chile, the NSB decision is a relief to those who want U.S. astronomy to unite behind a realistic plan and catch up. “I think the decision was long overdue,” says John Monnier of the University of Michigan. But for Richard Ellis of University College London, “It’s a tragedy, given the investment made in both telescopes.” He adds, “There were many op- portunities to merge or down select. Now, the U.S. has lost a couple of years trying to keep up with the European Southern Observatory.” Such giant telescopes are the next logical step for cutting-edge astronomy. They will allow researchers to zoom in on habitable planets outside the Solar System and study the formation of the first stars and galax- ies. Today’s top telescopes, with apertures of 8 to 10 meters, showed that many segmented mirrors or several large ones could be com- bined into a much larger effective mirror. They also demonstrated adaptive optics: us- ing rapidly deformable secondary mirrors to cancel out the distortions caused by Earth’s atmosphere to capture images as sharp as those taken from space. These technical advances spawned the two U.S.-led projects: the Giant Magellan Tele- scope (GMT) in Chile and the Thirty Meter Telescope (TMT) in Hawaii. Both are backed by consortia of universities, philanthropic foundations, and international partners. But thisprivatelyfundedapproach,whichduring the 20th century produced groundbreaking instruments, stumbled when it came to multibillion-dollar projects. Although design work and mirror casting forged ahead, both projects failed to amass enough funding. So, in 2018 the projects, historically ri- vals, joined forces as US-ELTP and made an offer to NSF. In return for public fund- ing, all U.S. astronomers would have access to the telescopes, which would open un- precedented views of the night sky above both hemispheres, something Europe’s Extremely Large Telescope (ELT) will not offer (Science, 25 May 2018, p. 839). The 2020 decadal sur- vey in astrophysics, which defines the field’s priorities for funders and Congress, put US- ELTP first among ground-based projects, in line with the recommendation of a panel led by Timothy Heckman of Johns Hopkins Uni- versity. “We felt this made a compelling case,” Heckman says. The NSB decision, he says, “is a bittersweet outcome.” NSF carried out preliminary design re- views of both telescopes and approved them in early 2023, but the costs are in a different league from what NSF is used to. The GMT is estimated to cost $2.54 billion, of which existing partners have pledged $850 mil- lion. The TMT’s partners have so far offered $2 billion of its $3.6 billion price tag. In a statement, NSB acknowledged the ambition of the US-ELTP proposal but noted it would soak up 80% of NSF’s entire funding for ma- jor projects. In an editorial in Science in November 2023, Michael Turner, an astrophysicist at the University of Chicago, argued that insist- ing NSF fund two telescopes put both proj- NEWS 1038 8 MARCH 2024 • VOL 383 ISSUE 6687 science.org SCIENCE IMAGES: (TOP TO BOTTOM) TMT INTERNATIONAL OBSERVATORY; GMTO CORPORATION ASTRONOMY U.S.giant telescopes imperiled by funding limit NSF faces choice between multibillion-dollar projects after board sets cost cap IN DEPTH The Thirty Meter Telescope (artist’s conception) in Hawaii is one of two projects seeking public funding. The Giant Magellan Telescope, under construction in Chile, is a smaller and cheaper project.
- 15. By Elizabeth Pennisi A mutantbutterfly for sale on eBay has helped upend naturalists’ pic- ture of how butterfly wings acquire their intricate variety of red, yellow, white, and black stripes. It and re- cent research into other butterflies show how visible traits in many animals may be controlled by an underexplored ge- netic regulatory mechanism, based not on proteins, but on RNA. In 2016, geneticists thought they had pinned much of the wing-pattern variation on a protein-encoding gene called cortex. But three teams have now proved that a different gene, previously missed because it overlaps with cortex, is the key. Its final product is not pro- tein, but RNA that regu- lates genes responsible for the pigmentation pat- terns of black and other hues on the wings. One team also showed the RNA is broken down into a smaller RNA that fine- tunes the production of the colors. “They solved a puzzle that had left everyone in the com- munity wondering,” says Nicolas Gompel, a devel- opmental biologist at the University of Bonn. The discovery, de- tailed in three preprints this month, also rep- resents the first time long noncoding RNA (lncRNA), so-called because it does not code for proteins, has been linked to the evolution of a visible trait in animals. “Now we have to pay more attention to noncoding RNA,” says Ilik Saccheri, an evolutionary biologist at the University of Liverpool and a member of one of the teams that had focused on cortex. For evolutionary developmental bio- logist Luca Livraghi, now at George Wash- ington University, the key break came when a colleague told him and Joseph Hanly, a bioinformatician at Duke University, about completely white Heliconius butterflies being sold on eBay. When they sequenced dozens of these so-called ivory mutants, they found a deletion in the region of the cortex gene. They then realized the miss- ing DNA included a sequence encoding an lncRNA that no one had ever closely exam- ined. Working with painted lady butter- flies (Vanessa cardui), which have colorful wings and are easy to breed in the lab, they used the gene editor CRISPR to disable just the lncRNA’s gene. The edit yielded white- winged painted ladies, just like the ivory Heliconius, they reported on 12 February in a preprint on bioRxiv. Disabling cortex had no effect. Moreover, Livraghi’s team found this same lncRNA also controls black and other pigmentation in the scales of other butter- fly species, some distantly related. “We have to conclude now that the key regulator is an RNA, not a protein,” says Peter Holland, an evolutionary biologist at the University of Oxford who was not part of any of the new work. At a conference midway through these studies, Livraghi learned that a Cornell Uni- versity group studying wing color patterns in the buckeye butterfly (Junonia coenia), common throughout North America, was homing in on this same lncRNA. The two teams decided to coordinate their efforts. NEWS 8 MARCH 2024 • VOL 383 ISSUE 6687 1039 SCIENCE science.org PHOTO: LUCA LIVRAGHI ects at risk. NSF says it will have more to say in the coming months on how it will choose between the TMT and the GMT. “Neither is a slam dunk. Both have risks,” Turner says. “I don’t envy the NSF.” Made up of 492 segments, the TMT’s 30-meter mirror makes for the larger, more sharp-eyed instrument. But its chosen site, the summit of Mauna Kea on Hawaii’s Big Island, is opposed by some Native Hawai- ian groups who consider the summit sacred. They have blocked any construction work since 2015. TMT officials hope work will be able to proceed under the aegis of a new state-appointed authority that governs the mountaintop and includes both astronomers and Native Hawaiians. “We’re working on our relationships in Hawaii,” says TMT Executive Director Robert Kirshner. “We’re learning how to do that in a humble and straight- forward way.” Turner says the impasse may not be solved anytime soon. “I’m sure a so- lution will be found, but it may take longer than people like,” he says. The GMT, smaller and cheaper, is a lower risk choice. Its foundations are being laid on a mountaintop at Las Campanas in Chile, while support structures for its mirrors are taking shape in the United States. Three of its seven 8.4-meter mirrors, the equivalent of a 25.4-meter-wide mirror, are already finished; the other four are being polished. Because of the risks attached to the TMT, Monnier and Ellis suspect NSF will prob- ably back the GMT. But with a mirror less than 40% of the size of its 39-meter Euro- pean rival, the GMT “is no match for ELT,” says Ellis, a former TMT board member. Monnier thinks the GMT will probably be good enough in key astronomy areas, but NSF will need to judge whether those areas are important for U.S. astronomers. Abandoning either of these very capable telescopes will harm U.S. astronomy, says Wendy Freedman at Chicago, one of the GMT’s partner organizations. “The science that will come out really does justify two tele- scopes.” Upcoming survey telescopes such as the 8.4-meter Vera C. Rubin Observatory in Chile will identify a wealth of interesting ob- jects in need of follow-up observations by in- struments on the GMT and the TMT that can split the light into information-rich spectra. “That’s what these big telescopes give you,” she says. Language in a spending bill passed by Con- gress this week “strongly encourages” NSB to build both telescopes, even though lawmak- ers cut NSF’s 2024 funding by more than $800 million, to $9 billion (see story, p. 1043). Freedman hopes the congressional direction will prompt a rethink. “The United States will sit out the future of astronomy if we don’t get these telescopes,” she says. j Surprise RNApaints colorful patterns on butterfly wings Understudied means of regulating genes is likely widespread in butterflies—and perhaps other animals BIOLOGY A gene edit affecting one wing (right) of this Heliconius erato radically changed its normal color pattern.
- 16. By Rodrigo PérezOrtega S ince the 19th century, scientists at the Smithsonian Institution have obtained, studied, and stored more than 30,000 human remains, one of the largest such collections in the United States. In the past, many re- mains were studied in order to justify sci- entific racism. Now, the institution should rapidly offer to return most of these re- mains to lineal descendants or descen- dant communities, according to a report released last month by an institutional task force. “It’s important to face this past and try to repair the harms caused by our institution and so many others,” says Sabrina Sholts, curator of biological anthropology at the Smith- sonian’s National Museum of Natural History and member of the task force. Most of the Smithson- ian’s human remains were collected without proper consent in the early 20th century, and many acquisitions were part of an attempt to prove now-debunked notions of white superior- ity. “It’s a collection that should have never been amassed, and we’re committed to dis- mantling as much of it as possible,” wrote Secretary of the Smithsonian Lonnie Bunch III last year in an editorial. The Smithsonian already has a process for repatriating its 15,000 Native American remains, as a 1989 federal law requires; it has returned more than 5000. Now, the report urges that the collection’s Indig- enous remains be returned more quickly and that the effort extend to all human re- mains. It also suggests prioritizing the re- mains of other marginalized groups, such as the collection’s 2100 African American remains, as well as the nearly 6000 re- mains of people whose names are at least partially known. The task force applies a bedrock princi- ple of research on living humans—the need for informed consent—to the remains, a first for the Smithsonian. It advises that no research should be done without consent from the deceased or their descendants. Research would be permitted without consent on ancient remains that cannot be linked to any of today’s communities, which are a small percentage of the total. Other new recommendations in- clude returning as many remains as pos- sible by 2030 and barring destructive sampling—to analyze DNA, for example—to identify descendants. Studies of the remains, such as DNA anal- ysis of dental calculus to study pathogens, might be harder to carry out under the new recommendations. Although there’s no of- ficial moratorium, no new human remains research has been approved in recent years because of stricter re- quirements, Sholts says. She expects a pause on approvals while the new policy is established, but notes the report antici- pates positive outcomes from future research. The 15-member task force, including both Smithsonian staff and outsiders, says the insti- tution should ramp up its efforts to identify both lineal descendants and communities of descent and then initiate contact, rather than waiting for repatriation requests. The report recommends the Smithsonian re- quest new funds and staff for the massive repatriation effort, but does not say how much would be needed. “I’m impressed,” says Carlina de la Cova, a biological anthropologist at the Univer- sity of South Carolina who is not on the task force. The recommendations “will force scholars working with the dead to think about how they engage with [re- mains] and what that means for the living.” She adds that it’s the first time a museum has made such recommendations public, and she expects other institutions to fol- low the Smithsonian’s steps. Sholts agrees: “This first step towards a long-overdue reckoning makes it more likely that others will do the same.” j NEWS | IN DEPTH 1040 8 MARCH 2024 • VOL 383 ISSUE 6687 science.org SCIENCE Come fall, especially in the U.S. East, the light brown wings of buckeyes darken to a deep red, enabling them to absorb heat more efficiently. When Cornell evolution- ary biologists Robert Reed and Richard Fandino used CRISPR to knock out differ- ent parts of the lncRNA in these butter- flies, they were born with little or no color and their fall reddening was altered, the team reported on 19 February on bioRxiv. A white butterfly mutant posted on the social media platform X (formerly Twit- ter) alerted Livraghi to the team behind the third new preprint: evolutionary de- velopmental biologists Antónia Monteiro and Shen Tian at the National University of Singapore. They were focused on short RNA sequences, microRNAs, known to reg- ulate gene activity in plants, animals, and other eukaryotes—organisms that pack their DNA in a nucleus. In the squinting bush brown butterfly (Bicyclus anynana), a well-studied tropical species, they found that a microRNA was active in the black wing pattern, just as Livraghi had found for the ivory lncRNA. When the Singapore team disabled the DNA encoding this microRNA, mir-193, bush brown wings became lighter, the team reported on 12 February in a bioRxiv preprint. Knocking out mir-193 also had dramatic effects in a distant relative, the Indian cabbage white (Pieris canidia), changing its black-patterned wings to completely white. After learning about the lncRNA identified by the two other groups, Monteiro and Tian concluded that the longer RNA is broken down to produce these microRNA. “A lot is happening within this small part of the genome,” says Violaine Llaurens, an evolutionary biologist at the College of France. She cautions that other regulatory elements probably play a role in butterfly wing patterns. But the fact that the same microRNA fine-tunes coloration in very distantly related species is “amazing,” says Anyi Mazo-Vargas, an evolutionary bio-logist at Duke who worked with Reed. She suspects similar RNAs color wings in most, if not all, of the 180,000 species of moths and butterflies. And because mir-193 is conserved across the animal kingdom, Monteiro and Tian think noninsects may also make use of these regulatory RNAs. Small RNAs derived from parent lncRNAs affect traits in plants, too, says Yaowu Yuan, an evolutionary biologist at the University of Connecticut whose team last year reported that so-called siRNAs determine color in monkeyflowers. The RNA realm is expanding, Yuan says. “I am quite positive that many more similar studies will come soon.” j Smithsonian urged to speed repatriation of human remains Task force says museum should return many of its 30,000 remains and seek descendants’ consent for research MUSEUM COLLECTIONS “Thisfirststeptowards along-overduereckoning makesitmorelikely otherswilldothesame.” Sabrina Sholts, National Museum of Natural History
- 17. By Amanda Heidt I n1859 Charles Darwin coined the term “living fossil” to describe lineages that have looked the same for tens of millions of years, such as the coelacanth, sturgeon, and horseshoe crab. The term captured the popular imagination, but scientists have struggled to understand whether such species just resemble their long-ago ances- tors or have truly evolved little over the eons. Now, in a study published this week in Evo- lution, researchers confirm that in some—but not all—living fossils, evolution is at a virtual standstill. The most striking examples are prehistoric-looking fish called gars, which have the slowest rate of molecular evolution of all jawed vertebrates. The team also pro- poses a mechanism to explain gars’ timeless- ness: superb DNA repair machinery. That repair has likely kept gar genomes so stable that species whose last common ancestor lived more than 100 million years ago have diverged very little, and some can still hybrid- ize today to produce viable offspring. “That’s amazing,” says Tetsuya Nakamura, an evolutionary developmental biologist at Rutgers University. “This paper has a lot of interesting work into this question of what makes a living fossil, but when I read that, I was shocked.” To see whether several putative living fos- sils evolve more slowly than other vertebrate groups, the team gathered published se- quences from more than 1100 exons (the cod- ing regions of the genome) across 478 species. Using existing family trees for each group, they created a massive evolutionary tree. For each lineage, the researchers estimated the rate at which each DNA base changed over time—the so-called substitution rate. Surprisingly, they found evolution was not on pause in all living fossils. The coel- acanth, the elephant shark, and a bird called the hoatzin—all considered ancient—have faster than expected mutation rates of about 0.0005 mutations at each site per million years, although that was still slower than the average rate for amphibians (0.007 mutations per million years) and placental mammals (0.02 mutations per million years). The find- ings support the idea that some species that still resemble their ancient ancestors have nevertheless changed at a molecular level. But gars, big freshwater fish with long, toothy snouts, were different: In almost every exon, gars had the slowest rates of molecular substitution, often by several orders of mag- nitude; they averaged only 0.00009 muta- tions per million years at each site. Indeed, two genera that diverged roughly 20 million years ago had identical sequences at nearly all the sites analyzed—a finding the team at first attributed to sequencing error. “I came into this project cautious about using the term living fossil,” says study co-author Chase Brownstein, an evolutionary biology Ph.D. student at Yale University. “But for gars at least, it’s an appropriate term.” The authors posit that because gar mu- tation rates seem consistently low across sites—including in genomic regions un- likely to be under selective pressure to stay the same—a global mechanism likely drives the slow substitution. They suggest gars are extremely efficient at repairing DNA after mutations or damage, keeping the animals from evolving even as the conti- nents have shifted around them. A similar hypothesis has previously been proposed by other researchers for sturgeon, which had the second-lowest substitution rates among vertebrates in the study. DNA repair is “a reasonable hypothesis, but there’s probably more than just one ex- planation,” says Elise Parey, an evolutionary genomicist at University College London. For example, gars have slow metabolic rates and long generation times, features that could reduce mutation rates. Gars have also preserved the arrangement of DNA in their chromosomes and dampened the effects of so-called jumping genes that can cause ge- netic reshuffling as they move from place to place in the genome. “This goes not just to sequence changes, but also to chromosome evolution, which would be an interesting av- enue to explore,” Parey says. To test their findings, the authors followed up on reports of unusual gars that might be natural hybrids in rivers throughout Oklahoma and Texas. They analyzed tissue samples from dozens of these fish to trace their ancestry, finding that two gar genera— Atractosteus and Lepisosteus—are crossing to produce fertile, hybrid young. These groups last shared a common ancestor roughly 105 million years ago, a record separation time for eukaryotes that can produce viable offspring. The gars beat the previous re- cord holders—two species of fern—by about 60 million years. (Keen minds may re- call reports of the sturddlefish, a hybrid of paddlefish and sturgeon, which diverged even longer ago, but those accidental hybrids were likely sterile and don’t occur naturally.) A next step will be to prove that gars’ DNA repair mechanisms are indeed slowing their genetic change. By equipping zebrafish—a standard model animal—with gar DNA repair genes, investigators might be able to observe the genes at work. “This will be a challeng- ing experiment though, because [DNA repair genes] are fundamental,” Nakamura says. But the authors say understanding how gars keep their mutation rate so low could have additional payoffs. For example, such insights might help humans better under- stand our own DNA repair pathways, which can lead to cancer when they fail. j Amanda Heidt is a science journalist in Utah. 8 MARCH 2024 • VOL 383 ISSUE 6687 1041 SCIENCE science.org PHOTO: SOLOMON DAVID Gars truly are‘living fossils,’ massive DNAdata set shows The fish’s genomes change so slowly that species separated since the dinosaurs can produce fertile hybrids today EVOLUTION This fish is the hybrid offspring of an alligator gar and a spotted gar—members of genera that last shared a common ancestor at least 100 million years ago.
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- 22. The Project GutenbergeBook of The Lost Dispatch
- 23. This ebook isfor the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this ebook or online at www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you will have to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this eBook. Title: The Lost Dispatch Author: Anonymous Release date: April 19, 2016 [eBook #51803] Most recently updated: October 23, 2024 Language: English Credits: Produced by Martin Pettit and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from images generously made available by The Internet Archive) *** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE LOST DISPATCH ***
- 24. Transcriber's Note: Obvious typographicerrors have been corrected. A Table of Contents has been added. THE LOST DISPATCH. GALESBURG, ILL.: Galesburg Printing and Publishing Company. 1889. Copyrighted 1889, By Galesburg Printing and Publishing Company.
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- 26. PREFACE. In adding thisaccount of the finding of the "Lost Dispatch" to the war literature of our country, I do so without further preamble or preface than to say that all persons connected with this narrative appear on the following pages under strictly fictitious names. For purely personal reasons, reasons that seem to me right and proper, I still desire to remain unknown. There are not more than twenty-five persons now living, who, on reading this account, will be able to recognize the writer. These I place on their honor not to reveal their knowledge. The Author.
- 27. CONTENTS. PAGE CHAPTER I. 5 CHAPTERII. 14 CHAPTER III. 24 CHAPTER IV. 35 CHAPTER V. 44 CHAPTER VI. 52 CHAPTER VII. 60 CHAPTER VIII. 69 CHAPTER IX. 77 CHAPTER X. 84 CHAPTER XI. 91 CHAPTER XII. 99 CHAPTER XIII. 106 CHAPTER XIV. 112 THE LOST DISPATCH. AN INCIDENT OF THE LATE WAR.
- 28. CHAPTER I. The Unionarmy lay impatiently waiting until the plans of the leader of the Rebel troops could be fathomed. His designs were shrouded in so much mystery that the anxious watchers could not determine whether the invasion of Maryland was only a feint to draw off the Union troops from the points they were protecting, or whether he really aimed to attack the Northern cities. It seemed absolutely impossible to obtain authentic information. The stories brought in by the stragglers and prisoners were wild and improbable in the extreme. To have believed them would have been to have believed that the enemy had the power of marching in a dozen different directions at one and the same time, for each story gave the enemy a different starting point, and a different aim and purpose to their movements. Of the scouts who had been sent out to all points, many had been taken prisoner, or had met a speedy death. In spite of their untiring and daring efforts to obtain reliable information, the reports brought back by the few who did return were so unsatisfactory and contradictory that no dependence could be placed in them, for seemingly none of the soldiers and few, if any, of the officers of the invading army knew where they were going or for what. At the headquarters of General Foster, which that first week of September, '62, were located in an open meadow, half a dozen officers were gathered in a low-voiced consultation. Their faces were grave and marked with lines of anxious thought, as they poured over maps and compared conflicting dispatches. A young officer, Captain Guilfoyle, who sat writing at a table made up of rough boards, joined in the conversation only when questioned by his superior officers,
- 29. regarding some pointin the topography of the country, which could not be determined from the imperfect maps they studied. An hour later all excepting the young officer had left the tent. Stopping only to light a candle as it grew too dark to see, he wrote steadily on until his work was finished and the papers lay folded on the table. He arranged them ready for inspection, then rose and walked back and forth across the narrow limits of the tent to stretch his tired muscles. At last, with an impatient sigh, he seated himself again and after waiting a moment drew from his pocket a long narrow book. It fell apart, as if accustomed to being opened at one particular page, and the light from the candle shone over a thick, long curl of fair hair, which might have been cut from the head bending over it, so exactly the same was the color. At the sound of approaching footsteps and voices outside the tent he hastily returned the book to his pocket. Some one was asking for General Foster. The next moment a man dressed like a teamster entered. His clothes were ragged and dirty. One arm was wrapped around with a piece of blood stained cloth and hung limp and useless at his side. His face was pale under the wide brim of his torn hat, and the blood had trickled down one side from a fresh wound in his forehead, making a wide mark along his cheek. The man showed his utter exhaustion in every movement, and staggered from side to side as he went across the tent and dropped half fainting onto a stool. Captain Guilfoyle took a flask from off the bed and held it to the man's lips, eyeing him closely, until recovering somewhat, he straightened up and removed the hat which partly shaded his face. As he did so the Captain recognized him as one of the scouts whose return they were anxiously hoping would bring them the sorely needed intelligence and whose report General Foster had ordered him to receive if he got in during his absence. "Yes, I'm here at last," replied the man to Captain Guilfoyle's hurried interrogation, "and I've nothing to report but a total lack of success."
- 30. "I left poorDedrick and Allison over there, and barely succeeded in getting back myself. You know what they were,—the best scouts in the whole army. We did all men could do, but luck was against us. We have learned nothing except that the enemy are across the Potomac, something any straggler can tell. I have been four days getting back," said the new comer, going on to give a full account of what he and his companions had tried to do. "I tell you," he added wearily, "I doubt if any one can find out what they mean to do until they do it, for I don't believe they know themselves. They are——." There the low voice stopped abruptly and the speaker's head sank until it touched the table. Calling in an orderly waiting outside, the officer applied restoratives, and as soon as consciousness returned the sufferer was helped away to a place where his wounds could receive much-needed attention. Captain Guilfoyle returned to his seat by the table to await General Foster's return. After noting down some items in a well worn dispatch book, he leaned his head on his hand and gave himself to deep and serious thought, until, finally, a look of grim determination settled on his smooth, boyish face. When the General returned, Captain Guilfoyle rose to report his work finished. "McClandish has come in without any news of importance; the two scouts with him were killed and he is badly wounded," he reported further, after receiving orders relating to the disposition of the papers he had copied. The grave, anxious look that settled over General Foster's face as he listened, showed how he regarded the failure of an undertaking from which so much had been hoped. In obedience to a word from his superior, the young officer went on to give a full account of all he had learned from McClandish. When he had finished he made a moment's pause, then added quickly, leaning forward and speaking almost in a whisper, "If you will allow me to go, I believe I can bring full and reliable information of the strength of the enemy's forces and of his plans and intentions."
- 31. The General stoppedhis rapid pacing across the tent and looked keenly at the slim, boyish figure standing before him. "If you could: if we knew the strength of the Rebel forces and where they mean to strike, worn out and demoralized as our troops are, we could surely intercept them and turn them back," he said. "I can try," replied Captain Guilfoyle. "You know the fate of the most of the men who have gone," said the General gravely. "But it may not be mine," returned the younger officer. "McClandish is one of our best lieutenants and the two scouts with him were old, both in experience and training. How can you succeed where they and all the others have failed?" added General Foster after a long pause. "I believe I can do it." "How?" "If you will accept my services and see that my destination is kept secret, and that I shall never be required to tell how I gain any information I bring back, I will be back at the earliest possible moment and I trust with a full knowledge of what the enemy mean to do," replied Captain Guilfoyle firmly. "I only ask that no person except yourself shall know for what I have gone. Send me instead of Freeland to Washington with these dispatches. Let it be known I have gone there, but after I have delivered them let me follow my own plan. I cannot tell just how long I must be away, but you may be assured not one day, not one hour longer than necessary." A low, earnest conversation followed, which ended in General Foster accepting the offer of his young aid.
- 32. CHAPTER II. From thispoint I will drop the cloak of an observer and narrate events as they followed fast upon each other. After leaving General Foster's tent I went to inquire after McClandish. I found him with his wounds dressed, and though weak from loss of blood and exhaustion, he had recovered enough to give me some pieces of information I wanted. My preparations were not extensive, but included the writing of some letters to be left with General Foster and sent by him to various friends in case I did not return. Just as I was turning in for a few hours' sleep, Major Larrabee, who shared my tent, came in. We talked awhile on the outlook of affairs, then I told him that I had been ordered to the Capital with dispatches and was to set out at daybreak. Joe had a cup of coffee ready for me before daylight showed itself, and as I finished it he brought around Bagdad, ready saddled. I had not thought of it when giving my orders the night before, but as the horse gave a glad whinny of welcome, I quickly decided to leave him to await my return and take a less valuable horse. I knew that in a few hours I would have to change to a fresh one and it would not be likely that once left I would ever see him again. I was soon on my way. I carried dispatches to General Pennington and Colonel Barbour, and important papers which I was to deliver to the Commander-in-Chief, wherever he might be. The sun was just up when I reached the headquarters of General Pennington and delivered the dispatches. I learned there that the troops had been moved; that the Commander-in-Chief was near R
- 33. ——, so insteadof going on toward Washington I turned off and saved considerable time by going across the country. I found the general headquarters on a slope about three-quarters of a mile south of R——. Without hard riding I reached there before nine o'clock. As I dismounted an orderly took my horse and called another, who conducted me past the trim sentries and across the tent-outlined square to the tent of the Commander-in-Chief. He was ready to see me and in less than half an hour I had delivered the papers and was on my way to Washington, where Colonel Barbour was to meet me and deliver the dispatches which he and General Pennington wished to send back to General Foster, so saving me the trip out to get them. I found the roads so filled with vehicles of all sorts, mingled with cavalry and foot soldiers, as to be almost impassable in any direction, and at places they were completely obstructed, but by taking side paths I was able to keep my horse at a fair speed. At four o'clock I was to meet Colonel Barbour at Willard's and in the meantime I had enough to do. As soon as I reached the city I made my way to a restaurant for a nondescript meal, which might be called either a very late breakfast or an early dinner. From there I went to Willard's, where I took a room and a hot bath. Ever since I had decided to undertake the hazardous enterprise on which I was bent, I had had an intense desire to be off and avoid all delay, and it required more time than I cared to give to remove the traces of my long, hard ride and furbish myself up into a fit condition for calling, but the calls I was to make were the preliminary steps in my hastily constructed plans and too important to be omitted. The bright sun of the morning was almost obscured by hazy clouds as I started out that warm September afternoon. I sat in four different parlors that afternoon, and my fair Rebel entertainers little dreamed that I, who had "looked them up for old
- 34. acquaintance sake whileI had a few hours' leisure," sat with every nerve strained, only waiting for an opportunity to put the seemingly trivial questions which were to gain me the information so necessary to the successful carrying out of my plans. All direct questions had to be most carefully avoided and it was discouraging to lead up to the subject and then have the conversation go over and around the point to which I had been so carefully striving to bring it. At the end of my second call I was ready to curse the luck which made further effort necessary. During the third call I began to get the desired enlightenment, and at the next house a few freely volunteered remarks rounded my scrappy knowledge. That I did not change countenance, I knew from the face of my entertainer, and she little guessed the joy I felt when she casually told me what I had been striving so hard to find out. My one desire then was to get away, and it required some effort to keep up my part of the conversation. If I had followed the predominant impulse of the moment I would have sped away and "stayed not on the order of my going," instead of drawing my call out to the proper, lingering length. When I again reached Willard's, I inquired if Colonel Barbour had yet arrived, and learning that he had, I went directly to his room. There were three or four other officers there, all anxious to learn any news I could tell and eager to question, but as I was not personally acquainted with any of them, I cut all conversation as short as I could without actual rudeness, and avoided being detained long. I ordered my horse, and feeling the necessity of eating while I had an opportunity, I went in to dinner. After a hasty meal I left the hotel. The street was full of moving troops. As I rode slowly along I had to draw up close to the pavement several times to avoid the crush, and several times came to a full halt, until the moving mass of troops, vehicles and pedestrians had surged past. I finally reached the small restaurant on a side street, where, as previously arranged, I met an orderly sent by General Foster. I gave him the dispatches I carried, telling
- 35. him to proceedat once with them to that General's headquarters. As soon as he was out of the way I was free to follow my own plans. The streets were comparatively deserted in the direction I took on leaving the restaurant, and I met with no detention. After leaving the city fairly behind me, a sharp three-quarters of an hour's ride brought me to a small, old house standing somewhat back from the road. A decrepit negro took my horse and I went in at a side door opening onto the drive. It was dark when I left the house again, but even in daylight I do not believe any stranger would have recognized in me, the well gotten up young officer who had entered half an hour before. I had discarded all my accouterments and my uniform, which, notwithstanding the rough usage it had lately been through, still retained much of its new freshness and glitter of brass and gilt. In its place I had on a pair of blue trousers, a gray flannel shirt and a large, soft felt hat, all considerably the worse for wear. I had also changed to a fresh horse. The one I took was not much in the way of looks, but had considerable speed in him, and was not too valuable to abandon to the enemy, as I was well aware I might have to do at any moment. Leaving the place by a gate near the stables, which led into a grove, I threaded my way through it, then turning west I rode across a meadow and through another grove, where I came to a road which I followed until I reached the Chesapeake and Ohio Canal. I intended to avoid observation as far as I could. I carried passes which would prevent any serious trouble if my detainers were our own troops. But a meeting with any of them might require me to lose considerable time. There was, besides, the possibility that I might chance on a party of Rebels lurking around and I was particularly anxious to avoid such. Fortunately I met but few persons. Some passed without accosting me. Three times when approaching sounds indicated more than a single individual, I drew off into shelter and squads of four or five
- 36. men rode rapidlypast. Who or what they were I was too far off to distinguish. As soon as I was on the tow-path I put my horse to a gallop and passed rapidly over a number of miles. Several times I was obliged to make my way up and down the steep banks to avoid being stopped. At one particularly forbidding spot, where the rocks overhung the path, some guard at an exalted altitude sang out a question about my destination, which I did not stop to answer. He repeated his inquiry and emphasized it by sending a bullet after me. Luckily it went wide of the mark.
- 37. CHAPTER III. Another hour'sriding, a ten minute's pause to reconnoiter, and I crossed to the other side of the Potomac by a rough and almost impassable ford. Making the top of the rocks which faced the river, I gave my horse time to get his breath, while I sat on a stone beside him. Night and darkness had almost shut in the view on every side. The moon was up but was obscured by clouds except for a moment or two at a time. I could hear the faint swish of the water as it flowed over the stones immediately below, but save for that an intense stillness prevailed. Rising after a few moments' contemplation of a landscape, which I could but faintly see, I buried my passes and the one other valuable paper I carried under a huge stone. I then felt that I was fairly started on my perilous undertaking. I was on the Virginia side of the river, in a region known to be swarming with Rebels who asked nothing better than to catch a Union spy. I well knew that if I should run across any of them in such a way as to arouse their suspicions my life would not be worth the asking, and I would share the fate of many who had tried before. As I now had no passes or any way of proving my identity, I also had to guard equally against meeting any of our own troops, for unless I should chance on an acquaintance among them, they would be certain to hold me prisoner. My endeavor was to avoid every one, for a small foraging party or a few belated pickets might prove as disastrous to me as "an army with banners." I had determined that it would be necessary for me to avoid all well-traveled roads and all towns, even the smallest villages, and to make my way through the dense woods when ever I could, taking advantage of such bridle- paths as I could find running in the direction I wanted to go.
- 38. Before I hadrode many miles I became convinced that a general move toward the Potomac of some sort was going on. Whenever I approached a road I could tell from the sounds that persons were passing along it, not rapidly or in any large sized bodies, but mostly on foot and singly, or in small squads of six or eight. They seemed to be pressing on too steadily for ordinary skulkers, yet in a too "go as you please" style for troops under command. At last I decided to gratify my curiosity, hoping to gain at the same time some information that would be of use to me. Some miles back I had struck a path which I had been able to follow. When it again crossed a road, I stopped a few rods back, slipped my horse's bridle over a sapling and made my way to the edge of the road, which, as I soon made out at this point, ran along a sort of gully. On the side I was on the bank was at least four feet above the road, and along the edge of the bank was a rough attempt at a rail-fence pieced out and propped up here and there with stones. I crept noiselessly behind this shelter and waited until two stragglers came along. When nearly opposite me they accosted a third who must have been resting by the roadside. We all went on together; they on the road and I behind the fence. From their interchange of confidences, scraps of which came up to me, I soon learned that they were Rebels and belonged to Knapp's division, and that in the first advance it had been left behind on the James, but had just crossed the Potomac and gone on to join Luce. The men seemed to be stragglers who had dropped behind from pure physical inability to keep up, and their great anxiety, as well as I could judge from their conversation, was to get there before anybody "fit." Having learned all I was likely to from them, I retraced my steps and mounted my horse. I had to keep him at a walk, for I was in a rough piece of woods and could not see two feet beyond my horse's head. I had not rode long when I heard faint sounds of musketry in front of me and a little to my left, in exactly the direction I was traveling. I
- 39. listened intently, andconcluded it must be a chance brush between a party of our troops and some of the Rebels. The firing was directly between where I was and the place where I intended to get breakfast and hoped to get a fresh horse. I did not want to miss stopping there, for it was the only Union man's house I knew of any where near. I could not afford to circle around the fighting, as it might lead me considerably out of my road. A skirmish, even if a small affair, is a very unsatisfactory thing to go around, not being exactly stationary. I carried an old silver watch which I had procured during my stay in the Capital, but it was too dark to see the time without striking a match, which I did not care to do. I judged from the distance I had come it must be near daybreak. So, anxious as I was to get on, I knew it would be wise to halt until it began to get light and the dispute ahead should be settled. I tied my horse to a tree and went as far away as I could to be within hearing distance of his movements. As soon as I discovered a log, which I did at last by taking a header over it, I lay down behind it. Though in point of fact I did not know which to call the front or back, considering it as a barrier to an approaching foe. I was too weary to more than reach a recumbent position before I was asleep. I had been asleep long enough to feel completely chilled from the cold fog when something awoke me. I aroused with a start and a feeling that some one was near me. On the alert at once I waited with baited breath for some further noise to indicate in which direction the disturbance had been, but none came and I finally concluded that I had been mistaken or dreaming. I went over to look at my horse and make sure that he had not pulled loose. He was where I had left him and had evidently spent his time nibbling off every tender branch in his reach. I determined to look around before mounting. It was barely daybreak and there was a light fog, which made all excepting near
- 40. objects indistinct. Imade my way through a shallow, dry gully and across a wide flat covered with trees. I knew I must then be near the road which I had been skirting the latter part of my ride, so I paused a moment before advancing further. Hearing nothing I went on around a jutting point of rocks on a thicket-covered slope and stopped at the head of a washout, made by the summer rains. As I stood listening the ground suddenly gave way with me and I went down a steep bank, to find the road sooner than I expected, and myself in the company of two Rebel soldiers and a broken down army wagon. I found out with a vengeance what had aroused me, and as is sometimes the case with investigators, learned more than was desirable. The men had evidently been half asleep, when my abrupt appearance brought them to their feet. A man has to think quickly in moments of danger. I took in the situation at a glance and in the same brief time decided to enter into conversation with them. "What's up?" I asked. "Broke down," replied the liveliest looking of the two, while both kept their muskets suggestively convenient and eyed me suspiciously. The wagon was heavily loaded and the back axle-tree had broken in two, letting down the end. I looked it over because I had nothing better to do. One of the men volunteered the information that it was twice too much of a load. "You don't expect to sit here with it all day, do you?" I asked, intending to offer to go ahead and find some one to help them right matters as an excuse to get away. "No," said the man who had not spoken before. "Holly, 'es gone on thar an' 'ell bring back some of our squad to help."
- 41. As he spoke,faintly approaching sounds indicated that a "Holly" was coming back with assistance. There was no chance for me to leave and nothing better suggested itself than to act so that whoever came back would think I belonged there. I proposed to the men that we might as well see what we could do while we waited. When a dingy officer and eight men appeared on the scene, we were all three busy inspecting the damage and no awkward questions were asked. So for a short space of time I served in the Confederate army,—at least I pulled at the wheel of a Confederate army wagon, with a great show of work and no real exertion. The officer in command, it was impossible to tell his rank from his dress, but as he assumed more airs than a Brigadier-General, it is safe to say he was not above a Sergeant, ordered the men around as if he were reconstructing an entire train. His obstinancy was soon apparent to my very alert observation. No matter what one of the men began to do, he stopped him and set him to work in another manner. This amiable trait of his character I turned to my own advantage. When things were righted and he called out that one man must go back with a message and the rest follow him, I said audibly that I would "go on," and had my expectations realized by his ordering me to go back to meet Captain Shuman. Not being deeply impressed with the necessity of encountering that individual, I followed the road no longer than was necessary to take me beyond sight and hearing of the men who, with the wagon, had started in the opposite direction. Entering the woods, I returned to my horse, mounted and hurried on. As I neared the place where the firing had occurred, I kept a sharp lookout for a dead Confederate in decent clothes, intending to appropriate them. It is proverbially slow work waiting for dead men's shoes, and I found it considerably more tedious still trying to acquire a more extended outfit. In all the four miles to Petterbridge's there
- 42. were no signsof a skirmish visible, saving a dead horse and a discarded musket or two. I wanted at the first opportunity to discard my blue trousers for a pair of the Rebel colors. Many of the men in the Confederate army at that time wore such parts of Union soldiers' clothes as they had been able to get to replace their own ragged and filthy garments. I knew the blue trousers I wore would not be likely to excite any suspicion, still I preferred to use every precaution.
- 43. CHAPTER IV. Petterbridge's housestood in a small sheltered valley into which the sun had not yet made its way, when I drew rein at the rail fence at the side of his house. As I was not known by the family, and might have had trouble getting what I wanted from any of them, I was particularly glad when the old man himself appeared at the back door. In reply to his "What ere' want, stranger?" I dismounted and convinced him who I was. As there was only the family at home, it was safe for me to stop. Here I got breakfast, a pocketfull of bread and meat to carry with me, a fresh horse, a pair of butternut trousers, and the news that several houses supposed to belong to Unionists had been burnt by Rebels during the night. Petterbridge also said that quite a body of Confederate troops had passed down the valley a mile back the day before, and gave me the agreeable bit of information that the country ahead was worse, if possible, than what I had just come through, being alive with raiders and bushwhackers as well as overrun with stragglers anxious to get to the front. Devotedly hoping that I might miss all these ill-regulated gentlemen, I left Petterbridge's and pushed on. The horse I had taken was only a fair traveler, but then he was not too valuable to abandon to the enemy. A number of times I met and was accosted by single stragglers and skulkers. They were a pitiful looking set of men, ragged as Lazarus, generally barefoot, and gaunt almost to emaciation. I always stopped at the least effort on their part to enter into conversation, and asked earnestly after a lost cow or a fictitious companion, varying the inquiry as I thought my interlocutor took me for one of
- 44. the mountaineers indigenousto that region, or for one of themselves. I never willingly ran against them, but it was impossible to avoid them entirely, for they were making for the Potomac, and I was practically following its course and going across their line of march. There was really little to fear from them. They could not know that I was a Union spy, and they were not a suspicious set of men anyway. It was the bushwhackers and raiders I was most in danger from, and more from the bushwhackers than the raiders. The latter, like the stragglers, kept on and near the roads, and there was always enough of them together to make me aware of their presence by their noise, so with due caution I would not be likely to encounter them. More than a dozen times I drew up into thickets and ravines to let a party of them pass, and several other times saw squads in the distance. From the bushwhackers I had no protection. Singularly enough I did not actually encounter any, although I discerned a good many by the aid of my imagination and had plenty of evidence of their actual near presence. The whole country was an extremely pretty one to bushwhack in. I tried to let the fact slip my mind, but I had an unpleasant, ticklish sensation in my back the whole time and longed for an eye in the rear of my head to keep a lookout in the direction from which I particularly anticipated a bullet. I will here say I was in the bloodiest and most hopeless battles of the war, and I have had a pretty steady diet of Indian fighting since the war, having been surrounded by half-frozen Indians of various tribes in Montana and Dakota, and chased and been chased by red hot Apaches in Arizona and New Mexico, but never have I undergone such nerve-trying work as was that trip I made as a Union spy, the account of which I am telling. There was never at any time more danger than I met afterward, but there was no let up. Every nerve was strung to its highest tension and kept there, every sense was held alert. There was never present the enlivening enthusiasm of battle, which warms a man's blood to
- 45. deeds of heroism;there was no emulation to keep up one's courage; there was always the demoralizing necessity of keeping out of the way of danger; there was ever present the fretting fact that self- preservation only could insure success. No man is anxious to be killed. No matter how strongly he is imbued with a sense of duty and honor and of love for his country, he is pretty certain to feel that her good will be better secured if he is on the boards to look after it, than it would be if he had laid down his life at her shrine. He prefers to live, but at the same time he does not want his personal safety to be a matter of perpetual concern. I was not a coward, but I felt decidedly averse to being shot. I had started out to do something and I wanted to do it; I had already concluded that there was no "right time" for a spy to be killed. He does not want to be shot until he has found out what he seeks to know, and then not until he has told it. It was about three o'clock when I finally stumbled on an oat stack in an odd little clearing, far out from sight of the owner's windows. I let my horse take his dinner, while I kept guard and ate a sandwich. In order to let him make as good a meal as possible I delayed as long as my impatience would let me and then nearly made him break his neck and mine too, by trying to canter him down a place about as steep as Jordalemet and nearly as slick, in order to make up for lost time. The country which had been comparatively level and well settled for some distance back through the valley, became rough again as I neared the mountains, and I had to make my way more slowly and cautiously. I seemed to have run out of the stream of Rebels. I determined to question the first person I met. Before long I saw a weak minded looking man driving a few sheep along a narrow path, and coming from the opposite direction. "Howdy, stranger?" I began.
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