Between 1916 and 1927, botanists in several countries independently resolved three problems that had mystified earlier naturalists – including Charles Darwin: how did the many species of orchid that did not produce nectar persuade insects to pollinate them? Why did some orchid flowers seem to mimic insects? And why should a native British orchid suffer ‘attacks’ from a bee? Half a century after Darwin's death, these three mysteries were shown to be aspects of a phenomenon now known as pseudocopulation, whereby male insects are deceived into attempting to mate with the orchid's flowers, which mimic female insects; the males then carry the flower's pollen with them when they move on to try the next deceptive orchid. Early twentieth-century botanists were able to see what their predecessors had not because orchids (along with other plants) had undergone an imaginative re-creation: Darwin's science was appropriated by popular interpreters of science, including the novelist Grant Allen; then H.G. Wells imagined orchids as killers (inspiring a number of imitators), to produce a genre of orchid stories that reflected significant cultural shifts, not least in the presentation of female sexuality. It was only after these changes that scientists were able to see plants as equipped with agency, actively able to pursue their own, cunning reproductive strategies – and to outwit animals in the process. This paper traces the movement of a set of ideas that were created in a context that was recognizably scientific; they then became popular non-fiction, then popular fiction, and then inspired a new science, which in turn inspired a new generation of fiction writers. Long after clear barriers between elite and popular science had supposedly been established in the early twentieth century, they remained porous because a variety of imaginative writers kept destabilizing them. The fluidity of the boundaries between makers, interpreters and publics of scientific knowledge was a highly productive one; it helped biology become a vital part of public culture in the twentieth century and beyond.

Early nineteenth-century zoology in Britain has been characterized as determined by the ideological concerns of its proponents. Taking the zoologist Robert E. Grant as an exemplary figure in this regard, this article offers a differently nuanced account of the conditions under which natural-philosophical knowledge concerning animal life was established in post-Napoleonic Britain. Whilst acknowledging the ideological import of concepts such as force and law, it points to an additional set of concerns amongst natural philosophers – that of appropriate tool use in investigation. Grant's studies in his native Edinburgh relied heavily on the use of microscopes. On his arrival in London, however, he entered a culture in which a different set of objects – museum specimens – held greater persuasive power. This article relates changes in Grant's ideas and practices to the uneven emphases on microscopic and museological evidence amongst European, Scottish and English natural philosophers at this time. In so doing, it identifies the reliance of London-based natural philosophers on museology as constituting a limiting effect on the kinds of claim that Grant sought to make regarding the nature of life.

Despite much excellent work over the years, the vast history of scientific filmmaking is still largely unknown. Historians of science have long been concerned with visual culture, communication and the public sphere on the one hand, and with expertise, knowledge production and experimental practice on the other. Scientists, we know, drew pictures, took photographs and made three-dimensional models. Rather like models, films could not be printed in journals until the digital era, and this limited their usefulness as evidence. But that did not stop researchers from making movies for projection at conferences as well as in lecture halls, museums and other public venues, not to mention for breaking down into individual frames for analysis. Historians of science are more likely to be found in the library, archive or museum than the darkened screening room, and much work is still needed to demonstrate the major effects of cinema on scientific knowledge. Film may have taken as long to change science as other areas of social life, but one can begin to glimpse important ways in which ‘image machines’ (cameras, projectors and the like) were beginning to mediate between backstage experimental work and more public demonstration even around 1900.