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to neighboring islands must be made by cutter, whaleboat, or canoe…. At times it is possible to procure horses. Almost without exception, however, the exploration of a valley can be accomplished only on foot, owing to the steep declivities to be traversed, the deep streams to be forded, and the absence of any trails whatsoever in the thick forest and undergrowth of the areas inhabited by Partulae.
    But Crampton also recorded the countervailing pleasures that keep us all going:
    The experiences incidental to the active life necessitated by such work were many, varied, and interesting; but the present monograph is not the place for a description of the beautiful islands or of their delightful inhabitants. Suffice to say that the days and nights of arduous and sometimes dangerous effort included hours of keen enjoyment, for the island of Tahiti, especially, is of matchless beauty, while the chiefs and their families offered abundant hospitalities which it was a privilege to enjoy at the time as it is now a pleasure to acknowledge them.
    Moreover, Crampton’s labor only began with collecting. He then spent years measuring his snails (some 80,000 for the Tahiti monograph, and a whopping 116,000 for the Moorea work) and calculating statistics—all of which, incredibly (even for his day), he did personally and by hand! (No computers, no hand-held calculators; when Crampton speaks of “calculating machines,” he means those old mechanical jobbies that performed division by successive subtraction and clanked away for minutes to perform simple operations.) Again, he wrote in understatement:
    The author is personally responsible for every direct measurement and for every detail of classification; hence the personal coefficient is uniform throughout the entire research…. In computing the standard deviations fractions were carried out to eight decimal places…. The length of time required for such quantitative analysis can be estimated only by those who themselves have engaged in such work…. These figures, together with a single line of text, may be all that represents two to eight weeks of mathematical drudgery…. Yet the employment of such methods is justified in the final results.
    Third, and most important, ultimate judgment must reside in a criterion of utility. All good science is accumulative; no one can get everything right the first time. If Crampton’s monographs were only monuments to past effort and ideas, they might still be admired, but only as items of human paleontology. They are, in fact, precious mines for continuing revision and extension. I know this in the most personal way, for I have used Crampton’s tables, the product of his years of “mathematical drudgery,” in at least three of my technical papers.

    A figure from Crampton’s monograph illustrating a Partula shell and some of the measurements that he made on each specimen. Carnegie Institution of Washington .
    To put this crucial point in another and stronger way, Crampton spent fifty years documenting the current geographic distribution and variation of Partula on Tahiti, Moorea, and nearby islands. This work has great and permanent value as a frozen snapshot, but Crampton’s half century should be but a transient moment in the future history of Partula . Crampton devoted this lifetime of effort in order to establish a baseline for future work. Partula would continue to evolve rapidly, and Crampton’s baseline would become a waystation of inestimable value. No scientist could view such dedication in any other light. Future changes have much more value than current impressions.

    One of nearly a hundred tables, most of comparable length and equally chock full of numbers, from Crampton’s monograph on the Partula of Moorea. Each number in the chart is a calculated average based on many specimens, not simply a measurement. Carnegie institution of Washington .
    And Crampton’s plan paid off—or so it seemed at first. Three of the world’s