Maybe it expressed a sergeant’s snark toward the officer corps. Or a budding scientist’s thrill at a big find. Either way, the hand-lettered label that future Bates professor William H. Sawyer Jr.

Wesley R. Coe, professor of zoology at Yale during the early 20th century, devoted his career to studying ribbon worms — a group of mostly marine-dwelling creatures that includes more than 1,000 known ...