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This paper gives an account of the European discovery of an Australian marsupial, the common wombat Vombatus ursinus, with particular reference to the first complete wombat specimen to reach Europe, which survives in The Hancock Museum, Newcastle upon Tyne. The involvement of colonial officials, navigators, explorers, naturalists and artists is discussed.
KEY WORDS: The Hancock Museum – Newcastle upon Tyne – Governor John Hunter – Matthew Flinders – George Bass – John Wilson – Thomas Bewick.
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A biography of a celebrated sea-anemone (Cnidaria, Anthozoa) is recounted. The history of the specimen, from its collection by John Graham Dalyell to its death in the Royal Botanic Garden, Edinburgh, is presented in the social and political context of the period.
KEY WORDS. Actinia equina – longevity – captive breeding – aquaria – biography – John Graham Dalyell
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This paper documents the life of Samuel Tufts, Jr. (1817–1902), a Massachusetts shell collector and aquarium stocker. Tufts spent most of his life as a shoemaker and proprietor of express and furniture moving businesses. During the 1850s, he lived in Swampscott and Lynn, Massachusetts, adjacent seacoast communities, and there collected shells and conducted an aquarium stocking business. He published a list of local shells and donated specimens to the Essex Institute of Salem, Massachusetts. Tufts was a friend of the marine zoologist William Stimpson. His procedures for shipping live marine specimens were described in Robert Carter’s A summer cruise on the coast of New England, an account of an 1858 cruise by Carter, Stimpson and others. Tuft’s natural history activities seem to have ended when he relocated to Cambridge, Massachusetts, around 1860. Tufts is the only American aquarium stocker of this era whose methods have been recorded. His observations were published locally but were conveyed to the wider natural history community through publications of more prominent naturalists including William Greene Binney, Augustus Addison Gould and William Stimpson.
KEY WORDS: William Stimpson – Essex Institute – United States – marine biology – conchologist.
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Warrington has an important educational and scientific history which includes the Warrington Academy, the first rate-supported library in England and one of the first municipal museums. Natural history in Warrington in the late nineteenth century revolved around the town’s museum and the field club. One man dominated the scene, Linnaeus Greening. A local industrialist, he spent the whole of his life in the town and was associated with the museum and the Warrington Field Club, giving lectures to members for over 40 years. Nationally he was known for his work on and collections of spiders and other arachnid groups but also collected and studied amphibians and reptiles.
KEY WORDS: provincial science – museums – field club – spiders.
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The endeavour of natural history has often been ridiculed as “mere stamp collecting” by those unwilling to see anything scientific in naturalists’ work. This paper traces some of the ways the term “stamp collecting” has been used in scientific literature. It discusses how the term can be seen as a reflection of the changing methodological context in which science has been done in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. It also points to the importance of considering the relative status of certain sciences not as a problem of what type of science is better or more important but as a problem of scientific communities competing for both resources and prestige.
KEY WORDS: systematics – ecology – scientific method – museums – collections – professionalization.
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A description is given of the waxworks made by the Italian physician Angelo Maestri (1806–1889), preparator, taxidermist and model-maker at the Museum of Natural History of Pavia University where the majority of his wax models are held today. Maestri’s main works deal with the anatomy, physiology and pathology of the silkworm, the morphology of mushrooms and the poison fangs of snakes. He also made models of the life cycle of the nematode Trichinella spiralis and of the blood circulation in some vertebrates. Several preparations in wax by Maestri are held in other scientific institutions in Italy.
Gli autori presentano un quadro sintetico riguardante la figura e l’attività ceroplastica del medico italiano Angelo Maestri (1806–1889), famoso preparatore, tassidermista e modellatore presso il Museo di Storia Naturale dell’Università di Pavia e presso il Museo civico di Storia Naturale di Pavia. Le sue principali opere in cera trattano dell’anatomia, fisiologia e patologia del baco da seta, della morfologia dei funghi, dei denti veleniferi dei serpenti, del ciclo del nematode Trichinella spiralis e della circolazione sanguigna di alcuni vertebrati. Altre pregevoli preparazioni dovute ad Angelo Maestri si trovano presso diversi Istituti scientifici italiani.
KEY WORDS: ceroplastics – natural history collections – mycological models – zoological models – silkworms – snakes – mushrooms.
PAROLE CHIAVE: ceroplastica – collezioni naturalistiche – modelli micologici – modelli zoologici – baco da seta – serpenti – funghi.
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At the back of a copy of Thomas Johnson’s Iter plantarum at Magdalen College, Oxford, is a manuscript list of plants in the hand of John Goodyer, Johnson’s “onely Assistant” in the revision of Gerard’s Herball. The purpose of the list, and its date, is unknown. From a comparison of the plants included with those in the Herball, in Johnson’s Iter plantarum and Descriptio itineris plantarum, and in Goodyer’s other writings I conclude that the list was written in the late summer or early autumn of 1633 as an aide-mémoire of corrections and additions to the Herball. I discuss the relevance of a few entries to priority of discovery in Britain.
KEY WORDS: John Goodyer – Gerard’s Herball – Magdalen College – Kent – Hampstead – Hampshire.
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In the context of Africa detailed descriptions of collecting insects during the eighteenth century from Dru Drury’s archive in The Natural History Museum, London, can be used to provenance insect specimens in William Hunter’s collections in the Hunterian Museum, University of Glasgow. The demand and supply of insects during this period resulted in the issue of instructions to collectors. Improved methods for preserving and transporting insects from overseas evolved as the result of field experience. The link between explorers, professional collectors in the field, and private museums in London is described in relation to Hunter’s cabinets.
KEY WORDS: Dru Drury – Henry Smeathman – Francis Masson – Johan Christian Fabricius.
W. R. P. BOURNE
ABSTRACT: The household accounts of King James V of Scotland provide the first quantitative information on the seasonal occurrence of birds there, and some first records.
KEY WORDS: historical bird list – bird names – bird seasons.
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Modernization of agriculture, economic development and population increase after the end of the Thirty Years’ War caused authorities in many parts of Germany to decree the eradication5/9/07row. Farmers were given targets, and had to deliver the heads of sparrows in proportion to the size of their farms or pay fines. At the end of the eighteenth century German ornithologists argued against the eradication of the sparrows. During the mid-nineteenth century, C. L. Gloger, the pioneer of bird protection in Germany, emphasized the value of the House Sparrow in controlling insect plagues. Many decrees were abolished because either they had not been obeyed, or had resulted in people protecting sparrows so that they always had enough for their “deliveries”. Surprisingly, various ornithologists, including Ernst Hartert and the most famous German bird conservationist Freiherr Berlepsch, joined in the war against sparrows at the beginning of the twentieth century, because sparrows were regarded as competitors of more useful bird species. After the Second World War, sparrows were poisoned in large numbers. Persecution of sparrows ended in Germany in the 1970s. The long period of persecution had a significant but not long-lasting impact on House Sparrow populations, and therefore cannot be regarded as a factor in the recent decline of this species in urban and rural areas of western and central Europe.
Die Modernisierung der Landwirtschaft, der allgemeine wirtschaftliche Wiederaufbau und das Bevölkerungswachstum nach dem Ende des 30-jährigen Krieges veranlasste die Behörden in vielen Teilen Deutschlands, Vorschriften zu erlassen mit dem Ziel, so genannte schädliche Tiere auszurotten, darunter auch den Haussperling. Bauern hatten eine bestimmte Zahl Sperlingsköpfe abzuliefern entsprechend der Größe des von ihnen bewirtschafteten Landes oder sie mussten eine Strafe bezahlen. Gegen Ende des 18. Jahrhunderts wandten sich namhafte deutsche Ornithologen gegen die Ausrottung des Sperlings. Mitte des 19. Jahrhunderts betonte C. L. Gloger, Pionier des Vogelschützes in Deutschland, die Nützlichkeit der Sperlinge bei der Bekämpfung von Insektenplagen. Viele der erlassenen Sperlingsverordnungen wurden wieder abgeschafft, entweder weil sie nicht befolgt wurden, oder weil sie schließlich dazu führten, dass die Bevölkerung anfing, Sperlinge zu schützen, damit man immer genug Köpfe abliefern konnte. Überraschenderweise unterstützten zu Beginn des 20. Jahrhunderts verschiedene Ornithologen, darunter auch Ernst Hartert und der wichtigste Vogelschützer Freiherr von Berlepsch den Krieg gegen die Sperlinge, da sie diese Vögel als Konkurrenten für nützliche Vogelarten betrachteten. Nach dem Zweiten Weltkrieg wurden Sperlinge in großer Zahl vergiftet. Die Sperlingsverfolgung endete in Deutschland schließlich Mitte der 1970er Jahre. Die lange Zeit der Verfolgung hatte zwar eine vorübergehend erhebliche, jedoch keine langfristige Auswirkung auf die Haussperlingsbestände und kann daher auch nicht als eine Ursache für den in letzter Zeit starken Rückgang dieser Art in städtischen und ländlichen Regionen West- und Mitteleuropas angesehen werden.
KEY WORDS: pest birds – bird protection.
STICHWÖRTER: Haussperling – Vogelschutz.
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A small box of animal bones, forwarded by Charles Darwin from North Wales, led to excavations by William Boyd Dawkins in Denbighshire between 1869 and 1872 and in Flintshire in 1886. Neglected riches of the archival record allow glimpses of Darwin and his family and contribute to this first narrative account of a pioneering episode in prehistoric archaeology which resulted in the three most important discoveries of Neolithic human remains in North Wales (and their later apparently near total disappearance). Many of the leg bones had features of the flattening of tibia (platycnemia) and femur (platymeria) first noted by George Busk in Neolithic bones from Gibraltar in 1863, and by Paul Broca at Cro-Magnon in 1868. Within a few years flattened leg bones were recognised across the globe, subsequently in samples extending back to the Middle Palaeolithic and forward to modern hunter-gatherers; platymeric shafts have been found at early hominin sites. Busk’s platycnemic index and understanding of flattening as related to muscular activity anticipate the work of modern bioarchaeologists. Dawkins was recipient of a much quoted account of the Huxley-Wilberforce confrontation at Oxford and opponent of Darwin’s views on human origins: his work opens up instructive perspectives.
KEY WORDS: Paul Broca – George Busk – Sir William Boyd Dawkins – Sir William Turner – Jeffries Wyman – platymeria.
Correspondence bearing on the history of ornithologist M. A. Carriker Jr. and the use of arsenic in preparation of museum specimens
Correspondence in 1936 between the prolific ornithological collector M. A. Carriker Jr. and C. M. B. Cadwalader, director of the Academy of Natural Sciences of Philadelphia, reveals that Carriker, as well as certain other collectors, had abandoned the use of arsenic in specimen preparation by the early twentieth century and its disadvantages are detailed. The correspondence also discloses a professional rift between Carriker and other ornithological staff at the Academy that had important ramifications for Carriker’s career.
KEY WORDS: birds – mammals – neotropical ornithology – Academy of Natural Sciences of Philadelphia
– Smithsonian Institution.
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