|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|||||||
All existing accounts of the geology of Lesotho (formerly Basutoland), in southern Africa, refer to the pioneering efforts of the Revd S. S. Dornan, published between 1905 and 1908, as the first geological works in this country. However, one Henry Edward Richard Bright had already published two papers on Basutoland geology in the Cape monthly magazine, in 1873 and 1874. The first paper dealt with an uneconomic twelve-inch coal seam south of Maseru. It was accompanied by a sketch map and the first published geological cross-section through any part of Lesotho. In the second paper, dealing with the geology of Basutoland, Bright described the sedimentary strata and first fossil plants from western Basutoland, in rocks today assigned to the upper Karoo Supergroup. Bright erroneously assumed that the whole country was made up of these strata – being unaware of the existence of thick basaltic lava flows that occupied the mountainous high ground. He also recorded the oldest known earthquake from Lesotho (near Maseru, February 1873). Among his mineralogical finds was ilmenite, which we now know as occurring in kimberlitic intrusions. For his various discoveries, Bright deserves to be recognized as a pioneer in the geological and palaeontological exploration of Lesotho.
KEYWORDS: Basutoland – Karoo strata – coal seam – fossil plants – earthquake – ilmenite – dyke.
[BACK] to contents page
To date little attention has been paid to how Alfred Russel Wallace’s skill as a writer helped advance his career. Here, a small discovery is reported which contributes to such an understanding: Wallace apparently had a standing arrangement with a London magazine to provide eyes-in-the-field reports when he set out for Singapore in early 1854.
KEY WORDS: naturalists – journalism – Literary gazette – field work – bibliography.
[BACK] to contents page
The most prolific of Darwin’s correspondents from Ireland was James Torbitt, an enterprising grocer and wine merchant of 58 North Street, Belfast. Between February 1876 and March 1882, 141 letters were exchanged on the feasibility and ways of supporting one of Torbitt’s commercial projects, the large-scale production and distribution of true potato seeds (Solanum tuberosum) to produce plants resistant to the late blight fungus Phytophthora infestans, the cause of repeated potato crop failures and thus the Irish famines in the nineteenth century. Ninety-three of these letters were exchanged between Torbitt and Darwin, and 48 between Darwin and third parties, seeking or offering help and advice on the project. Torbitt’s project required selecting the small proportion of plants in an infested field that survived the infection, and using those as parents to produce seeds. This was a direct application of Darwin’s principle of selection. Darwin cautiously lobbied high-ranking civil servants in London to obtain government funding for the project, and also provided his own personal financial support to Torbitt.
KEY WORDS: Belfast – famine – Ireland – nineteenth century – Phytophthora – potato cultivars.
[BACK] to contents page
Shortly before he died, John Lindley decided to dispose of his herbarium and botanical library. He sold his orchid herbarium to the United Kingdom government for deposit at the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, and then offered his library and the remainder of his herbarium to Ferdinand Mueller in Melbourne. On his behalf, Joseph Hooker had earlier unsuccessfully offered the library and remnant herbarium to the University of Sydney, using the good offices of Sir Charles Nicholson. Although neither the University of Sydney nor Mueller was able to raise the necessary funds to purchase either collection, the correspondence allows a reconstruction of a catalogue of Lindley’s library, and poses some questions about Joseph Hooker’s motives in attempting to dispose of Lindley’s material outside the United Kingdom. The final disposal of the herbarium to Cambridge and previous analyses of the purchase of his Library for the Royal Horticultural Society are discussed. A list of the works from Lindley’s library offered for sale to Australia is appended.
KEY WORDS: Joseph Hooker – colonial science – Ferdinand von Mueller – Royal Horticultural Society – Cambridge University Department of Botany – University of Sydney
John Lawson’s A new voyage to Carolina, an important source document for Amer20/10/0809 in A new collection of voyages and travels, a two-volume set that also contained travel books translated by John Stevens. Lawson’s publishers were leaders in the book trade of early eighteenth century London, and the New voyage is typical of the resurgent popular interest in foreign travel narratives and exotic flora and fauna that began in the late 1600s. The New collection was among the earliest examples of books published in serial instalments or fascicles, a marketing strategy adopted by London booksellers to broaden the audience and increase sales. Analysis of London issues of the New voyage indicates that the 1709, 1711, 1714, and 1718 versions are simply bindings of the original, unsold sheets from the 1709 New collection edition, differing only by new title-pages, front matter, and random stop-press corrections of type-set errors. Lawson’s New voyage illustrates important aspects of the British book trade during the hand press period of the early eighteenth century.
KEY WORDS: colonial America – natural history – eighteenth century – serial publication – John Stevens – James Knapton – John Brickell – James Petiver – Mark Catesby.
[BACK] to contents page
The secretarybird, the only species of the family Sagittariidae (Falconiformes), inhabits all of sub-Saharan Africa except the rain forests. Secretarybird, its vernacular name in many languages, may be derived from the Arabic “saqr at-tair”, “falcon of the hunt”, which found its way into French during20/10/0820/10/0820/10/08riginal sketch obviously, together with other information on birds and living birds, came from the court of Sultan al-Kâmil (1180–1238) in Cairo. Careful examination led to an interpretation as Sagittarius serpentarius. Two archaeological sources and one nineteenth century observation strengthened the idea of a former occurrence of the secretarybird in the Egyptian Nile valley.
André Thevet (1502–1590), a French cleric and reliable research traveller, described and depicted in 1558 a strange bird, named “Pa” in Persian language, from what he called Madagascar. The woodcut is identified as Sagittarius serpentarius. The text reveals East Africa as the real home of this bird, associated there among others with elephants. From there raises a connection to the tales of the fabulous roc, which feeds its offspring with elephants, ending up in the vernacular name of the extinct Madagascar ostrich as elephantbird.
KEY WORDS: Emperor Frederick II – Sultan al-Kâmil – Palaearctic fauna – André Thevet – Madagascar.
[BACK] to contents page
Publication data relating to a rare and obscure Japanese journal Lansania Journal of arachnology and zoology (1929-1941) are examined. Available facts, together with a substantial body of circumstantial and anecdotal evidence suggest that many planned issues, including several cited by independent sources as having been published, were not published. Some biographical data relating to the editor, Kyukichi Kishida (1888–1968), are provided. Titles of all papers known to have been published in Lansania, with page numbers and claimed publication dates are presented, together with a list of 113 new zoological names proposed in the journal. Known library holdings of the journal worldwide are indicated. Details are provided of unpublished manuscripts in proof obtained from Kishida in the 1960s. The strong probability that some printed publication dates are inaccurate is discussed in detail.
KEY WORDS: publication history – zoological nomenclature – Japan – Pacific Region – Kyukichi Kishida – Entomophilia.
[BACK] to contents page
We review the growth of knowledge in several areas of ornithology, and demonstrate the important, but largely unrecognized role of European bird-keeping in the development of several different areas of bird study. By ignoring the early bird-keeping literature, historians of ornithology have overlooked many significant observations. There are several reasons why the role of bird-keeping has been ignored, including the shifting boundaries of scientific ornithology and the varying relationship between bird-keeping and ornithology. We review the significance of observations of captive birds to ornithology and show that they have made important and previously unrecognized contributions to the following aspects of bird biology: song acquisition, function and anatomy; territory; breeding biology; external genitalia; migration; instinct and learning.
KEYWORDS: history – ornithology – aviculture.
KEY WORDS: J. Hullet – bird specimens – Zoologisches Museum Berlin – history of collection
[BACK] to contents page
Khutū was a material derived from an animal used by Medieval Asian peoples in the manufacture of knife handles and as an alexipharmic. Al-Bīrūnī (973-1048) made extensive enquiries into the origin of khutū but reached no definite conclusion. Literary scholars in the first half of the twentieth century identified the walrus and narwhal as probable sources, but in ignoring aspects of the literature on khutū’s appearance and provenance left a number of questions unanswered. We clarify and extend this research and identify further clues to the identity of khutū. We concur that walrus ivory was one source of khutū, suggest that the remains of “Ice Age” mammals may have influenced development of the medieval literature on khutū more than previous investigators realized, and offer a new hypothesis of khutū’s origin.
KEY WORDS: Al-Bīrūnī – musk ox – Ovibos moschatus – Odobenus rosmarus – Monodon monoceros – Mammuthus primigenius.
[BACK] to contents page
“Traitté general des oyseaux” was written in 1660 by Jean Baptiste Faultrier, a taxman working in Louis XIV’s royal hunting lodge. The 787-page, un-illustrated manuscript was dedicated to the all-powerful Nicolas Fouquet, Louis XIV’s superintendent of the finances. Faultrier used an impressive variety of sources, from the natural history treatises of Aldrovandi and Belon, to falconry treatises, Italian bird-keeping manuals, Thevet’s travel literature, and husbandry books. Faultrier’s work brought together many facets of ornithology, and placed natural history, hunting and bird-keeping on the same level. Although on a par with Jonston’s De avibus (1650), Faultrier’s “Traitté” was never printed and remained unknown until 2004. Analysis of the content reveals how Faultrier worked and his aim in writing such a manuscript, which is one of the only ornithology works of seventeenth-century France.
KEY WORDS: natural history – ornithology – hunting – falconry – bird-keeping –sixteenth century – seventeenth century.
The first and only part published of A descriptive catalogue of the raptorial birds in the Norfolk and Norwich Museum by John Henry Gurney (senior) is usually dated 1864. But a copy with a variant title-page dated 1861 exists, raising the question of whether there are two editions or issues. Typographical errors indicate that all copies, whatever dated, constitute a single impression from one type setting. All copies dated 1864 have a cancelled title-leaf. The copy dated 1861 is apparently unique, an accidental survival that escaped the cancellation; its title-page never appeared in commercially available copies. Printing of the whole book, on three batches of paper, was demonstrated by internal evidence to have been protracted over three years from 1861 to 1864. Therefore, there is only one edition, published in 1864, with the title-page in two states. This study demonstrates how differences between batches of printing-paper can facilitate recognition of cancelled conjugate pairs of leaves that would otherwise be undetectable unless a copy without the cancellation were found. Examination of the cloth types, spine titles, endpapers and various printed insertions, indicates that probably two different casings of the whole edition were carried out simultaneously, rather than consecutively, contrary to the usual practice of Victorian publishers. The surviving original manuscript suggests that the protracted printing resulted from indecision about some taxonomic and nomenclatural points; but complications in Gurney’s private life probably also contributed. No further parts of the catalogue were published, probably because of Gurney’s disastrous business problems between 1866 and 1869. The potential relevance of the book to avian nomenclature is appraised.
KEY WORDS: bibliography – cancellations – dating books – foxing – John Van Voorst – printing-paper.
[BACK] to contents page
 |
[TOP] •Home • About SHNH • Publications • Meetings • How to Join • News • Links • Site Map |