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Naturalists in the Field
Collecting, Recording and Preserving the Natural World from the Fifteenth to the Twenty-First Century
Series: - Emergence of Natural History, Volume: 2
Volume Editor:
Interposed between the natural world in all its diversity and the edited form in which we encounter it in literature, imagery and the museum, lie the multiple practices of the naturalists in selecting, recording and preserving the specimens from which our world view is to be reconstituted. The factors that weigh at every stage are here dissected, analysed and set within a historical narrative that spans more than five centuries. During that era, every aspect evolved and changed, as engagement with nature moved from a speculative pursuit heavily influenced by classical scholarship to a systematic science, drawing on advanced theory and technology. Far from being neutrally objective, the process of representing nature is shown as fraught with constraint and compromise.
With a Foreword by Sir David Attenborough
Contributors are: Marie Addyman, Peter Barnard, Paul D. Brinkman, Ian Convery, Peter Davis, Felix Driver, Florike Egmond, Annemarie Jordan Gschwend, Geoff Hancock, Stephen Harris, Hanna Hodacs, Stuart Houston, Dominik Huenniger, Rob Huxley, Charlie Jarvis, Malgosia Nowak-Kemp, Shepard Krech III, Mark Lawley, Arthur Lucas, Marco Masseti, Geoff Moore, Pat Morris, Charles Nelson, Robert Peck, Helen Scales, Han F. Vermeulen, and Glyn Williams.
With a Foreword by Sir David Attenborough
Contributors are: Marie Addyman, Peter Barnard, Paul D. Brinkman, Ian Convery, Peter Davis, Felix Driver, Florike Egmond, Annemarie Jordan Gschwend, Geoff Hancock, Stephen Harris, Hanna Hodacs, Stuart Houston, Dominik Huenniger, Rob Huxley, Charlie Jarvis, Malgosia Nowak-Kemp, Shepard Krech III, Mark Lawley, Arthur Lucas, Marco Masseti, Geoff Moore, Pat Morris, Charles Nelson, Robert Peck, Helen Scales, Han F. Vermeulen, and Glyn Williams.
Arthur MacGregor, D.Litt (1999), formerly a curator at the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford. He has published Curiosity and Enlightenment (2007), Animal Encounters (2012) and has edited some 13 other books and c.130 articles. He is editor of the Journal of the History of Collections (OUP).
"Aus der Vielzahl der Fallstudien zu Protagonisten und Expeditionen resultiert ein epochenübergreifendes Entwicklungsnarrativ, das sich erfolgreich u¯ber die gewöhnlich ku¯ rzer gefassten Phasen akademischer Periodisierung hinwegsetzt. So können langfristige Entwicklungen sichtbar werden, wie beispielsweise die vom Sammeln physischer Objekte – zunächst einzelner Repräsentanten möglichst vieler Arten bzw. später repräsentativer Sample – hin zum Sammeln von Daten."
- Bettina Dietz, Hongkong, in: Zeitschrift für Historische Forschung 47 (2020) 1:106-107
"The act of collecting specimens and its corollaries – the preservation, description, analysis and arrangement of those specimens – is fundamental to all natural history research. Naturalists in the Field offers a comprehensive and engaging overview of the various ways in which such specimens were acquired, preserved and transported over the past seven centuries."
- John McAleer, Archives of Natural History, Volume 46, Issue 2, Page 362-363. Published online September 2019
"Two themes run strongly through this assortment. The first is attention to naturalists’ practice, the details of the day-to-day life of collecting in the field, as well as documentation and preservation. [...] The other rich seam is the visual culture of natural history. [...] it is an expansive and lively overview of a topic in the history of science that keeps rewarding those who study it. A great time to be a historian of natural history, indeed.”
- Samuel J. M. M. Alberti (National Museums Scotland & University of Stirling), ISIS, Volume 110, Number 3, September 2019, pp. 576-577.
[...] this is a valuable set of essays that offer a broad range of insights into the practicalities of life in the field. The inclusion of nine lengthy appendices providing transcriptions of collecting instructions from the seventeenth to the nineteenth centuries will be of interest to students of natural history, while the rich selection of illustrations (most colored) makes the book appealing to a wider non-academic readership.
- Helen Cowie (University of York), Journal of Jesuit Studies 6 (2019) 333-336.
Both entertaining and informative, clearly written and drawing on original research, this book is likely to be read both by scholars and by readers simply interested in natural history and field collecting. Naturalists in the Field certainly deserves a place in the libraries of tertiary institutions and in major public libraries.
- Anne Coote (University of New England), Historical Records of Australian Science, Volume 30 Number 1, p. 60.
- Bettina Dietz, Hongkong, in: Zeitschrift für Historische Forschung 47 (2020) 1:106-107
"The act of collecting specimens and its corollaries – the preservation, description, analysis and arrangement of those specimens – is fundamental to all natural history research. Naturalists in the Field offers a comprehensive and engaging overview of the various ways in which such specimens were acquired, preserved and transported over the past seven centuries."
- John McAleer, Archives of Natural History, Volume 46, Issue 2, Page 362-363. Published online September 2019
"Two themes run strongly through this assortment. The first is attention to naturalists’ practice, the details of the day-to-day life of collecting in the field, as well as documentation and preservation. [...] The other rich seam is the visual culture of natural history. [...] it is an expansive and lively overview of a topic in the history of science that keeps rewarding those who study it. A great time to be a historian of natural history, indeed.”
- Samuel J. M. M. Alberti (National Museums Scotland & University of Stirling), ISIS, Volume 110, Number 3, September 2019, pp. 576-577.
[...] this is a valuable set of essays that offer a broad range of insights into the practicalities of life in the field. The inclusion of nine lengthy appendices providing transcriptions of collecting instructions from the seventeenth to the nineteenth centuries will be of interest to students of natural history, while the rich selection of illustrations (most colored) makes the book appealing to a wider non-academic readership.
- Helen Cowie (University of York), Journal of Jesuit Studies 6 (2019) 333-336.
Both entertaining and informative, clearly written and drawing on original research, this book is likely to be read both by scholars and by readers simply interested in natural history and field collecting. Naturalists in the Field certainly deserves a place in the libraries of tertiary institutions and in major public libraries.
- Anne Coote (University of New England), Historical Records of Australian Science, Volume 30 Number 1, p. 60.
Foreword
Sir David Attenborough
Editor’s Preface
Arthur MacGregor
List of Illustrations
List of Contributors
1 Introduction
Arthur MacGregor
2 New World and Other Exotic Animals in the Italian Renaissance: the Menageries of Lorenzo Il Magnifico and His Son, Pope Leo X
Marco Masseti
3 The Emperor’s Exotic and New World Animals: Hans Khevenhüller and Habsburg Menageries in Vienna and Prague
Annemarie Jordan Gschwend
4 “Judge by experience and by learninge”: the Fieldwork of William Turner (c.1508-1568)
Marie Addyman
5 On Northern Shores: Sixteenth-Century Observations of Fish and Seabirds (North Sea and North Atlantic)
Florike Egmond
6 Collecting and Preserving Fishes: an Historical Perspective
Peter Davis
7 Into the Wild: Botanical Fieldwork in the Sixteenth Century
Florike Egmond
8 “Take with you a small Spudd or Trowell”: James Petiver’s Directions for Collecting Natural Curiosities
Charles E. Jarvis
9 Linnaean Scholars Out of Doors: So Much to Name, Learn and Profit From
Hanna Hodacs
10 “Devilish fellows who test patience to the very limit”: Naturalists in the Pacific in the Age of Cook
Glyn Williams
11 Catesby’s Birds
Shepard Krech III
12 The Hudson’s Bay Company and Its Collectors
C. Stuart Houston
13 European Enlightenment in India: an Episode of Anglo-German Collaboration in the Natural Sciences on the Coromandel Coast, Late 1700s–Early 1800s
Arthur MacGregor
14 Eight Ways to Catch a Seal: Fieldwork in Siberia in the Age of Enlightenment
Han F. Vermeulen
15 Face to Face with Nain Singh: the Schlagintweit Collections and Their Uses
Felix Driver
16 More Than One Way to Skin a Wombat: the How and Why of Collecting in the South Seas
Rob Huxley
17 William Burchell in Southern Africa, 1811-1815
Malgosia Nowak-Kemp
18 Snapshots of Tropical Diversity: Collecting Plants in Colonial and Imperial Brazil
Stephen A. Harris
19 From Tubs to Flying Boats: Episodes in Transporting Living Plants
E. Charles Nelson
20 Faunal Collecting, Inventorying and Systematizing in the Marine Environment: a Historical, Mostly British, Perspective
P.G. Moore
21 Gathering Spirals: on the Naturalist and Shell Collector Hugh Cuming
Helen Scales
22 Bat-Fowlers, Pooters and Cyanide Jars: a Historical Overview of Insect Collecting and Preservation
Peter C. Barnard
23 Nets, Labels and Boards: Materiality and Natural History Practices in Continental European Manuals on Insect Collecting 1688-1776
Dominik Hünniger
24 Collecting Abroad, Preserving at Home: Titian Ramsay Peale II, American Entomologist and Collector
Robert McCracken Peck
25 John Russell Malloch: Amateur Naturalist to Professional Taxonomist
E. Geoffrey Hancock
26 Reflections on Some Practical Aspects of Collecting During the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries
Pat Morris
27 Following the Lure: Field Experience and Professional Opportunities in Turn-of-the-Twentieth-Century American Vertebrate Paleontology
Paul D. Brinkman
28 Evolving Contexts of Collecting: the Australian Experience
A.M. Lucas
29 Virtual Collecting: Camera-Trapping and the Assembly of Population Data in Twenty-First-Century Biology
Sarah Elmeligi, Ian Convery, Volker Decker Deecke and Owen Nevin
30 The Psychology of Finding and Recognizing Wildlife
Mark Lawley
Appendix: Key Texts in the History of Field Collecting
Index
Sir David Attenborough
Editor’s Preface
Arthur MacGregor
List of Illustrations
List of Contributors
1 Introduction
Arthur MacGregor
2 New World and Other Exotic Animals in the Italian Renaissance: the Menageries of Lorenzo Il Magnifico and His Son, Pope Leo X
Marco Masseti
3 The Emperor’s Exotic and New World Animals: Hans Khevenhüller and Habsburg Menageries in Vienna and Prague
Annemarie Jordan Gschwend
4 “Judge by experience and by learninge”: the Fieldwork of William Turner (c.1508-1568)
Marie Addyman
5 On Northern Shores: Sixteenth-Century Observations of Fish and Seabirds (North Sea and North Atlantic)
Florike Egmond
6 Collecting and Preserving Fishes: an Historical Perspective
Peter Davis
7 Into the Wild: Botanical Fieldwork in the Sixteenth Century
Florike Egmond
8 “Take with you a small Spudd or Trowell”: James Petiver’s Directions for Collecting Natural Curiosities
Charles E. Jarvis
9 Linnaean Scholars Out of Doors: So Much to Name, Learn and Profit From
Hanna Hodacs
10 “Devilish fellows who test patience to the very limit”: Naturalists in the Pacific in the Age of Cook
Glyn Williams
11 Catesby’s Birds
Shepard Krech III
12 The Hudson’s Bay Company and Its Collectors
C. Stuart Houston
13 European Enlightenment in India: an Episode of Anglo-German Collaboration in the Natural Sciences on the Coromandel Coast, Late 1700s–Early 1800s
Arthur MacGregor
14 Eight Ways to Catch a Seal: Fieldwork in Siberia in the Age of Enlightenment
Han F. Vermeulen
15 Face to Face with Nain Singh: the Schlagintweit Collections and Their Uses
Felix Driver
16 More Than One Way to Skin a Wombat: the How and Why of Collecting in the South Seas
Rob Huxley
17 William Burchell in Southern Africa, 1811-1815
Malgosia Nowak-Kemp
18 Snapshots of Tropical Diversity: Collecting Plants in Colonial and Imperial Brazil
Stephen A. Harris
19 From Tubs to Flying Boats: Episodes in Transporting Living Plants
E. Charles Nelson
20 Faunal Collecting, Inventorying and Systematizing in the Marine Environment: a Historical, Mostly British, Perspective
P.G. Moore
21 Gathering Spirals: on the Naturalist and Shell Collector Hugh Cuming
Helen Scales
22 Bat-Fowlers, Pooters and Cyanide Jars: a Historical Overview of Insect Collecting and Preservation
Peter C. Barnard
23 Nets, Labels and Boards: Materiality and Natural History Practices in Continental European Manuals on Insect Collecting 1688-1776
Dominik Hünniger
24 Collecting Abroad, Preserving at Home: Titian Ramsay Peale II, American Entomologist and Collector
Robert McCracken Peck
25 John Russell Malloch: Amateur Naturalist to Professional Taxonomist
E. Geoffrey Hancock
26 Reflections on Some Practical Aspects of Collecting During the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries
Pat Morris
27 Following the Lure: Field Experience and Professional Opportunities in Turn-of-the-Twentieth-Century American Vertebrate Paleontology
Paul D. Brinkman
28 Evolving Contexts of Collecting: the Australian Experience
A.M. Lucas
29 Virtual Collecting: Camera-Trapping and the Assembly of Population Data in Twenty-First-Century Biology
Sarah Elmeligi, Ian Convery, Volker Decker Deecke and Owen Nevin
30 The Psychology of Finding and Recognizing Wildlife
Mark Lawley
Appendix: Key Texts in the History of Field Collecting
Index
Academic and general readers with an interest in the natural sciences, both from a historical and a contemporary perspective.