• Digital Humanities and Cultural Heritage
• Publications close
• Archives of Natural History close

Many authors have written about the new bird species discovered by members of the Lewis and Clark expedition (1804–1806), but the history of one species in particular – Oreortyx pictus (mountain quail) – has remained elusive. Primary sources confirm that Lewis returned from the expedition with a specimen (now missing), which he deposited in the Philadelphia Museum. However, for unexplained reasons, the specimen was overlooked by Alexander Wilson and other ornithologists. Here, I review primary sources from the expedition and its aftermath, including novel sources that resolve this long-standing puzzle.

Through European colonization, First Nations peoples were subjected to systematic and violent actions to dispossess them of their land and sovereignty. In Tasmania, this involved government-sponsored bounties as well as militaristic and diplomatic efforts to remove Indigenous peoples from the landscape. At the same time, and using similar rhetoric, thylacines ( Thylacinus cynocephalus (Harris, 1808)) suffered similarly from settler colonists. Thylacines (also known as Tasmanian tigers or Tasmanian wolves) were the largest marsupial carnivores of modern times, but became extinct in the twentieth century. There are several parallels between the treatment and representation of thylacines and Indigenous Tasmanian people, and how their remains were traded. This allows for analysis of how the environmental and human costs of the colonial project were enmeshed with practices of natural history. A central figure in the export of both thylacines and Indigenous remains from Tasmania was Morton Allport (1830–1878). This paper shows that Allport actively built his scientific reputation by exchanging specimens for honours. It asks whether this was a widespread model for other colonial figures who may have used specimen-based philanthropy to develop a form of soft power through associations with respected institutions such as learned societies, universities and museums. Figures like Allport played the role of a type of colonial settler-intermediary, valued for providing privileged access to specimens to the metropole. Allport also worked to augment scientific work in Tasmania and the economic reputation of the colony, demonstrating that the development of social networks and scientific reputations of colonial figures were entwined with the status and success of the colonies themselves.

The ownership of a copy of Flora Glottiana heavily annotated in the 1810s is discussed. The annotations are attributed to James Heriot ( né Maitland) or his wife Margaret ( née Dalgleish), owners of the estate of Ramornie in Fife. The marginalia turn the volume into a local Flora for Fife, vice-county (vc) 85; some of the more interesting species records and their localities are discussed. Many of the localities are estates that belonged to Maitland or Dalgleish relations, suggesting that botanical recording formed part of a network of familial and social interactions. Such links went beyond Scotland and connections with India are discussed, as is the question of how the volume ended up in the ownership of John Hutton Balfour.

Benjamin Waterhouse Hawkins (1807–1894), celebrated in Britain and the United States for his models and illustrations of extinct animals, also had an extensive lecturing career. This paper discusses the reports of Hawkins’s lectures in Britain, delivered between the 1850s and the early 1880s. Unabbreviated transcriptions of his lectures are rare, but newspaper reports are numerous. Hawkins spoke on comparative anatomy, geology, palaeontology and art, his most prominent themes being the origin of dragon myths and the impossibility of human evolution. Above all, he was known for his ability to sketch natural forms rapidly and accurately as he spoke. Hawkins saw significant success in metropolitan centres, but he also built rewarding relationships with provincial towns. This allowed for substantial engagement with civic scientific communities, whose fossil specimens were used by Hawkins and whose local science initiatives were promoted in press accounts of his lectures. Hawkins’s fervent anti-evolutionism aroused attention, although his alternative explanation of life’s development, “the unity of plan”, led to some confusion, and he became embittered by the spread of evolutionary naturalism. Hawkins’s career faded in the 1880s, but memories of his lecturing style lingered with audiences at the century’s close.

An autograph manuscript written after late October 1747 by Mark Catesby, now in the collections of the University of Virginia, Charlottesville, USA, reveals that he was the author of a summary of the final (eleventh) part of his own book, The natural history of Carolina, Florida and the Bahama islands (1729–1747). The summary was read to the Royal Society by Cromwell Mortimer in February 1748 and was then published under Mortimer's name in the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society. Mortimer only lightly edited Catesby's manuscript and added an encomium. In his summary, Catesby took the opportunity, several months after the publication of the final part (“Appendix”) of his two-volume book, to enlarge on a few details.