Locality Names Research Articles

Bryophytes from Jan Mayen, including Twenty-Five Species New to the Island

Four hepatics and twenty-one mosses are reported from Jan Mayen for the first time. Doubtful or neglected records of one hepatic and ten mosses are confirmed by new finds and reexamination of herbarium material. New localities are given for 28 taxonomically interesting or little-collected species. Five hepatic and eight moss names are excluded from the flora of Jan Mayen. The known bryo- phyte flora of Jan Mayen consists of 41 liverwort species in 22 genera, and 133 moss species in 66 genera. Jan Mayen is a young volcanic island situated about midway between the Norwegian mainland, Svalbard, Greenland and Iceland. Since it is so isolated it is interesting to know which plants have reached and established themselves on the island. Lid (1964) has pre- sented a survey of the botanical investigations in Jan Mayen 1817-1957, and all bryophytes reported in the papers cited below were collected by members of the expeditions mentioned by him. A sketch map of Jan Mayen including many locality names are presented by Lid (1941, 1964) and Watson (1964), and topographic maps on the scale of 1:50 000 are available (Norsk Polarinstitutt 1959).

Andesite in oceanic regions

Among the chemically intermediate rocks of the central ocean basins, three genetic series-tholeiitic, low-K alkalic, and high-K alkalic-are recognizable on the basis of relations between the differentiation index (DI) and total alkalies and between DI and the alkali index [AI, here defined as 100 × K2O/(K2O + Na2O)]. The present nomenclature for these rocks, using terms based on locality names (hawaiite, tristanite, icelandite, and so forth), is inconsistent. Names based on chemical differences do not cover the range in composition, and names based on mineralogical differences do not reflect existing differences in chemistry. Alternatives to this “locality” nomenclature are considered: First, andesite is redefined, regardless of its geographic occurrence, as a volcanic rock in which more than 2/3 of the feldspar is plagioclase, the groundmass plagioclase is oligoclase or andesine, normative quartz is less than 15 percent, and the color index is less than 40. By prefixing this generalized andesite with appropriate terms indicating the genetic series, geographic location (for example, “oceanic”), and distinctive mineralogy, a consistent and informative nomenclature is possible. A second alternative is to define in a more consistent fashion the present locality names of the intermediate rocks by grouping them into two sets, one based on modal composition (mugearite, hawaiite), the other on chemistry (trachyandesite, trachybasalt).

The Collection of Place Names by Small Expeditions

IT will be wrELL to acknowledge straight away that the field collection of names in a foreign country cannot be properly done except by a highly competent or specially trained linguist. There are two principal reasons for this. Sounds divorced from meaningful context are extremely difficult to hear even in one's own language? how often one has to have an unfamiliar name or address spelled out. A foreign tongue, which may have many sounds that do not exist in the traveller's own language, is virtually impossible to hear correctly. It is not difficult in Arabia, for example, to find io wildly different spellings of a single original name recorded by 10 travellers over a period of 20 years. The second and probably the greatest impediment to accur? ate recording of place names is the double difficulty of ensuring that the informant understands what is being asked about and that his reply is correctly interpreted topographically. Different peoples view the land and their physical surroundings often in very different ways according to their needs and their mode of life and thus have different naming habits. You may see a river, pure and simple?he may see an unfordable stretch of that river which will have a different name from the same river further upstream; you may see a hill?he may see and name only a pasture thereon; you may see a plain clearly bounded?he may see and name only a part of that plain covered by a certain sort of scrub. Locality and area names in particular are fraught with difficulties of comprehension and delimitation, the solution to which will require as detailed a knowledge of the way of life of the local inhabitants as of their language. There are also a number of lesser but often unpredictable difficulties, as, for example, the hazards attendant upon the use of a native interpreter, which are too obvious to need elaboration. Nevertheless, small expeditions do often go to places which are badly mapped or not mapped at all and their names collection can help considerably in subsequent understanding and handling of the toponymy of the area. It is hoped that the guide? lines here offered, viewed in the light of the observations above, will serve to make the work of small expeditions more effective in this respect. (a) If the expedition is fortunate enough to have a linguist among its members, he should as far as possible make enquiries in advance about the languages likely to be encountered and their phonetic structure, so that he may have a transcription system ready for application. In any event he should provide a detailed statement of the system or systems he has used in the recording of names. Portable tape-recorders are ideal in theory, but they are difficult to use in practice and the sound quality is usually too poor for accurate transcription. (b) In the absence of a linguist the member of the expedition entrusted with the collection of names should equip himself likewise with as much advice as he can obtain in advance. In the absence of more precise instructions he should record names in the following conventional alphabet, which was devised by the Permanent Committee on Geographical Names (PCGN) in 1954 to replace the older RGS II System.

The Mosses Collected by Thomas Drummond in Western Canada, 1825-1827

Many of the place names used by Thomas Drummond (d. 1835) in his narratives and exsiccati series are obscure, misleading, or no longer current. His route of exploration through western Canada is traced. The mosses that he reported are listed with the nomenclature and locality names brought up-to-date. In 1828 Thomas Drummond distributed 286 numbers of an exsiccati series called Musci Americani. These mosses were collected from 1825-1827 while he served as assistant naturalist on the Second Land Arctic Expedition under the command of Captain John Franklin. Many of the exsiccati are critical from taxonomic and phytogeographic viewpoints, and consequently it is important to know where they were collected. Geographical misinterpretations have been made because the narratives (Franklin, 1828; Drummond, 1830) and the information of the exsiccati labels are often vague, and many of the terms used now have different meanings or are of only local application. The following account attempts to clarify his route, the place names on the exsiccati labels, and to bring the nomenclature of the mosses in the narratives up-to-date. This study is restricted to those reports from western Canada, the provinces of Manitoba, Saskatchewan, Alberta, and British Columbia. Drummond had two exsiccati sets with the general title Musci Americani. The one referred to herein is: Musci Americani; or, Specimens of the Mosses Collected in British North America, and Chiefly among the Rocky Mountains, During the Second Land Arctic Expedition under the Command of Captain Franklin, R.N., by Thomas Drummond, Assistant Naturalist to the Expedition. Vols. I, II. Numbers 1-286. Glasgow. 1828. The second one, which is not referred to herein, is: Musci Americani; or, Specimens of Mosses, Jungermanniaceae, &c. Collected by the Late Thomas Drummond, in the Southern States of North America. Arranged and named by W. Wilson and Sir W. J. Hooker. Numbers 1-180. Warrington. 1841. The expedition which resulted in the second exsiccati set is traced in a lively way by Geiser (1948, pp. 55-78).

Discussion

Dr. S. H. Straw said that the 6500 feet or so of Ludlovian deposits in the area formed the thickest development of these rocks so far recorded in Wales. Over half of this thickness was made up of the Bailey Hill Beds which, with their innumerable gritty bands, were a repetition of the Denbighshire Grit facies of North Wales. They extended southwards for some miles along the western side of Radnor Forest, but farther to the south and east the gritty bands died out and at Builth the corresponding eds were represented by sandy shales. Recent work by Cummins (1957 Geol. Mag 94 , 433–51) seemed to indicate that the Denbighshire Grits were derived from a south-westerly source. Had the author any evidence as to the direction from which the Bailey Hill Beds had been derived ? The scarcity of fossils in some parts of the succession made close correlation with all but the adjacent area of Clun Forest difficult and uncertain ; but the speaker hoped that the author would extend his investigations into the areas to the east and south-east with a view to linking up, eventually, his succession with those at Ludlow on the one hand and Builth on the other. Dr. J. D. Lawson said that successions in the basin facies were now established at Builth, Clun Forest, the Brecon anticlinal and Knighton; with Llandovery and Bishops Castle soon to come. All these areas had their own classifications based on fossil, lithological or locality names. A pattern

Observations on the Life Histories of Panama Bats

Since there is only scanty information on the breeding, feeding, habits, and habitats of all but a few species of tropical bats, the following observations made between February 10 and August 15, 1953, in the region of the Panama Canal Zone, are presented. During the first half of this period, as assistant to Dr. D. R. Griffin, I collected alive as many species of bats as possible for the primary purpose of making recordings of their high-frequency sounds used in echolocation. This work was supported by a contract between The Office of Naval Research and Cornell University. In the course of this work I visited many bat roosts, observed various species both in the field and laboratory, and prepared specimens, some of which are now in the Museum of Vertebrate Zoology. During the last four months of the period I remained in the region studying the fishing habits of Noctilio leporinus and did more incidental collecting of other species. I am indebted to Dr. Harold Trapido for pointing out bat roosts in the vicinity, and to Dr. Herbert C. Clark, Director of the Gorgas Memorial Laboratory, for allowing me to use the Juan Mina field station, five miles northeast of Gamboa, as a base of operations during parts of April, May, and August. For accounts of the already existing knowledge of the species listed below see Goldman (Smithsonian Misc. Coll., 69, No. 5, 1920), Enders (Bul. Mus. Comp. Zool., Harvard, 78, No. 4, 1935), and Allen (bats, Harvard Univ. Press, 1939). Goldman gives a good description of the climate, topography, and vegetation of Panama. Most locality names can be found on any map of the Canal Zone Region. Rhynchonycteris naso (Maximilian).—Seven were caught in trammel nets at Borinquen Dam, two miles northwest of Pedro Miguel, on Borinquen Highway, between 6:15 …

Fig characteristics useful in the identification of varieties

does not appear. First page follows. Introduction Culture of the fig, Ficus Carica L., began many centuries ago somewhere in Eurasia. Primitive man recognized the delectable qualities of the fruit, selected seedling trees bearing superior kinds, and thus established definite fig clones or varieties. Egyptian hieroglyphics and other pictographs give us some idea of the high regard in which the fig was held, but the Greeks have given us what is probably the earliest written indication of fig taxonomy. In the Odyssey, Ulysses says to his father: “Through these very trees we were going and thou didst tell me the names of each of them. Pear trees thirteen thou gavest me, and ten apple trees, and figs two score” (Homerus, 1909).4 In the third century b.c., varieties of fruits were not only named but studied. (Theophrastus (1916)) says: “Most of the wild kinds [plants] have no names and few know about them, while most of the cultivated kinds have received names and they are more commonly observed; I mean such plants as vine, fig, pomegranate, apple, pear, bay, myrtle, and so forth; for, as many people make use of them, they are led also to study the differences.” During the centuries in which the fig has been cultivated, varieties have so greatly multiplied that the present number is not even approximately known. In the first century of the present era, Pliny (Plinius Secundus, 1855-90) listed 29 varieties of figs, and (Columella (1745)) mentioned 8 varieties under locality names.