Natural History Books Research Articles

The elephant in the room (at Notre-Dame de Gourdon, Burgundy)

John Osborne begins this paper with a question: what was an elephant doing on the wall of a Romanesque church dedicated to the Virgin Mary’s Assumption? He answers by considering first the placement of the elephant in the other art of the building and the relationship of the lower part of the wall-painting (called the dado) to the higher images; then by considering what medieval Europeans would have known about elephants from natural history books, bestiaries, and imported silks; some would also have seen live animals, the rare gifts to monarchs from Eastern rulers, and would have extensive knowledge of the ivory trade.

Biography and scientific work of György Szollát (1954–2021) in the Hungarian Natural History Museum

György Szollát, a Hungarian biologist and botanist, was working in the vascular plant collections of the Department of Botany in the Hungarian Natural History Museum from 1978 to 2007. His main fields were exploring and monitoring the flora and vegetation of the national parks and protected areas in the surroundings of Budapest, in the Gerecse Mts, in Nógrád and Somogy counties, in the Dráva Lowland, in Mt Szársomlyó, and in the Aggtelek National Park. He also participated in several expeditions to unique destinations such as the trips to North Korea within an exchange program of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences. His publications and educational activities were outstanding concerning the more than 50 papers and articles, numerous exhibition scripts, presentations and the translations of many natural history books and documentaries. His photographs of flowers were published in different journals and magazines. Between 2007 and 2018, he was an academic teacher at the faculty of nature conservation engineering at the Kaposvár University.

Aesthetics of Evil in Middle Ages: Beasts as Symbol of the Devil

Since the very origin of art, human beings have faced the challenge of the representation of Evil. Within the medieval Christian context, we may find many beings which have attempted to convey the power of the devil. Demonic beings, terrifying beasts, fallen angels or even Satan himself can be frequently found and appear in many forms. They can be seen in chapitols, stained glass windows, codices … Our aim is to evaluate different creatures, animals and monstruous hybrids, which represent the efficient presence of the devil. We base our evaluation on some bestiaries, natural history books and encyclopedias from the XII and the XIII century, like the Bestiaire from Philippe de Thaon, Pierre de Beauvais, Guillaume le Clerc, or the so-called Cambridge Bestiary as well as the one from Oxford, the Livres dou Tresor from Brunetto Latini, the Liber monstrorum de diversis generibus, L’image du Monde from Gossuin, the Bestiario moralizzato di Gubbio, and of course, the Physiologus. Natural beings acquire a supernatural dimension in bestiaries and in natural history books. We will present the reader with a satanic bestiary, a short selection of these evil-related beings. In this, we will distinguish between those beasts representing evil through their ability to deceive and those which are able to generate not only fear, but also death.

The Effectiveness of Malaise Traps, H-Traps, and Sticky Traps for Collecting Horseflies (Diptera: Tabanidae)

The Effectiveness of Malaise Traps, H-Traps, and Sticky Traps for Collecting Horseflies (Diptera: Tabanidae)

The polyphony of nature

The polyphony of nature

The Seven Secluded Monkeys of Conrad Gessner

Conrad Gessner is considered a major encyclopedist of the 16th century. His work is a benchmark in natural history studies. It is an enormous effort that covered the zoological information known until that century. In his publications, illustrations were a fundamental component that paralleled the textual narratives. Those noteworthy images followed different paths before being re-conceived as xylographies to be printed as part of those natural history books and presented to the public. A large set of drawings used by Gessner in the Felix Platter collection remained unknown and hidden for almost four centuries in Amsterdam. The colorful primates of this collection stand as reminders of an early history of the circulation of scientific knowledge and imaginaries of animals. They visually influenced further zoological works and were initial accounts about the diversity of this mammal group.

Southeast Asian manuscripts from the collection of Sir Hans Sloane in the British Library

Sir Hans Sloane (1660-1753) was the founding father of the British Museum and its Library, which later became the British Library. Sloane’s vast collections of natural history specimens, coins, medals, ethnographic items, and books included four thousand manuscripts, twelve of which were from Southeast Asia. These twelve Southeast Asian manuscripts, including eight from the Indonesian archipelago, are described in detail here. Although Sloane is not known to have had personal connections with Southeast Asia or any particular interest in the region, this small collection nonetheless encompasses an exceptionally wide range of the languages, scripts, writing supports and books formats found in the region, manifest in some of the earliest manuscripts known in certain genres.

Gilbert White, John Ray and the construction ofThe Natural History of Selborne

When compiling his seminal work, The Natural History and Antiquities of Selborne (1789), Gilbert White relied on a number of natural history books in order to manage and accumulate information. One of White's most important books was his copy of John Ray's Synopsis Methodica Avium et Piscium, a work frequently mentioned in Selborne. White's annotated copy of this work, now in the Whipple Library, Cambridge, provides new insight into his working practices and methods of observing and recording the natural world. White's copy of Ray's Synopsis was essential for assembling information for the letters which formed one of the most successful and influential works of eighteenth-century natural history in Britain.

"Looking through nature to significance" : Le non-humain comme métaphore politique dans quelques récits d’histoire naturelle américains des XVIIIème et XIXème siècles

This paper examines two natural history books: Travels (short title), botanist William Bartram’s only book, published in 1791 and Alexander Wilson’s nine-volume American Ornithology (1808-1814). It argues that both books, using Buffon’s degeneration theory as leverage, offer descriptions of nonhuman animals that help delineate the country’s political identity.

明治初期図画教科書とその原本の研究(3) : 西洋博物学書図版の引用

明治初期図画教科書とその原本の研究(3) : 西洋博物学書図版の引用

British Ornithologists' Union Godman–Salvin Medal

Tim has been keen on birds since he was a schoolboy, a trip to Bardsey Island when aged 11 having generated a lifelong fascination with seabirds. Despite having been told by teachers at his school that he was ‘not considered University material’, he went on to obtain a degree in Zoology in 1972 from the University of Newcastle, followed by a DPhil in 1976 from the University of Oxford. The latter started him off on a long-term study of guillemots on the island of Skomer, which he has continued for more than 40 years. On completion of his PhD, he moved straight to a lectureship at the University of Sheffield, and has held a personal chair there since 1992. Tim's initial research work was very much focused on the behaviour and population ecology of seabirds. As well as working on Skomer, he also studied seabirds in the Canadian Arctic. However, having been introduced to the field of sperm competition while studying for his undergraduate degree at Newcastle, he started looking at this, initially in guillemots and then more generally. He has conducted detailed studies of the mating behaviour of male and female birds, and the morphology of their reproductive systems, with a view to understanding the physiological, morphological and behavioural adaptations that enable females to ensure that their eggs are fertilized by the highest quality mates available to them. This has involved fieldwork on various species and experimental studies in the laboratory, the latter mainly with Zebra Finches. Tim has played a major role in developing our understanding of sperm competition in birds, discovering how the pattern of storage in, and loss of sperm from, the female reproductive tract plays a major role in determining the fertilization success of males. Since 1992, together with other colleagues, he has organized a biennial meeting on the biology of spermatozoa, bringing together scientists from different disciplines to discuss current developments in this research area, thereby stimulating new research questions. From the platform of his studies of seabird populations on Skomer, he has championed the importance of long-term studies in furthering our understanding of both basic population processes and the effects of environmental change on seabirds. Tim has published over 200 scientific papers, and his work is very well cited. In addition, he has written five popular science books based on his research, covering various aspects of the biology of birds, interwoven with history and philosophy of science and personal perspectives. Like his basic research, these more popular works have been very well received – The Wisdom of Birds and Bird Sense both won Best Bird Book of the Year Awards from the British Trust for Ornithology and British Birds in 2009 and 2012 respectively, and Bird Sense was also rated best natural history book of 2012 by the Independent and Guardian newspapers. In recognition of his contribution to science, he has received several research awards, and was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 2004. Tim is deeply committed to his role as a teacher and mentor. He has inspired and supervised around 40 PhD students, and been the recipient of a number of awards for the excellence of his undergraduate teaching at Sheffield, for which he was also given a Teacher of the Year award by the Society for Biology in 2013. He plays an active role in the scientific community and in several learned societies in his discipline, having been President of the International Society for Behavioural Ecology and is currently President of the Association for the Study of Animal Behaviour. He has also been involved in examining how the science community identifies and deals with scientific misconduct. Tim also takes part in many different kinds of outreach activities, for schools, bird clubs, natural history societies and the general public. Being distinguished in many aspects of ornithology, Tim seems an extremely deserving recipient of the Godman-Salvin medal.

Natural history books in the library of Dr Richard Richardson

During the first decades of the eighteenth century the wealthy Yorkshire naturalist Richard Richardson acquired a large library, particularly strong in natural history, medicine and antiquarianism. Virtually all the natural history component was dispersed before the library was catalogued, so its contents have been unknown. Richardson's unpublished correspondence with Sir Hans Sloane and William Sherard contains many references to his books and shows that they and other leading naturalists were the source of most of them, by donation and purchase. Of about 700 books in natural history that he possessed, 425 have been identified; an Appendix lists 300 of the more significant titles. Comparison is made with other natural history libraries, and the eventual fate of Richardson's is discussed.

The “killer of the cane fields”: The social construction of the Australian coastal taipan

ABSTRACTThis paper makes an original contribution to human–animal studies through the application of social construction theory to an iconic species of Australian snake, the coastal taipan. Little research attention using this approach has been focused on reptiles, and this study addresses this gap in the literature. The taipan has achieved a high level of notoriety in Australia. This paper seeks to understand why and how this has occurred. Drawing on a range of data derived from analysis of newspaper articles, popular magazines and books, and the scientific literature, four dominant narratives are identified: the taipan as an object of science and natural history, as social problem, as object quest and as celebrity. The insights gained from this study support the contention that the meanings made of Australia's fauna are fluid, historically contextualised and socially constructed. In the specific case of the taipan, key individuals, including scientists, popular natural historians and snake men contributed greatly to the species’ construction, as did popular cultural forms such as newspapers and natural history books.

William Percival Westell (1874–1943): a prolific popularizer of British natural history

In spite of the prodigious output of books on natural history for the popular market that emanated from William Percival Westell during the first half of the twentieth century, little has been written in his appreciation save for one brief obituary. Estimated to have sold some half million copies of his works – the products of some 37 publishers – he must have had a great impact on the public's appreciation of natural history. A self-educated naturalist, he strove to make his publications accessible to all by eschewing technical language. A native of Hertfordshire, living initially in St Albans and latterly in Letchworth Garden City, he served as curator of Letchworth Museum for three decades. This article expands on his autobiography and obituary: examining his oeuvre, ethics and contacts in order to set his achievements in a wider context than has been done hitherto. A bibliography of his natural history books is presented.

Popularizing marine natural history in eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Britain

The literary and pedagogic style of books popularizing marine natural history for the British public shifted during the nineteenth century. Previously, natural history books had been written largely by men, with notable exceptions like Isabella Gifford, Mary Gatty and Mary Roberts. Gentlemen naturalists tended to be clerics or medics; educated men conventionally viewing their interest as revelatory of the Divine in nature. Typically, women were less well educated than men but some from clerical backgrounds, having better access to learning, became significant popularizers of natural history. Gosse's works promoting aquaria and “rock-pooling” (typically among the middle classes), helped to develop a ready market for the plethora of popular seashore books appearing in the 1850s; with coastal access being facilitated by expansion of the railways. Controversies concerning evolution rarely penetrated works aimed at a popular readership. However, the style adopted by marine natural history writers had changed noticeably by the end of the nineteenth century. The earlier conversational dialogue or narrative forms gave way to a more terse scientific style, omitting references to the Divine. Evolutionary ideas were affecting populist texts on littoral natural history, even if only covertly.

The beauty of Victorian beasts: illustration in the Reverend J. G. Wood's Homes without hands (W. T. Stearn Prize 2012)

The Reverend John George Wood (1827–1889) was a successful popularizer of natural history in the Victorian era. His Illustrated natural history (1853) and Common objects series (1857–1858) have been written about extensively. However, historians have largely ignored his most successful book, Homes without hands, in spite of its exquisite designs and profound connections with natural domesticity. In addition, little research has been conducted on the illustrations that appear across Wood's publications, despite their great popularity during his lifetime. This article examines the creation, popularization and methods of communication of this beautiful natural history book. A work explicitly about animal dwellings, Homes without hands was exceedingly popular during its time, as will be shown through an analysis of previously unpublished impression and sales records from the Longman's publishing archive at Reading University. Furthermore, this article will reveal Wood's use of advanced methods in printing and engraving technologies, which made Homes without hands more accessible to the public, particularly through the use of electrotype. In addition, Wood adapted his illustrations for the sake of uniting pleasing aesthetics with scientific representations. Wood's proactive involvement in the illustrative processes of the book ensured that his vision was fully enacted in the final designs. There were elements of danger and domesticity present throughout Wood's work, which functioned as a method for enticing readership and communicating social and religious messages. This will be revealed through a close analysis of a few specific illustrations. Wood dynamically united illustration and text to create a useful domestic piece of natural history, for and about the home. This article seeks to combine methods of examination of both natural history illustration and literature through the investigation of a single book, to better communicate how works of Victorian natural history functioned as a whole.

Publication models in a changing environment: bibliometric analysis of books and book chapters using publications by Surrey Beatty & Sons

Expectations and patterns of publication have changed markedly with evolving online availability and associated development of new citation gathering databases. Perhaps the most vulnerable components of the scientific literature to ongoing change are books and book chapters, given their elongated publication timelines and generally more limited online availability. To test this, we applied citation analyses and assessments of library holdings to determine the use of the natural history books published by Surrey Beatty & Sons between 1987 and 2010. We (i) evaluated the relative use of book chapters and journal papers by comparing citations to chapters in the five books of the Nature Conservation series by Surrey Beatty & Sons to citations of journal chapters in four Australian journals published in the same years, (ii) determined the efficacy of four different databases in retrieving citations to book chapters by comparing their recovery of citations to the five books of the Nature Conservation series, and (iii) quantified noncitation measures related to library holdings to evaluate the use of the books on the entire Surrey Beatty & Sons list. Mean citations/chapter to the first three books in the Nature Conservation series were similar to the mean citations/ paper in four Australian journals published in the same years. However, the mean citations/chapter of the last two books declined relative to citations/paper for the journals, suggesting a fall in book use evident by early this century. Citation retrieval varied across databases; Google Scholar retrieved most citations, followed by Scopus, Web of Science (Cited Reference Search) and Web of Knowledge. Contrary to published concerns, no citations retrieved by Google Scholar were in questionable sources such as contents pages - many were from highly ranked journals. Each book in the full Surrey Beatty & Sons list was held by an average of 45.3 libraries in Australia and 36.1 in the USA, and less than five in each of the UK, New Zealand, Hong Kong, Canada, Germany and South Africa. This was a similar coverage to another Australian publisher, the Royal Zoological Society of New South Wales, and indicated strong markets in Australia and the USA. It was less, though, than the number of libraries with current or past subscriptions to five Australian journals publishing nature conservation content. We conclude that citation data for books and book chapters are available and that library holdings provide another measure of use. The online ‘visibility’ of books may be a problem, but can be improved through better marketing and improved author search techniques.

Spiders, Horror, and Animal Others in Late Victorian Empire Fiction

By the 1850s, the representation of the spider in Victorian natural history was beginning to change. No longer associated solely with ingenuity and industry, the spider took on more disturbing connotations in the latter half of the nineteenth century. Unable to pin down the creature's precise rhetorical and metaphorical function, naturalists could not decide whether the spider ought to be loved or feared and at the same time the spider began to emerge as a ubiquitous, protean and unstable Gothic trope in popular fiction. While natural history books warned of the hazards of the foreign spider's bite, in adventure fiction the alien arachnid lurks in liminal spaces far from the safety of British shores. Much maligned as the unfamiliar Other, the spider caused – and mitigated – anxieties about the limits of the human. In the Gothic empire fiction of Bertram Mitford and H.G. Wells, the spider takes on the role of the harbinger of death on both sides of the colonial encounter.

Cover Caption

Conservation BiologyVolume 26, Issue 3 p. i-i Conservation Biology Cover Caption First published: 17 May 2012 https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1523-1739.2012.01884.xAboutPDF ToolsRequest permissionExport citationAdd to favoritesTrack citation ShareShare Give accessShare full text accessShare full-text accessPlease review our Terms and Conditions of Use and check box below to share full-text version of article.I have read and accept the Wiley Online Library Terms and Conditions of UseShareable LinkUse the link below to share a full-text version of this article with your friends and colleagues. Learn more.Copy URL Share a linkShare onFacebookTwitterLinked InRedditWechat Abstract Cover: Lappet-faced (Torgos tracheliotus), Rüppell's (Gyps rueppellii), and White-backed (Gyps africanus) Vultures feeding on the carcass of a Grant's gazelle (Gazella granti) recently killed by a cheetah (Acinonyx jubatus) at Ol Pejeta Conservancy, Laikipia, Kenya (October 2010). Vultures (Accipitridae and Cathartidae) are the only known obligate scavengers. On pages 453-460, Ogada et al. present evidence that effects of decreases in abundances of vultures may include longer persistence of carcasses and increasing abundance of and contact among facultative scavengers at these carcasses. Such changes could increase rates of transmission of infectious diseases among mammalian carnivores, with carcasses serving as hubs of infection. Cover image © 2012 Tui De Roy. Photographer: Tui De Roy (http://www.tuideroy.com) is a founding fellow of the International League of Conservation Photographers. Her work has been published in over 30 countries. She has authored 14 large-format natural history books on the Galápagos Islands, Andes, Antarctica, New Zealand, and the world's albatrosses and is producing a volume on penguins. Tui founded Th e Roving Tortoise Nature Photography (http://www.rovingtortoise.co.nz) in partnership with Mark Jones. She has spent most of her life in the Galápagos Islands, is a former member of the board of directors of the Charles Darwin Foundation, and works in close association with Galápagos National Park to document the islands' landscapes and their rare species. Tui currently lives in New Zealand, where she is patron of the New Zealand chapter of Friends of Galapagos. Volume26, Issue3June 2012Pages i-i RelatedInformation

The Publications and Malacological Taxa of William Wood (1774–1857)

William Wood (1774–1857), trained as a physician, soon turned his attention to natural history book publication and sales. Working in London, his chief malacological publications were the General conchology (1814–1815; reprinted in 1835), two editions of the Index testaceologicus (1818, 1823–1825; the latter reprinted in 1828), and a Supplement (1828) to the Index containing many new species. He made available 282 specific names, of which 109 are now considered valid. Type lots of many of his species are present in The Natural History Museum, London, some newly located during the present study.