Middle Nineteenth-Century Crinoid Studies Of Thomas Austin, Sr. And Thomas Austin, Jr.: Newly Discovered Unpublished Materials

1999 ◽  
Vol 18 (2) ◽  
pp. 180-197 ◽  
Author(s):  
William Ausich ◽  
George Sevastopulo ◽  
Hugh Torrens

Thomas Austin, Sr. (1794-1881) and to a lesser extent his son Thomas Austin, Jr. (1817-before 1881) are recognized as important early students of both Carboniferous and Jurassic crinoids. However, the extent of their understanding of crinoids was not appreciated until the recent discovery of unpublished materials of Austin, Sr., including a manuscript dated 1855, plates indicating the intended continuation of their never finished 1843-1849 systematic monograph, and photographs of fossil crinoids.Within at most three and one-half decades after Johann Samuel Miller (1779-1830) first named the class Crinoidea in 1821, Austin, Sr. accurately summarized the broad outline of crinoid evolutionary history. Furthermore, Austin had a post-natural-historical interpretation of fossil crinoids. Fossil crinoids were not just ancient organisms to be described and classified, but Austin tried to interpret the biology of these fossils. Furthermore, he considered questions of taphonomy, functional morphology, paleoecology, processes controlling evolutionary trends, and crinoid deposits—still topics of interest to paleobiologists 150 years later; and he also discussed crinoid "evolution" and extinction. Other discussion is present on the history of crinoid studies from a middle-1800's perspective and on the superstitious and medicinal uses of crinoid fossils.But fain Saint Hilda's nuns would learn If, on a rock by Lindisfarne, Saint Cuthbert sits, and toils to frame The sea-born beads that bear his name: Such tales had Whitby's fishers told, And said they might his shape behold, And hear his anvil sound; A deaden'd clang,-a huge dim form Seen but, and heard, when gathering storm And night were closing round. But this, as tale of idle fame, The nuns of Lindisfarne disclaim.

2020 ◽  
Vol 2 (2) ◽  
pp. 24-41
Author(s):  
Bogdan Chiriac

This article examines Ochire istorică asupra sclăviei (A brief historical survey of slavery), a mid-nineteenth-century pioneering study about the history of slavery, to ascertain the growing influence of anti-slavery ideas in the framing of the new Romantic historical discourse about Roma slavery in the Romanian principalities. The study, written by the leading Romanian historian, writer, journalist, and liberal statesman Mihail Kogălniceanu (1817–1891), was published in 1853 in a censored edition and has received only limited scholarly attentiondue to its incomplete form (the full version of the original article has yet to be published). The present paper intends to provide a critical reflection on the main features of Kogălniceanu’s analysis of the institution of slavery in the Romanian principalities by exploring the author’s multilayered interest in the question of Roma slavery, his command of primary sources, and the underlying historical interpretation and social doctrines thatframed his investigation.


1979 ◽  
Vol 8 (2-3) ◽  
pp. 409-423 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jean-Pierre Warnier

The linguistic situation in the Grassfields of Cameroon poses a problem, indeed a challenge. Basic vocabulary counts and shared lexical innovations point to one language classification and historical interpretation; but innovations in noun-classes do not agree and point to another (Voorhoeve 1976). To reconcile these findings in a consistent historical explanation, one must have recourse to some hypothesis as to the past relationships among the speakers of the languages. Such a hypothesis must be controlled by whatever can be known about the sociolinguistic history, as it were, of the area. In recent ethnohistorical research, I have been able to reconstruct a nineteenth-century pattern of multilingualism as an essential part of the social and political fabric of the Grassfields. Of the three hypotheses that might be advanced to explain the present language situation, the third is best supported by this reconstruction and other evidence. Further work is underway to test the hypothesis. In the meanwhile, the case shows the necessity of sociolinguistic as well as narrowly linguistic reconstruction in explanation of actual cases of change.


Author(s):  
Andrew Franta

This essay considers the Hampshire Chronicle, and the provincial newspaper in general, as a context for reading Austen. If the provincial newspaper would appear to afford a sharper framework for the historical interpretation of Austen’s novels, the Hampshire Chronicle and the history of the provincial press instead raise larger questions about the constitution of ‘the local’ in the early nineteenth century and suggest a different basis for understanding the significance of Austen’s focus on everyday life.


2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Alejandro Ibáñez ◽  
Uwe Fritz ◽  
Markus Auer ◽  
Albert Martínez-Silvestre ◽  
Peter Praschag ◽  
...  

AbstractDespite the relevance of chemical communication in vertebrates, comparative examinations of macroevolutionary trends in chemical signaling systems are scarce. Many turtle and tortoise species are reliant on chemical signals to communicate in aquatic and terrestrial macrohabitats, and many of these species possess specialized integumentary organs, termed mental glands (MGs), involved in the production of chemosignals. We inferred the evolutionary history of MGs and tested the impact of macrohabitat on their evolution. Inference of ancestral states along a time-calibrated phylogeny revealed a single origin in the ancestor of the subclade Testudinoidea. Thus, MGs represent homologous structures in all descending lineages. We also inferred multiple independent losses of MGs in both terrestrial and aquatic clades. Although MGs first appeared in an aquatic turtle (the testudinoid ancestor), macrohabitat seems to have had little effect on MG presence or absence in descendants. Instead, we find clade-specific evolutionary trends, with some clades showing increased gland size and morphological complexity, whereas others exhibiting reduction or MG loss. In sister clades inhabiting similar ecological niches, contrasting patterns (loss vs. maintenance) may occur. We conclude that the multiple losses of MGs in turtle clades have not been influenced by macrohabitat and that other factors have affected MG evolution.


2018 ◽  
Vol 41 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kevin Arceneaux

AbstractIntuitions guide decision-making, and looking to the evolutionary history of humans illuminates why some behavioral responses are more intuitive than others. Yet a place remains for cognitive processes to second-guess intuitive responses – that is, to be reflective – and individual differences abound in automatic, intuitive processing as well.


2003 ◽  
Vol 30 (2) ◽  
pp. 299-316 ◽  
Author(s):  
Hans-JüRgen Lechtreck

Two early nineteenth century texts treating the production and use of wax models of fruit reveal the history of these objects in the context of courtly decoration. Both sources emphasise the models' decorative qualities and their suitability for display, properties which were not simply by-products of the realism that the use of wax allowed. Thus, such models were not regarded merely as visual aids for educational purposes. The artists who created them sought to entice collectors of art and natural history objects, as well as teachers and scientists. Wax models of fruits are known to have been collected and displayed as early as the seventeenth century, although only one such collection is extant. Before the early nineteenth century models of fruits made from wax or other materials (glass, marble, faience) were considered worthy of display because contemporaries attached great importance to mastery of the cultivation and grafting of fruit trees. This skill could only be demonstrated by actually showing the fruits themselves. Therefore, wax models made before the early nineteenth century may also be regarded as attempts to preserve natural products beyond the point of decay.


2013 ◽  
Vol 40 (2) ◽  
pp. 244-256 ◽  
Author(s):  
Holger Funk

In the history of botany, Adam Zalužanský (d. 1613), a Bohemian physician, apothecary, botanist and professor at the University of Prague, is a little-known personality. Linnaeus's first biographers, for example, only knew Zalužanský from hearsay and suspected he was a native of Poland. This ignorance still pervades botanical history. Zalužanský is mentioned only peripherally or not at all. As late as the nineteenth century, a researcher would be unaware that Zalužanský’s main work Methodi herbariae libri tres actually existed in two editions from two different publishers (1592, Prague; 1604, Frankfurt). This paper introduces the life and work of Zalužanský. Special attention is paid to the chapter “De sexu plantarum” of Zalužanský’s Methodus, in which, more than one hundred years before the well-known De sexu plantarum epistola of R. J. Camerarius, the sexuality of plants is suggested. Additionally, for the first time, an English translation of Zalužanský’s chapter on plant sexuality is provided.


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