(William T. Stearn Prize 2009) “The mighty cassowary”: the discovery and demise of the King Island emu

2010 ◽  
Vol 37 (1) ◽  
pp. 74-90 ◽  
Author(s):  
S. Pfennigwerth
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Life History ◽  
Human Error ◽  
Early Nineteenth Century ◽  
Record Keeping ◽  
In The Wild ◽  
History Of ◽  
Visual Record ◽  
Century Science ◽  
Printing Techniques

Nicolas Baudin's 1800–1804 voyage was the only scientific expedition to collect specimens of the dwarf emu (Dromaius ater) endemic to King Island, Bass Strait, Australia. The expedition's naturalist, François Péron, documented the only detailed, contemporaneous description of the life history of the bird, and the artist Charles-Alexandre Lesueur made the only visual record of a living specimen. Hunted to extinction by 1805, the King Island emu remains relatively unfamiliar. It is ironic that a bird collected as part of one of the most ambitious ordering enterprises in early nineteenth-century science – a quest for intellectual empire – has been more or less forgotten. This paper discusses how human error, assumption, imagination and circumstance hampered recognition and understanding of the King Island emu. Poor record-keeping led to the confusion of this species with other taxa, including the Australian emu and a dwarf species restricted to Kangaroo Island, contributing to the epistemological loss of the species. The expedition's agenda was equally influential in the perception and documentation of the species, with consequences for its conservation in the wild. The paper also argues that as a symbolic rather than a scientific record, Lesueur's illustration fostered inaccuracies in later descriptions of the King Island emu, especially when the image was taken out of context, subjected to the vagaries of nineteenth-century printing techniques and reproduced in more recent ornithological literature. Rather than increasing knowledge about this species, the Baudin expedition and its literature contributed, albeit unwittingly, to the King Island emu's textual and literal extinction.

Giant Lizards: A Brief History of Early Dinosaur Reconstruction

1994 ◽  
Vol 7 ◽  
pp. 7-20
Author(s):  
Donald G. Mikulic
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Life Form ◽  
Distinct Group ◽  
Natural World ◽  
Educational Tool ◽  
Limited Evidence ◽  
Early Nineteenth Century ◽  
History Of ◽  
Life On Earth ◽  
Century Science

Although they have been extinct for more than 60 million years, dinosaurs are a familiar part of our culture. Featured regularly in entertainment, advertising and the news, they are recognized more readily in today's society than many living animals. Dinosaurs also function as a powerful educational tool, stimulating the interest of children and adults in the natural world. Moreover, they serve as a primary symbol of evolution, extinction and the long history of life on Earth. Yet, few people realize how radically our understanding of dinosaurs has changed since their discovery 170 years ago.The initial recognition of dinosaurs as a distinct group of extinct animals was one of the major accomplishments of nineteenth century science. When first discovered, dinosaurs were an unexpected and almost alien life form whose interpretation was inhibited by a scarcity of good fossils and absence of close living relatives. For this reason, early nineteenth century dinosaur reconstructions, which were later ridiculed for their inaccuracies, may seem simplistic and conservative. In reality, they were quite innovative. Examination of this early work reveals just how profound these ideas actually were in light of the limited evidence available and demonstrates how interpretations changed as new fossil discoveries were made.

A history of some fruit models in wax and other materials: scientific teaching aids and courtly table decorations

2003 ◽  
Vol 30 (2) ◽  
pp. 299-316 ◽  
Author(s):  
Hans-JüRgen Lechtreck
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Fruit Trees ◽  
Visual Aids ◽  
Early Nineteenth Century ◽  
Teaching Aids ◽  
Scientific Teaching ◽  
Glass Marble ◽  
History Of ◽  
By Products ◽  
Wax Models

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.

Dan Inman, The Making of English Theology: God and the Academy at Oxford (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2014). ISBN: 9781451469264

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Johannes Zachhuber
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Early Nineteenth Century ◽  
University Of Oxford ◽  
History Of ◽  
History Of The University ◽  
The University

This chapter reviews the book The Making of English Theology: God and the Academy at Oxford (2014). by Dan Inman. The book offers an account of a fascinating and little known episode in the history of the University of Oxford. It examines the history of Oxford’s Faculty of Theology from the early nineteenth century to the middle of the twentieth. In particular, it revisits the various attempts to tinker with theology at Oxford during this period and considers the fierce resistance of conservatives. Inman argues that Oxford’s idiosyncratic development deserves to be taken more seriously than it often has been, at least by historians of theology.

The National and the Universal

2020 ◽  
pp. 368-386
Author(s):  
Sarah Collins
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Cultural Difference ◽  
John Stuart Mill ◽  
Late Nineteenth Century ◽  
Johann Gottfried Herder ◽  
Early Nineteenth Century ◽  
The World ◽  
Respective Treatment ◽  
History Of

This chapter examines the continuities between the categories of the “national” and the “universal” in the nineteenth century. It construes these categories as interrelated efforts to create a “world” on various scales. The chapter explores the perceived role of music as a world-making medium within these discourses. It argues that the increased exposure to cultural difference and the interpretation of that cultural difference as distant in time and space shaped a conception of “humanity” in terms of a universal history of world cultures. The chapter reexamines those early nineteenth-century thinkers whose work became inextricably linked with the rise of exclusivist notions of nationalism in the late nineteenth century, such as Johann Gottfried Herder and John Stuart Mill. It draws from their respective treatment of music to recover their early commitment to universalizable principles and their view that the “world” is something that must be actively created rather than empirically observed.

scholarly journals An Illustrated Shiʿi Pilgrimage Scroll in the Collections of the Royal Asiatic Society

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-25
Author(s):  
ULRICH MARZOLPH ◽  
MATHILDE RENAULD
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Visual Narrative ◽  
Early Nineteenth Century ◽  
Asiatic Society ◽  
Material Condition ◽  
Visual Dimension ◽  
History Of ◽  
Initial Survey ◽  
Royal Asiatic Society

Abstract The collections of the Royal Asiatic Society hold an illustrated pilgrimage scroll apparently dating from the first half of the nineteenth century. The scroll's hand painted images relate to the journey that a pious Shiʿi Muslim would have undertaken after the performance of the pilgrimage to Mecca. Its visual narrative continues, first to Medina and then to the Shiʿi sanctuaries in present-day Iraq, concluding in the Iranian city of Mashhad at the sanctuary of the eighth imam of the Twelver-Shiʿi creed, imam Riḍā (d. 818). The scroll was likely prepared in the early nineteenth century and acquired by the Royal Asiatic Society from its unknown previous owner sometime after 1857. In terms of chronology the pilgrimage scroll fits neatly into the period between the Niebuhr scroll, bought in Karbala in 1765, and a lithographed item most likely dating from the latter half of the nineteenth century, both of which depict a corresponding journey. The present essay's initial survey of the scroll's visual dimension, by Ulrich Marzolph, adds hitherto unknown details to the history of similar objects. The concluding report, by Mathilde Renauld, sheds light on the scroll's material condition and the difficulties encountered during the object's conservation and their solution.

scholarly journals Johann Michael von Hermann (1793–1855): A predecessor of Max Schweidler?

2019 ◽  
Vol 40 (3-4) ◽  
pp. 239-270
Author(s):  
Susanne Wagini ◽  
Katrin Holzherr
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Present Article ◽  
Early History ◽  
Early Nineteenth Century ◽  
Conservation History ◽  
Works Of Art ◽  
Close Study ◽  
Fresh Perspective ◽  
History Of ◽  
Paper Conservation

Abstract The restorer Johann Michael von Hermann (1793–1855), famous in the early nineteenth century, has long fallen into oblivion. A recent discovery of his work associated with old master prints at the Staatliche Graphische Sammlung München has allowed a close study of his methods and skills as well as those of his pupil Ludwig Albert von Montmorillon (1794–1854), providing a fresh perspective on the early history of paper conservation. Von Hermann’s method of facsimile inserts was praised by his contemporaries, before Max Schweidler (1885–1953) described these methods in 1938. The present article provides biographical notes on both nineteenth century restorers, gives examples of prints treated by them and adds a chapter of conservation history crediting them with a place in the history of the discipline. In summary, this offers a surprising insight on how works of art used to be almost untraceably restored by this team of Munich-based restorers more than 150 years before Schweidler.

Burney's The Wanderer and Early-Nineteenth-Century Commodity Fetishism

2002 ◽  
Vol 57 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-30 ◽  
Author(s):  
Andrea Henderson
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
French Revolution ◽  
Social Changes ◽  
Commodity Fetishism ◽  
Early Nineteenth Century ◽  
Labor Theory ◽  
History Of ◽  
Theory Of Value ◽  
Historical Moment ◽  
The Wanderer

This essay explores a particular moment in the history of commodity fetishism by means of an examination of Frances Burney's The Wanderer (1814). The novel, which is explicitly concerned with the social changes facing early-nineteenth-century England, reveals that at this historical moment the commodity inspired emotions of a particular kind: it was idealized and perceived as attractively individualized, aloof, exotic, and changeable, and it elicited a passionate and sometimes even painful form of desire. In The Wanderer Burney explores the human repercussions of this new way of engaging with objects in the marketplace. She reveals, moreover, the extent to which the fetishism of the commodity reflected not just developments within the economy but also political change: under the influence of the French Revolution the charisma once generated by social status was transferred to the economic realm, where, embodied in the commodity, it gave rise to a pleasurable but masochistic reverence. Burney'sargument for the usefulness of economic independence necessarily leads her to appreciate the commodity fetishism she describes: even while she develops a labor theory of value, Burney promotes a mystification of the commodity by insisting on the aloof independence of both labor and its products. Thus, Burney uses the apparent autonomy of things——which Marx decries——as a means to argue for the autonomy of the makers of those things.

scholarly journals In the Theater of Counterrevolution: Loyalist Association and Conservative Opinion in the 1790s

2002 ◽  
Vol 41 (3) ◽  
pp. 291-328 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kevin Gilmartin
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
French Revolution ◽  
Free Expression ◽  
Political Repression ◽  
Early Nineteenth Century ◽  
Political Expression ◽  
Civic Activism ◽  
Late Eighteenth ◽  
History Of ◽  
Negative Role

Conservative movements have generally played a negative role in accounts of the history of political expression in Britain during the period of the French Revolution. Where E. P. Thompson and others on the Left tended to identify radicalism with the disenfranchised and with a struggle for the rights of free expression and public assembly, conservative activists have been associated with state campaigns of political repression and legal interference. Indeed, conservatism in this period is typically conceived in negative terms, as antiradicalism or counterrevolution. If this has been the view of hostile commentators, it is consistent with a more sympathetic mythology that sees nothing novel about the conservative principles that emerged in late eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century Britain. They represent an establishment response to alien challenges. Even where conservatives set about mobilizing the resources of print, opinion, and assembly in a constructive fashion, the reputation for interference has endured. John Reeves's Association for Preserving Liberty and Property against Republicans and Levellers is a useful case in point, since it managed in its brief but enterprising history to combine fierce anti-Jacobinism with the later eighteenth century's rising tide of voluntary civic activism. The association came together at the Crown and Anchor Tavern when a group of self-professed “private men” decided “to form ourselves into an Association” and announced their intentions through the major London newspapers in November and December of 1792. The original committee then called on others “to make similar exertions in their respective neighbourhoods,” forming energetic local associations that would be linked by regular correspondence with the central London committee. In this way, the loyalist movement grew with astonishing speed.

scholarly journals The application of life history information to the conservation management of Chrysoritis butterflies (Lepidoptera: Lycaenidae) in South Africa

Koedoe ◽  
2004 ◽  
Vol 47 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
R.F. Terblanche ◽  
H. Van Hamburg
Keyword(s):  
South Africa ◽  
Life History ◽  
Life Histories ◽  
Host Plants ◽  
Conservation Management ◽  
Aesthetic Value ◽  
Wing Patterns ◽  
In The Wild ◽  
History Of ◽  
Voucher Specimens

Due to their intricate life histories and the unique wing patterns and colouring the butterflies of the genus Chrysoritis are of significant conservation and aesthetic value. Thisoverview probes into practical examples of butterfly life history research applicable to environmental management of this relatively well-known invertebrate group in South Africa. Despite the pioneer work on life histories of Chrysoritis in the past, more should be done to understand the life history of the butterflies in the wild, especially their natural host plants and the behaviour of adults and larvae. A system of voucher specimens of host plants should be introduced in South Africa. Although various host plant species in nature are used by the members of Chrysoritis, including the Chrysoritis chrysaor group, the choice of these in nature by each species is significant for conservation management and in the case of Chrysoritis aureus perhaps even as a specific characteristic.A revision of the ant genus Crematogaster will benefit the conservation management of Chrysoritis species since some of these ant species may consist of a number of specieswith much more restricted distributions than previously thought. Rigorous quantified tudies of population dynamics of Chrysoritis butterflies are absent and the introductionof such studies will benefit conservation management of these localised butterflies extensively.

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