Naturalists in the Field

Interposed between the natural world in all its diversity and the edited form in which we encounter it in literature, imagery and the museum, lie the multiple practices of the naturalists in selecting, recording and preserving the specimens from which our world view is to be reconstituted. The factors that weigh at every stage are here dissected, analysed and set within a historical narrative that spans more than five centuries. During that era, every aspect evolved and changed, as engagement with nature moved from a speculative pursuit heavily influenced by classical scholarship to a systematic science, drawing on advanced theory and technology. Far from being neutrally objective, the process of representing nature is shown as fraught with constraint and compromise.

Foreword
      Sir David Attenborough, Patron of the Society for the History of Natural History
Editor's preface
      Arthur MacGregor
List of Contributors

1. Introduction: specifying the collection
      Arthur MacGregor
2. New World and other exotic animals in the Italian Renaissance: the menageries of Lorenzo Il Magnifico and his son, Pope Leo X
      Marco Masseti
3. The Emperor's exotic and New World animals: Hans Khevenhüller and Habsburg menageries in Vienna and Prague
      Annemarie Jordan Gschwend
4. "Judge by experience and by learninge": The Fieldwork of William Turner (c.1508–1568)
      Marie Addyman
5. On Northern Shores: Sixteenth-Century Observations of Fish and Seabirds (North Sea and North Atlantic)
      Florike Egmond
6. Collecting and Preserving Fishes: An Historical Perspective
      Peter Davis
7. Into the Wild: Botanical Fieldwork in the Sixteenth Century
      Florike Egmond
8. "Take with you a small Spudd or Trowell": James Petiver's Directions for Collecting Natural Curiosities
      Charles E. Jarvis
9. Linnaean Scholars Out of Doors: So Much to Name, Learn and Profit From
      Hanna Hodacs
10. "Devilish fellows who test patience to the very limit": Naturalists in the Pacific in the Age of Cook
      Glyn Williams
11. Catesby's Birds
      Shepard Krech III
12. The Hudson's Bay Company and its Collectors
      C. Stuart Houston
13. European Enlightenment in India: An Episode of Anglo-German Collaboration in the Natural Sciences on the Coromandel coast, Late 1700s–Early 1800s
      Arthur MacGregor
14. Eight Ways to Catch a Seal: Fieldwork in Siberia in the Age of Enlightenment
      Han F. Vermeulen
15. Face to Face with Nain Singh: The Schlagintweit Collections and their Uses
      Felix Driver
16. More than One Way to Skin a Wombat: The How and Why of Collecting in the South Seas
      Rob Huxley
17. William Burchell in Southern Africa, 1811–1815
      Malgosia Nowak-Kemp
18. Snapshots of Tropical Diversity: Collecting Plants in Colonial and Imperial Brazil
      Stephen A. Harris
19. From Tubs to Flying Boats: Episodes in Transporting Living Plants
      E. Charles Nelson
20. Faunal Collecting, Inventorying and Systematizing in the Marine Environment: A Historical, Mostly British, Perspective
      P. G. Moore
21. Gathering Spirals: On the Naturalist and Shell Collector Hugh Cuming
      Helen Scales
22. Bat-Fowlers, Pooters and Cyanide Jars: A Historical Overview of Insect Collecting and Preservation
      Peter C. Barnard
23. Collecting Abroad, Preserving at Home: Titian Ramsay Peale II, American Entomologist and Collector
      Robert McCracken Peck
24. Nets, labels and boards. Materiality and natural history practices in continental European manuals on insect collecting 1688–1776
      Dominik Hünniger
25. Reflections on Some Practical Aspects of Collecting during the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries
      Pat Morris
26. John Russell Malloch: Amateur Naturalist to Professional Taxonomist
      E. Geoffrey Hancock
27. Following the Lure: Field Experience and Professional Opportunities in Turn-of-the-Twentieth-Century American Vertebrate Paleontology
      Paul D. Brinkman
28. Evolving Contexts of Collecting: the Australian Experience
      A. M. Lucas
29. Virtual Collecting: Camera-Trapping and the Assembly of Population Data in Twenty-First-Century Biology
      Sarah Elmeligi, Ian Convery, Volker Deecke and Owen Nevin
30. The Psychology of Finding and Recognizing Wildlife
      Mark Lawley

Appendices: Key Texts in the History of Field Collecting
Index