Biodiversity Heritage Library

In this reconstruction, a pod of Albicetus travel together through the Miocene Pacific Ocean, surfacing occasionally to breathe. Modern sperm whales are also known for forming these tight-knit groups, composed mainly of females and their calves. Art by A. Boersma for the Smithsonian.

1820. Far west of the Galapagos Islands in the Pacific Ocean. A whaleship pursues a pod of sperm whales. Suddenly, an eighty-five foot long giant charges the ship, ramming it with its head not once, but twice, caving in the bows and sending the ship to a watery grave.

This is the story of the sinking of the Essex, the subject of Ron Howard's movie adaptation of Nathaniel Philbrick's novel In the Heart of the Sea, opening this Friday. The sperm whale that sank the Essex also served as one source of inspiration for another literary icon - the infamous white whale Moby Dick.

In addition to the big screen, another "white whale" hits the spotlight on a different stage this week - the scientific stage. Scientists from the Smithsonian Institution have just published new research on an extinct sperm whale that roamed the seas millions of years ago, which they've named Albicetus ("white whale").

Today's modern sperm whale was first scientifically described by Carl Linnaeus in the tenth edition of his 1758 Systema Naturae, a pivotal work that laid the foundation for our modern system of zoological nomenclature. Within this work, Linnaeus initially described the sperm whale as four separate species: Physeter catodon, Physeter macrocephalus, Physeter microps, and Physeter tursio. Today, we recognize that Linnaeus was actually describing only one species, which is now known by the binomial Physeter macrocephalus.

In the years following Linnaeus' naming of the species, mystery and confusion surrounded the sperm whale, and over a dozen species names and multiple genera were published for the whale by the mid-1800s. Most of what information could be gleaned about the animal came from specimens that washed ashore, such as that depicted in Johann Jonstonus' 17th century work Historiae naturalis de quadrupetibus libri, and from whaling expeditions.

Sperm Whale stranding. Jonstonus, Joannes. Historiae naturalis de quadrupetibus libri. pt. 2-6. 1650. http://biodiversitylibrary.org/page/44040300.

In the 18th, 19th, and early 20th centuries, whaling was an important industry, and the sperm whale, with its spermaceti organ full of valuable sperm oil, was a primary target for whalers. Despite the threats posed by the industry to whale populations, whalers were perhaps in the best position to learn more about the species they hunted. These expeditions also offered naturalists excellent opportunities to study these cetaceans.

One such individual was Thomas Beale (1807-1849), a British surgeon who, in 1830, joined the London whaling ship Kent as the physician on an expedition to the South Seas. Through his keen observations during the expedition, Beale gathered much information about the sperm whale, and, upon his return to England, published a fifty-eight page booklet for subscribers in 1835 entitled A Few Observations on the Natural History of the Sperm Whale, with an account of the Rise and Progress of the Fishery, and of the Modes of Pursuing, Killing, and "Cutting In" that Animal, with a List of its Favourite Places of Resort. The booklet was so well received that Beale revised, expanded, and republished it in 1839 as The Natural History of the Sperm Whale. This work served as the primary source of what was known about sperm whales at the time, and the Penny Cyclopedia hailed "Mr. Beale...in his excellent work on the 'Natural History of the Sperm Whale,' has done more to elucidate its habits and form than any other writer."

Beale, Thomas. The Natural History of the Sperm Whale. 1839. http://biodiversitylibrary.org/page/48976761.

Beale's work was an important reference for Herman Melville, who acknowledged the book as a primary source of information for the cetological section of Moby-Dick; or, The Whale. Whaling provided additional inspiration for this work; the climax of Melville's novel is based on the same events recounted within In the Heart of the Sea - the sinking of the Nantucket whaleship Essex. The crew that escaped the sinking of this ship spent three months at sea, covered 4,500 miles, and resorted to tragic lengths to stay alive. Of the 20 men who left the Essex, only 5 survived. Owen Chase, chief mate of the Essex, kept a journal of the events, which was later published as Narrative of the Most Extraordinary Shipwreck of the Whale-ship Essex, of Nantucket; which was Attacked and Finally Destroyed by a Large Spermaceti-whale, in the Pacific Ocean. Melville read Chase's account of the event, and acknowledged its impact on his writing. The events were circulated within many natural history books, such as in this account within Johnson's Household Book of Nature (1880).

While today there are only three extant species in the sperm whale family (the sperm whale and its relatives, the pygmy and dwarf sperm whales), their evolutionary history has seen many additional members. One of these, Albicetus oxymycterus, lived around 15 million years ago in the North Pacific Ocean, and now, thanks to research conducted by Dr. Nick Pyenson, curator of fossil marine mammals at the Smithsonian's National Museum of Natural History, and Smithsonian research student Alex Boersma, we have a better understanding of this animal's place in its family's evolutionary history.

Archival specimen notes for type specimen for Albicetus oxymycterus.

Mr. Charles A. Roe collected the type specimen for Albicetus oxymycterus from the sea cliffs near the original Santa Barbara Lighthouse (known as the Santa Barbara Light) sometime around 1909. Archival typewritten notes at USNM indicate that Mr. Roe had “first observed the specimen when he was a boy, some 30 years before.” After Mr. Roe’s death, his wife presented the National Museum of Natural History (then the United States National Museum) with the specimen in 1924.

Albicetus oxymycterus specimen. Kellogg, Remington. Proceedings of the United States National Museum. v. 66 (1926). http://biodiversitylibrary.org/page/7739240.

At the time, well-known naturalist and paleontologist Remington Kellogg had an avid interest in this material (Kellogg would later become curator of vertebrate paleontology at USNM and make extensive contributions to the study of fossil marine mammals). Kellogg took it upon himself to describe the Santa Barbara specimen, and published his findings in 1925. He assigned the specimen to the genus Ontocetus, which was first named by Joseph Leidy on the basis on a large tooth found in the 19th century, which he thought belonged to a large marine mammal, and likely a sperm whale. Kellogg also thought this tooth, Ontocetus emmonsi, resembled the large dentition of his sperm whale specimen, which led him to place the Santa Barbara fossil as a new species in the genus Ontocetus. However, recent authors, weighing in favor of dissenting opinions about Ontocetus since the 19th century, have argued that the original tooth of Ontocetus emmonsi belongs not to a sperm whale, but to an ancient walrus.

3D model of Ontocetus emmonsi from Smithsonian X 3D.

In light of our improved understanding of the Ontocetus genus, Pyenson and Boersma re-evaluated the specimen and erected a new genus for it, Albicetus, or “white whale,” in homage to Melville’s Moby Dick.

“Since our specimen is most definitely an ancient sperm whale, we needed to give it a new and more appropriate genus name," explained Pyenson. "While we don’t know what its skin color in life actually looked like, the color of the fossil is an ashen white. It only seemed appropriate to evoke Melville’s white sperm whale Moby Dick.”

Alex Boersma with the NMNH Albicetus oxymycterus specimen. Photo Credit: James Di Loreto, NMNH Imaging.

Boersma and Pyenson published the name and their accompanying research about the fossil, which includes an estimation of the size of the whale and its place in the sperm whale evolutionary tree, today in the PLOS ONE article "Albicetus oxymycterus, a new generic name and redescription of a basal physeteroid (Mammalia, Cetacea) from the Miocene of California, and the evolution of body size in sperm whales." The paper helps to resolve questions about how sperm whales have evolved into the singular creatures they are today, with insights on the increase in body size and changes in feeding strategies.

To accompany the redescription, Boersma and Pyenson created a 3-dimensional model of the specimen, available on the Smithsonian X 3D website (http://3d.si.edu). “In addition to making the specimen available for public viewing, the model was also necessary just for us to describe the specimen fully,” confesses Pyenson. “It weighs well over 300 pounds, taking four people just to slowly roll it over. Having the model was crucial for easy examination of the specimen from all angles for description and comparison.”

3D model of Albicetus oxymycterus from Smithsonian X 3D.

Thanks to Herman Melville, the White Whale is arguably one of the most recognizable figures in literary history. It is a figure with many identities. It is a harbinger of death; the personification of evil. It is a symbol of unattainable glory. But today, it is also something more. Today, the white whale is also Albicetus, a majestic, ancient, and complex creature that swam in the heart of the sea millions of years ago.

You can browse historic illustrations of the sperm whale in the BHL Flickr.
Browse publications about the sperm whale in our White Whale collection on BHL.

Post By:

Nick Pyenson

Curator of Fossil Marine Mammals

Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History

Alex Boersma

Smithsonian Research Student

Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History

Grace Costantino

Outreach and Communication Manager

Biodiversity Heritage Library

Charles Darwin is famous for the theory of evolution by means of natural selection. The theory hinges on the mutability of species, whereby the propagation of certain favorable traits within members of a species may gradually result in the evolution of that species. The question of when Darwin first came to believe in the mutability of species - when he became a "convinced transmutationist" - has long been a point of contention among historians of science.

There are two prevailing theories on the topic. The early conversion hypothesis states that Darwin developed a belief in the transmutation of species while on the Beagle voyage based on observed similarities between the fossils he was collecting and extant species in the area. The second theory, the late conversion hypothesis, holds that Darwin did not start believing that species were mutable until after the Beagle voyage, once experts in England had studied the specimens he collected. Today, most historians of science support the latter theory.

Dr. Paul D. Brinkman, Head of the History of Science Research Lab and Curator of Special Collections at the North Carolina Museum of Natural Sciences, finds the late conversion theory flawed.

Paul D. Brinkman consorting with known pirates in Charleston, SC.

Brinkman has been studying the history of science for nearly twenty years. He specializes in late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century geology and vertebrate paleontology, especially in the American West, and is also interested in the spread of science from Europe to the New World and the trans-Atlantic exchanges of specimens and ideas. The question of when Darwin adopted a transmutationist viewpoint is of particular interest to Dr. Brinkman.

In a 2010 paper published in the Journal of the History of Biology entitled "Charles Darwin's Beagle Voyage, Fossil Vertebrate Succession, and the 'Gradual Birth & Death of Species,'" Brinkman argues that Darwin's own journals from the Beagle voyage (which include discussions of the similarities between some of the fossils he was collecting and extant species - notably Glyptodontidae fossils and living armadillos - and reflections regarding fossil vertebrate succession - which Darwin himself later identified as a key element in his contemplation on the origin of species) suggest that Darwin's adoption of transmutationism happened gradually but certainly during, and not after, the Beagle voyage.

Darwin's journals and publications, as well as the books that Darwin was known to have in his Beagle library, provide key information that Brinkman used to support his arguments. As such, access to these materials is crucial to Brinkman's research. Thanks to BHL, it's easier than ever for him to obtain these resources.

Dr. Brinkman was introduced to BHL many years ago by Christine Giannoni, Museum Librarian at The Field Museum. Christine is a star promoter of BHL, having been involved with the program for many years; she currently serves as the Museum's Member Representative to BHL. Thanks to her introduction, Brinkman is now a regular user of BHL.

"BHL is a wonderful resource," lauds Brinkman. "I use a lot of old and obscure resources in my line of work, and BHL makes getting access to these sources a lot easier."

The cover of the American Naturalist of September, 1895, which Brinkman downloaded from BHL for a recent project entitled “Edward Drinker Cope’s final feud.” http://biodiversitylibrary.org/item/129692.

When conducting research, Brinkman often refers to BHL 8-10 times a day, reading articles online or downloading relevant pages as PDFs. He also downloads title pages and significant figures for use in lecture slides. And while he may refer to specialized material when conducting specific research, the most-common type of material that he consults on BHL may surprise you.

"I probably use old museum annual reports more than any other single resource on BHL," explains Brinkman. "This is especially useful, as a lot of these old reports have been relegated to offsite storage at many university libraries, which can sometimes mean long delays. BHL, however, provides them at the click of a button!"

So, whether it's helping a scientist confirm the identity of a specimen collected in the field or providing primary source evidence to support the work of historians of science, it's clear that BHL greatly increases the efficiency of research for those working in a variety of disciplines. We think Darwin would approve.

This post originally published on the Smithsonian Collections Blog. View the original post here.

By Julia Blakely

Special Collections Cataloger

Smithsonian Libraries

Blooms in the Rotunda of the National Museum of Natural History.

Tired of poinsettias?

Last year, we at BHL asked this question in social media and offered up vibrant, joyful portraits of the amaryllis instead. But one commentator declared “Poinsettias rule!” And indeed poinsettias do reign as an economic powerhouse of the nursery industry, cultivated all over the world. The public areas of the various Smithsonian museums and the neighboring Botanic Gardens on the Mall in Washington now have abundant, seasonal displays of poinsettias, beautiful specimens propagated by the talented horticulturists of the Federal greenhouses. The palette of colors and shapes are wonderful, never a dull sight this time of year.

The Smithsonian Castle (made up entirely of plant materials) nestled in the display of poinsettias in the Garden Court of the United States Botanic Garden.

Potted plants in the Smithsonian Libraries’ collection areas are generally discouraged because of the insects they may harbor, potentially harmful to the books on the shelves. Consequently, there are no seasonal flowers welcoming researchers to the reading rooms. However, anyone can find holiday blossoms in the Libraries by going on a virtual plant hunt. The range of holdings in the Smithsonian Libraries provides both images and a full portrayal of the poinsettias’ history (some of it mythic) and, a renewed appreciation for this remarkable plant. There is still a fuller story yet to be told, to separate oft-repeated lore from actual evidence, waiting to be fully investigated in the Libraries’ resources.

It is commonly known that the poinsettia was named to honor physician, politician, diplomat, and amateur botanist, Joel Roberts Poinsett (1779-1851). He was a special envoy, then first Minister, representing the United States in Mexico from 1822 to 1830. Perhaps not as well-known is that the flower (the showy part is actually leaves or bracts) had an association with Christmas long before it was promoted by American and European nurseries. Further, the relationship between the plant and Poinsett is not as straightforward as often portrayed.

Lithograph and cut paper on paper portrait of Joel Roberts Poinsett (1841, National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution; gift of Robert L. McNeil, Jr.).

The Aztecs of the principal city of Tenochtitlan (now Mexico City) imported the plant from southern Mexico to northern Guatemala, where it thrives in the landscape of lower altitudes and warmer climate. In the ancient Nahuatl language it is called cuetlaxochitl - xochitl meaning ornamental flower. The winter-blooming plant was used for medicinal purposes (from its sap) and as a source of red dye (from the bracts). There is also evidence that cuetlaxochitl was used in religious ceremonies, its brilliant color representing purity. Ancient Aztec herbals, the few surviving from the Pre-Columbian period, may have references and illustrations to both the health properties and ritual uses of the plant. There are facsimile copies of these rare works in both the Smithsonian Libraries’ Anthropology, National Museum of American Indian and Special Collections Libraries.

As with other pagan rituals and symbols – think of winter greenery (pine, holly, mistletoe), of wreaths and trees brought indoors and the yule log – the star-shaped flower was incorporated into Christmas celebrations. In particular, it had a role in the nativity procession of the Fiesta of Santa Pesebre. After the Conquest, with Spanish missionaries in Mexico, the plant became known as “Flore de Noche Buena” or “Flower of the Holy Night” (Christmas Eve).

In a 2011 article by the Agricultural School of Purdue University, many of the myths of the poinsettia were investigated and debunked. There is no evidence, only legend, that it was Poinsett who introduced the plant to the United States, first to his native South Carolina. As a learned gentleman, he may have had a role in sending seeds to colleagues in Philadelphia where poinsettias were displayed in 1828. From that city, Scottish nurseryman Robert Buist brought cuttings to James McNab in Edinburgh. A German botanist, Karl Willdenow, provided the botanical name, Euphorbia pulcherrima, first published in 1834, by Johann Friedrich Klotzsch. Back in Edinburgh, another botanist, Robert Graham, changed the name in 1836 to Poinsettia pucherrima, although that version never did take officially. Another story is that William Hickling Prescott, the author of The History of the Conquest of Mexico (1843) gave the name to honor his friend in that publication. There are many copies of this title in the Smithsonian Libraries. As early as 1836 Curtis’s Botanical Magazine (London, volume 63) published a stunning illustration entitled Poinsettia pulcherrima (Showy Poinsettia).

Hand-colored engraving by Samuel Curtis. Curtis's Botanical magazine. Digitized image from the Biodiversity Heritage Library, copy supplied by the Peter H. Raven Library of the Missouri Botanical Garden.

There is research, appropriately enough published by The Botanic Garden and Botanical Museum Berlin in the journal Willdenowia, finding that earlier botanical expeditions to Mexico predating Poinsett had sent the first cuttings back to Europe. The Royal Botanical Expedition to New Spain, led by Martín de Sessé y Lacasta (1751-1808) and José Mariano Mociño (1757–1820) is the first contender. Following that were the explorations of Alexander Freiherr von Humboldt (1769-1859) and Aimé Bonpland (1773-1858) and, after the independence of Mexico in 1821, the collectors for the Natural History Museum in Berlin, Christian Julius Wilhelm Schiede (1798-1838) and Ferdinand Deppe (1798-1836).

Poinsettias were prized in Europe and America from the mid-19th century, although still a luxury grown in greenhouses. The Ecke family nursery, founded by German immigrants setting in Hollywood, California, was the great popularizer of poinsettias. The Eckes focused their floriculture business exclusively on poinsettias from 1909. Talented in their cultivation of exotics and clever in marketing, the nursery made the plant widely available. Their promotion of the plant can be seen in nursery catalogs digitized in BHL. The Ecke poinsettia nurseries were taken over by the Dutch conglomerate Agribo in 2012, now owned by a private equity group comprising the third-largest horticultural business in the world.

The growth in the commercial trade of the poinsettia can be traced in nursery catalogs. There are a great number in the trade literature collection of the National Museum of American History Library. This title page is courtesy of the Biodiversity Heritage Library, digitized from a copy in the National Agricultural Library.

In our search for a fuller history of the plant as preserved in the Smithsonian Libraries, it should be pointed out that Joel Roberts Poinsett is also a figure in the pre-history of the Smithsonian, as a co-founder of the National Institute for the Promotion of Science and the Useful Arts. This organization was made up of prominent figures advocating a vision for the use of James Smithson’s unexpected bequest to the United States. There are several works either written by Poinsett or associated with the National Institute in the Smithsonian Libraries’ Special Collections.

Poinsett’s death date, December 12th, is now National Poinsettia Day in the United States. Pause and admire living blooms you pass by and ponder the plant’s rich, if not entirely, settled history. Then consider exploring the wide-range holdings of the Smithsonian Libraries - from the art, natural and American histories, botanical, horticultural, anthropology, rare books, digital resources, and trade literature collections - to find new discoveries of the story of the poinsettia.

Studies of Poinsettias, Sophia L. Crownfield, drawing, early 20th century (Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum Collection; gift of Starling W. Childs and Ward Cheney).

We are pleased to announce that the Fiscal Year 2015 BHL Annual Report is now available!

Want to learn how our collections grew this past year, or how our audiences engaged with these collections, or explore the many new and exciting citizen science and outreach initiatives we've embarked on this year? Then check out the report today!

You can also see the latest updates from BHL in our newsletter. See the Fall 2015 edition archived here.

Want to stay up to date with all the great news from BHL? Then be sure to sign up for our quarterly newsletter here.

The BHL Secretariat was honored to be visited by Mgr. Ondřej Dostál, Director of the Mendel Museum of Masaryk University in Brno, Czech Republic.

Dr. Dostál shared information about the digitization work being done at the museum, particularly around the works of Mendel.

Special thanks to Tomoko Steen, BHL Member representative from the Library of Congress, who introduced Dr. Dostál to Program Director Martin Kalfatovic and also joined us for our meeting.

There was also an opportunity for Dr. Dostál to visit the Smithsonian Libraries' Joseph F. Cullman 3rd Library of Natural History and the Smithsonian Libraries' digitization facility in the National Museum of Natural History.

The dawn of a new year is an exciting time - a time to look forward to new possibilities and embark on new initiatives. Sometimes, however, it can also be tinged with sadness as these new beginnings may require us to say goodbye as well. For us at BHL, 2016 will also mean saying goodbye to William Ulate as our Technical Director. We have been honored to have him as our Technical Director since 2012 and will miss him in this role.

William also wanted to take an opportunity to share his thoughts and well-wishes for everyone at BHL in this post:

As some of you may know, I will no longer be the BHL Technical Director after 2015, so I want to take this opportunity to thank everyone in our BHL family for your valuable and kind support during these last three years as Technical Director and two years before that as Global Coordinator.

At the Center for Biodiversity Informatics
with Founding BHL Technical Director
Chris Freeland, back in 2012.

Particularly, I would like to thank my colleagues at the BHL Technical Team, our former Technical Director, Chris Freeland, the Executive Committee and the TAG members, past and present, for their guidance and trust since 2012. I also have to recognize the invaluable support from all the folks from the IT Department at Missouri Botanical Garden (MBG). My gratitude goes also to our Director, Martin Kalfatovic, the Secretariat at Smithsonian and the BHL Staff for all the time we spent working together in numerous meetings and calls... and outside of them too.

But most of all, I would like to wish you all in BHL the best for the upcoming years. I am positive that the future plans and challenges we have been talking about will make for very interesting technical developments. I look back proudly to our past achievements from these last 5 years and, as often happens, wish we could've done more. However, I believe changes are opportunities and judging from my experience, I am sure BHL will succeed on its endeavor thanks to the continuous work and involvement of each one of you.

At Missouri, USA

For me, this is not a reason to be sad but rather hopeful, because I know the best for BHL is yet to come and, besides, I'm not going too far next year either. I will still be around since we have received a no-cost extension from the IMLS for the Digging into Data Challenge to finish the Mining Biodiversity project. And I will remain employed at the Center for Biodiversity Informatics of the Missouri Botanical Garden with the World Flora Online project, so you may still be hearing from me from time to time...

Finally, I just want to say that it has been an honor and a privilege to work by your side. I've made a lot of friends worldwide and learned a lot from you all. For that and many reasons more, my sincerest "¡Gracias!" As a Latin American, I believe BHL is evidently one of the most successful projects for biodiversity information repatriation, so I would love to see its continuous development for many years to come... Keep the good work!

¡Hasta pronto!

William Ulate.

Somewhere in Costa Rica

Thank you, William, for all of your wonderful years of service, and we look forward to still seeing you on various other biodiversity projects in the future!

Best Wishes, The BHL Family

Over the years, we've discovered that social media is a pretty awesome way to learn more about our collections. Recently, a Twitter conversation helped us unravel the true identity of an incredible natural history artist.

In November, one of our star citizen scientists Siobhan Leachman was working on adding artist machine tags to images in the BHL Flickr (want to learn more about how to do that? See this guide!). She was working on Wonders of the Bird World (1921), which was digitized for BHL by Cornell University Library. The title page stated that it was illustrated by A.T. Elwes. But who exactly was this Elwes?

Wonders of the bird world. By Bowdler Sharpe. Illustrations by A. T. Elwes. (1921) http://biodiversitylibrary.org/page/16742946.

There was lots of information online about an Alfred Elwes (1819-1888), a prolific 19th century British author who wrote many books related to animals. What was unclear was whether this Alfred Elwes was the same person as A.T. Elwes, which, after some research, was found to be an abbreviation for Alfred Thomas Elwes. Siobhan reached out to BHL and many other libraries on social media to uncover the truth.

.@BioDivLibrary @Cornell_Library Can u confirm A. T. Elwes = Alfred Thomas Elwes 1819-1888 Want 2 artist machine tag https://t.co/Fw5hAKawQJ
— Siobhan (@SiobhanLeachman) November 16, 2015

Thanks to leads from a variety of people, including @silmaril11 and Mann Library at Cornell University, the mystery was finally solved.

@SiobhanLeachman strange. This of any help https://t.co/5NAyKxyjCm ?
— Steve Em (@silmaril11) November 17, 2015

@SiobhanLeachman @BioDivLibrary @Cornell_Library LOC name authority dbase (https://t.co/KMrnoDec8Q) shows this: pic.twitter.com/X3CLgK0sok
— Mann Library (@Mann_Library) November 19, 2015

A.T. Elwes was NOT Alfred Elwes. They were distinct individuals that shared nearly identical names and were active during many of the same years. Alfred Thomas Elwes (A.T. Elwes), however, was born in 1841 and died in 1917 (compared to Alfred Elwes' 1819 birth and 1888 death).

Through the leads she discovered via social media, Siobhan was able to learn much more about A.T. Elwes. She consolidated this information into a new Wikipedia article about him.

Alfred Thomas Elwes (A.T. Elwes) was a British natural history illustrator of mammals and birds. Though born in Leghorn, Italy around 1841, he lived and worked for most of his life in England. From 1872 to 1877, he was employed by the Illustrated London News as the chief draftsman of natural history subjects.

The birds of our rambles : with a companion for the country. By Charles Dixon. Illustrations by A. T. Elwes. (1891) http://biodiversitylibrary.org/page/22695638.

A.T. Elwes was an extremely productive artist, illustrating many natural history books over his lifetime. Many of these titles are in BHL, and, thanks to Siobhan, the Wikipedia article includes a list of a good many of them, as well as links to them in BHL where available. Some of the titles include The birds of our rambles : with a companion for the country (1891), The game birds and wild fowl of the British Islands; being a handbook for the naturalist and sportsman (1893), Birds' Nests (1902), and Wonders of the Bird World (1921).

Birds' nests; an introduction to the science of caliology. By Charles Dixon I.lustrations by A. T. Elwes. (1902). http://biodiversitylibrary.org/page/23036298.

The game birds and wild fowl of the British Islands; being a handbook for the naturalist and sportsman. By Charles Dixon. Illustrations by A.T. Elwes. (1893). http://biodiversitylibrary.org/page/37686026.

Social media is a powerful tool. It's not just a way to share what you ate for lunch or even just a tool for chatting with friends. It's also a networking and information goldmine, allowing you to draw on the expertise of disparate individuals and organizations in a variety of disciplines to get answers to questions that might otherwise be nearly impossible to solve on your own. For us at BHL, it's an amazing tool for not only sharing BHL and our collections with the world, but also for learning more about the incredible books we hold and the remarkable individuals that produced them. Thanks, Siobhan, for all of your incredible dedication and passion. We love our collections even more because of you!

Want to share your own expertise about our collections with us or learn more about the books we hold? Engage with us on Twitter and Facebook, follow our blog, and leave comments on books in BHL.

Today is National Bird Day, a day to celebrate and raise awareness about birds.

We're celebrating by highlighting one of the rare ornithology titles in the BHL collection: A monograph of the Alcedinidae : or, family of kingfishers (1868-71) by Richard Bowdler Sharpe. The work contains 120 hand-colored lithographed plates by and after famous Dutch bird illustrator Johannes Gerardus Keulemans. Printing and coloring of the plates was entrusted to Mr. P.W.M. Trap.

Sharpe, Richard Bowdler. A monograph of the Alcedinidae : or, family of kingfishers. (1868-71). Art by John Gerardus Keulemans. http://biodiversitylibrary.org/page/43064470.

In April, 2015, a first edition copy of this title sold at a Sotheby's auction for 10,000 GBP. But you can browse and download this work for free in BHL. Our copy was digitized from the collections of the Ernst Mayr Library of the Museum of Comparative Zoology at Harvard University.

According to the Encyclopedia of Life:

Kingfishers belong to the order Coraciiformes and the family Alcedinidae. Within Coraciiformes, kingfishers are grouped into the suborder Alcidines, with todies (Todidae) and motmots (Motmotidae). Alcedinidae comprises approximately 17 genera and 91 species, and is frequently subdivided into three subfamilies; Alcedininae, which comprises most of the “fishing” kingfishers, Halcyoninae, which comprises the “forest kingfishers” that reside primarily in Australasia, and Cerylinae, which includes all of the New World kingfishers.

Kingfishers are small to medium sized colorful birds with short necks, large heads and long, thick bills. They live primarily in wooded habitats of tropical regions, often near water. Despite their name, not all kingfishers are fishing specialists. While some species do consume primarily fish, most species have unspecialized diets that include a high proportion of insects. Most kingfishers are monogamous, territorial breeders, though a few species breed cooperatively.

Sharpe, Richard Bowdler. A monograph of the Alcedinidae : or, family of kingfishers. (1868-71). Art by John Gerardus Keulemans. http://biodiversitylibrary.org/page/43064554.

Richard Bowdler Sharpe was born in London in 1847. At a young age he took an interest in ornithology and desired to write a monograph on kingfishers. In 1865, he joined the Bernard Quaritch bookseller company, which allowed him to begin working on his kingfisher monograph in earnest. He used his small income to help acquire specimens. In 1867, he became a librarian at the Zoological Society of London and over the next couple years (1868-71) issued his first book, A monograph of the Alcedinidae : or, family of kingfishers, in parts.

Sharpe, Richard Bowdler. A monograph of the Alcedinidae : or, family of kingfishers. (1868-71). Art by John Gerardus Keulemans. http://biodiversitylibrary.org/page/43064624.

Johannes Gerardus Keulemans was the artist for the work. Keulemans illustrated some of the most well-known ornithological titles of the nineteenth century, including works by Daniel Giraud Elliot, Sir Walter Lawry Buller, and Henry Eeles Dresser. He also regularly provided illustrations for The Ibis and The Proceedings of the Zoological Society. In 1869, Sharpe persuaded Keulemans to not only illustrate his monograph, but also to move to London, where Keulemans lived for the rest of his life.

In 1872, Sharpe joined the British Museum as Senior Assistant in the Department of Zoology, where he took charge of the bird collection. He founded the British Ornithologists' Club in 1892 and edited its bulletin. He also wrote thirteen and a half of the 27 volumes of the Catalogue of the Birds in the British Museum (1874–1898). He authored many ornithology titles over his career, including Wonders of the Bird World, which we highlighted last week as one of the works illustrated by A.T. Elwes. Sharpe died in 1909 from pneumonia.

Sharpe, Richard Bowdler. A monograph of the Alcedinidae : or, family of kingfishers. (1868-71). Art by John Gerardus Keulemans. http://biodiversitylibrary.org/page/43064692.

Be sure to explore A monograph of the Alcedinidae : or, family of kingfishersin BHL and the illustrations in Flickr. You can see other works authored by Sharpe in BHL as well. Happy National Bird Day!

The Council on Library and Information Resources (CLIR) has selected the “Biodiversity Heritage Library Field Notes Project” for a 2015 Digitizing Hidden Special Collections and Archives award. The award of $491,713 will help support increased accessibility to original scientific documentation found in archival field notes in participating institution collections.

Field notes provide valuable, primary research data about species and ecosystems that is often unpublished or unavailable through other sources. They can also be extremely valuable for museum research, providing key specimen data related to study sites, collecting details, and ecology.

Hereward Chune Dollman's scientific notes, held in the Natural History Museum, London, Library and Archives. Image © The Trustees of the Natural History Museum, London. Image credit: Natural History Museum, London, Library and Archives.

A recent article in The Linnean (VOL 31(2) OCT 2015) by Hellen Pethers (Reader Services Librarian, Library and Archives, Natural History Museum, London, UK) and Dr. Blanca Huertas (Senior Curator of Lepidoptera, Life Sciences Department, Natural History Museum, London, UK) illustrated the importance of field notes to museum research. The paper focuses on the collections of Hereward Chune Dollman, an entomologist who worked extensively on the natural history and identification of insects in Zambia. Dollman's natural history collections, which were donated to the British Museum of Natural History (now the Natural History Museum, London) upon his death, include 3,500 butterfly specimens comprising 300 species, 157 watercolor drawings of caterpillars, and a notebook containing data related to his breeding and collecting. Dollman's caterpillar illustrations link directly to his scientific notes through unique identification codes, thus allowing researchers to explore details of the caterpillars' lives, their transformation to adult forms, and the study sites from which Dollman collected. The watercolors are the only record of the immature counterparts of the adult specimens that Dollman studied.

Watercolor from Hereward Chune Dollman's collection at the Natural History Museum, London, Library and Archives. Image © The Trustees of the Natural History Museum, London. Image credit: Natural History Museum, London, Library and Archives.

Dollman's collections were never consolidated with the main museum's collection, and thus have been little studied even though they contain important specimens from remote locations in Africa that are not widely represented in other collections. Recent initiatives at the Natural History Museum are working to amalgamate and arrange collections by taxonomy, providing greater accessibility to researchers. Dollman's notebook, held in the museum's Library and Archives, provides researchers will invaluable information necessary to effectively and efficiently study these collections and articulates the importance of field notes to scientific research and the necessity of collaboration between library and specimen collections.

While this case study at NHM provides an example of one attempt to bring together disparate specimen and related field note collections, the disassociation of these two types of collections is common within institutions. What's more, field notes from related persons and expeditions are often scattered across institutions, inaccessible to any but the determined researcher. The “Biodiversity Heritage Library Field Notes Project” aims to enhance research methodology by improving access to these field notes, thus allowing researchers to more easily connect them to related specimens and other scientific work.

Over a two year period, the BHL Field Notes Project will coordinate work to digitize field notes, assign metadata, and publish the field notes online through the Biodiversity Heritage Library and Internet Archive, with an emphasis on quality, quantity, and closely related content. The Smithsonian Libraries and Smithsonian Institution Archives will serve as the lead institutions on the project. Additional project participants include Missouri Botanical Garden, Peter H. Raven Library; American Museum of Natural History; Yale Peabody Museum; Harvard University Herbaria, Botany Libraries; Harvard University, Museum of Comparative Zoology, Ernst Mayr Library; University of California, Berkeley Museum of Vertebrate Zoology; The New York Botanical Garden, The LuEsther T. Mertz Library; The Field Museum; and Internet Archive.

The Digitizing Hidden Special Collections and Archives awards program, funded by The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, funds projects in which locally executed protocols contribute to a national good, using methods that are cost efficient and subject to wider adoption. It supports the creation of digital representations of unique content of high scholarly significance that will be discoverable and usable as elements of a coherent national collection. Eighteen projects were selected from among one hundred sixty-seven proposals submitted in 2015. This is the first group of projects supported by the Digitizing Hidden Special Collections and Archives awards program.

In the Northern Hemisphere, the winter season is well underway. Cold temperatures mean that species of all kinds must face many new challenges in order to survive the next few months.

Spiders are no exception.

One might assume that spiders die off once winter hits. While this is true for some species, it is not true for all spiders - many remain active in winter months. How do they manage this? Through a variety of physiological and behavioral adaptations. Behavioral adaptations include moving their homes to "overwintering sites" such as the "subnivean zone," an area between the snow and the ground, or concealed locations in leaf litter or under bark, where it's warmer. Spiders also have a physiological adaptation that helps them brave the cold months. They are able to accumulate glycols in their blood (i.e., antifreeze), which allows their tissues to remain unfrozen at temperatures well below freezing. And spiders aren't the only critters capable of this - many invertebrates also possess this ability.

So, through a combination of ingenious adaptations, spiders are able deal with the cold of winter. The process isn't perfect, of course. Spiders are not freeze tolerant, and their tissues cannot survive the process of freezing. However, their adaptations still give them much better odds than they would have otherwise.

Dr. Christopher Buddle. Associate Professor, McGill University.

Fascinating information like this can be found for a variety of arthropods on Arthropod Ecology. The site is a blog authored by Dr. Christopher Buddle, an Associate Professor at McGill University in Montreal, Canada. Chris has been in his field of study for twenty years, and his interests include, not surprisingly, arthropod ecology, arachnology, and natural history.

Chris discovered BHL some time ago, but recently enjoyed a "rediscovery" when he found us on social media. By following @BioDivLibrary on Twitter and browsing our albums on Flickr, Chris discovered the stunning visual resources that BHL has to offer, and through this exchange, developed a new love for our collections. In fact, Twitter and Flickr have become his favorite BHL features. He checks the Twitter feed daily and our Flickr collections every few weeks. His use of the website itself happens about once a month, particularly when he's trying to locate a specific publication, which he often subsequently downloads as a PDF for future use.

McCook, Henry C. American spiders and their spinningwork. v. 3 (1893). http://biodiversitylibrary.org/page/4492973.

For Chris, BHL's true impact comes from its ability to spark interest in natural history. As he explained,

"I feel that BHL has helped reignite a love of natural history, both for me at a personal level, but also more broadly in biology. Our current science is built upon those before us, and it's easy to forget this. We tend to focus on current whiz-bang publications, using new techniques and new analytical approaches. We are in an era of big data, and big science. I applaud many of these new approaches, but we must be reminded that without Wallace, Bates, the Peckhams, or McCook, we wouldn't be where we are today. Their contributions are still relevant and help inform current science, and these contributions are stored on BHL and accessible because of BHL. That is significant and important and should not be taken for granted.

I don't use BHL directly in my research all that much, but it has happened! As an example, I was working on a paper related to jumping spiders, and as part of that, was collecting ant-mimicking jumping spiders in a local forest. I wanted to learn more about the species, and try to uncover what we know about its life history. An online search revealed a few recent papers on the species, but the really good stuff was written in the late 1800s by the Peckhams. George and Elizabeth Peckham were teachers in Wisconsin, back in the 1800s, and in their spare time watched and wrote about insects and spiders. Their work was quite meticulous. Thankfully, BHL had their paper, and I was able to download the PDF and learn a great deal about the species courtship. Having access to the old literature made this possible.

Peckham, George and Elizabeth. Ant-like spiders of the family Attidae. Occasional papers of the Natural History Society of Wisconsin. v. 2 (1892). http://biodiversitylibrary.org/page/31440598.

Browsing through BHL, and the images from BHL on the Flickr page (which is probably where I spend the most time!), is truly inspiring. The old sketches, drawings, and paintings are masterpieces. Many of them tell a story: for example, I recall seeing some drawings of "Spiders and their enemies" - these images are more than a depiction of a species. These images tell about ecological interactions.

McCook, Henry C. American spiders and their spinningwork. v. 2 (1890). http://biodiversitylibrary.org/page/4489749.

Natural history is seeing a revival, and papers such as Tschinkel & Wilson remind us about how our world makes more sense when we uncover the natural history of species, whether it's a Pseudoscorpion, woodpecker or epiphyte. Igniting a passion for natural history sometimes takes a catalyst: perhaps a field trip, story, a line from an old paper, or an image. To me, this is among the most valuable contribution that BHL makes to our world. It's not necessarily a 'tangible' outcome; it can't be easily measured in clicks, research dollars, publications or citations. But the long term benefits may be enormous, whether it's a researcher like me being reminded about the value of old literature, or whether it's a high school student being inspired by the BHL Flickr set about orchids. We need passion and engagement about biodiversity across all sectors of society, and BHL certainly facilitates this."

"Inspiring discovery through free access to biodiversity knowledge." That's BHL's vision statement. Through not only open access to natural history literature, but also through other engagement outlets like Twitter and Facebook, through new presentations of our content, such as Flickr or online exhibitions, and through citizen science initiatives, we're working hard to realize that vision and are thrilled to see the fruits of our labors through Chris' testimony.

So, if you're bundled up for the winter months, take a moment to think about the intrepid spiders in your local ecosystems that are putting millions of years of evolution to good use to brave the cold right along with you. And if we've sparked your interest in these amazing animals, do a search in our collection or browse our Flickr images to help fan the flames of discovery. It's a blaze that just might help keep you warm this winter.

The Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS) has selected the Expanding Access to Biodiversity Literature project as one of nine National Digital Platform Projects funded in 2015 as part of the National Leadership Grants for Libraries program. The project will work to position the Biodiversity Heritage Library (BHL) as an on-ramp for biodiversity content providers that would like to contribute to the national digital library infrastructure through the Digital Public Library of America (DPLA).

Expanding Access to Biodiversity Literature will help libraries, museums, and natural history societies make their content more widely available by providing the tools and support necessary to facilitate contribution to DPLA through BHL. The award of $846,457 will support work over a two-year period (October 2015-September 2017). The Project Team will interact with content providers to improve metadata through training and quality control, engage the community through outreach on a national level, pursue copyright permissions, and improve BHL’s digital infrastructure through system enhancements.

The goals of the project are to: 1) Expand BHL’s role as a subject-specific content provider for life sciences; 2) Serve as an aggregator to allow small natural history collections to present their content in DPLA via BHL and expand the community of content providers by working with new partners; 3) Preserve and provide access to small natural history and botanical collections and publications through outreach, assistance with scanning, and software tools to format and normalize data for ingest; and 4) Increase the quality of partner metadata through use of DPLA metadata best practices.

The Project Team has four intended outcomes and a means towards measuring the success of these outcomes: 1) Expand public access to biodiversity literature; 2) Increase in the number of new and first time content providers to both BHL and DPLA, ideally with at least 100 added by the second year; 3) Serve as a model for “subject-based” hubs; and 4) Develop processes that will ensure long-term biodiversity contributions to DPLA.

The New York Botanical Garden (NYBG) will serve as the lead institution on the project, with additional participants including Harvard Ernst Mayr Library of the Museum of Comparative Zoology (MCZ), Missouri Botanical Garden (MBG), and Smithsonian Libraries (SIL).

The Project Team includes several veteran BHL participants, including Susan Fraser (Director of the NYBG LuEsther T. Mertz Library) as Project Director; Susan Lynch (Systems Librarian at NYBG) as Data Manager; Constance Rinaldo (Librarian of the Ernst Mayr Library of the MCZ/Harvard University) as Community Coordinator; Joe deVeer (Project Manager and Museum Liaison for the Ernst Mayr Library of the MCZ/Harvard University) as Project Manager for MCZ's participation in the project and mentor to the project's Community Manager; and Trish Rose-Sandler (Digital Projects Coordinator, Center for Biodiversity Informatics, Missouri Botanical Garden and Data Analyst for BHL) who will write functional specifications needed to accommodate new types of content, provide normalization and data clean up, and identify improved workflows for moving content from BHL to DPLA.

As part of the project, two new team members also joined the family, although the people filling those positions are no strangers to BHL.

Mariah Lewis, Metadata Specialist, Expanding Access to Biodiversity Literature

Mariah Lewis, Metadata Specialist, Expanding Access to Biodiversity Literature
Mariah is a recent graduate from Catholic University of America in Washington, D.C. where she completed a Master’s in Library and Information Science with a focus on Cultural Heritage Information Management. Previously, she worked with Florida State University, the National Library of Medicine, Smithsonian Center for Folklife and Cultural Heritage, New York University and Scholastic. Mariah has nearly two years of experience with BHL in a variety of intern and volunteer positions, working under BHL Digital Collections Manager Bianca Crowley. Her work involved updating tutorials and creating a video tutorial, conducting a title merging webinar, and working with bibliographic issues and copyright in BHL.

As the Expanding Access to Biodiversity Literature Metadata Specialist, Mariah will work closely with content providers, typically small museums, cultural heritage institutions and publishers, to ensure that they understand project requirements, workflows and the use of existing tools. She will work with new partners to normalize the metadata for new content and will train new content providers on the use of the tools used to ingest content into BHL. She will work closely with the Data Manager to ensure conformity to set standards and best practices. Her home institution will be The New York Botanical Garden.

Patrick Randall, Community Manager, Expanding Access to Biodiversity Literature

Patrick Randall, Community Manager, Expanding Access to Biodiversity Literature
Originally from Brunswick, Maine, Patrick will complete his MLIS at Simmons College this spring. Prior to joining the Expanding Access project, he did outreach as part of the Purposeful Gaming and BHL project.

As the Expanding Access to Biodiversity Literature Community Manager, Patrick will be responsible for the identification of potential content providers and will perform outreach services to potential providers such as society publishers and small natural history libraries. He will perform due diligence in determining copyright status of new content and will work with the BHL Digital Collections Manager, Bianca Crowley, to process license agreements for copyright. He will also solicit requests for permission to ingest in-copyright born digital material. His home institution will be the Ernst Mayr Library at the Museum of Comparative Zoology, Harvard University.

We are proud to be part of the IMLS National Digital Platform Projects program, which aims to advance the digital capability and capacity of libraries across the U.S. Each funded project contributes to enhancing the combination of software applications, social and technical infrastructure, and staff expertise that provide library content and services to users across the U.S. The Expanding Access to Biodiversity Literature project addresses challenges facing content providers—including insufficient amounts of content, indexing of scientific names, and metadata creation—and makes necessary digital infrastructure enhancements by creating an innovative model for collaboration and open access to data.

Learn more about the project on the IMLS website.

Welcome to 2016 and BHL's latest batch of in-copyright content! We have 8 new titles to add to the list since our last post.

Over the course of 2015, BHL secured the following:

Where possible, BHL acquires permission in the form of a signed license agreement from copyright holders to digitize post-1922 publications. These publications are available for open access under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0) license. Users are welcome to reuse the in-copyright content in BHL so long as they adhere to the terms of the CC license, meaning:

you attribute the content to the copyright holder

use the content for non-commercial purposes such as educational or personal use

share the content under the same license (CC-BY-NC-SA 4.0)

This time around we have contributions from South Africa, United States, Scotland, Italy and England:

Special thanks to our Affiliate partners with BHL Africa from the South African National Biodiversity Institute (SANBI) who are contributing 3 new titles to the BHL collection.

Bothalia (1918 to present) - named after General Botha, South Africa's first Union Premier and Minister of Agriculture, the journal continues to this day as a principal publication about South Africa's flora and fauna. Most recently, it is expanding in scope to include more information about African biodiversity and conservation topics.
"Atlas and red list of the reptiles of South Africa, Lesotho and Swaziland" (2014)
Flora of Southern Africa (1963 to present)

Smithsonian Institution Scholarly Press has contributed "Watershed Research Perspectives" (1986) edited by David L. Correll. This publication is a collection of papers resulting from a 1985 watershed research workshop held at the Smithsonian's Environmental Research Center.

The earliest issues of the newsletter Nemophila, published by the California Botanical Society, are now in BHL from 1919 to 1927. CBS is better known for its premier publication, Madroño which is also in BHL. We are very pleased to support the digital archives of this 103 year old society who support the scientific research initiatives and community outreach for Western American botany.

The quarterly magazine and journal for members of the Scottish Ornithologists' Club, Scottish Bird News, will be in BHL soon. The following graphic summarizes nicely the importance of the SOC for Scotland's bird enthusiasts and researchers alike. For now, selected back files are available via the organization's website.

Dating back to the 1870s, Italy's foremost organization dedicated to malacological research, the Società Italiana di Malacologia (SIM), has generously contributed later volumes of its Bollettino Malacologico (1979 to present, with 3 yr embargo) to the BHL collection. Its earliest volumes actually preceded the formalization of the society and are available in BHL as the Bullettino malacologico italiano. Stay tuned for the later volumes to come.

Now in their 155th year, the Yorkshire Naturalists' Union "is devoted to studying and recording Yorkshire's flora and fauna...as an association of amateur and professional naturalists covering a wide range of aspects of natural history." BHL will soon include later volumes of their triannual publication The Naturalist in our online collection. You can see its earliest volumes in BHL from 1864.

Digitization is in progress for these titles and you can see them appearing via our recent additions list.

Want to see more in-copyright content in BHL? Let us know what you’d like to see!

-Bianca Crowley, BHL Digital Collections Manager

In July 2015, BHL founding institution Smithsonian Libraries opened a new exhibit at the Smithsonian's National Museum of American History entitled Fantastic Worlds: Science and Fiction 1780-1910. The exhibit invites visitors to explore the fantastic worlds of fiction inspired by 19th century scientific discovery and invention. It features fabulous natural history books on topics ranging from marine life to geology and dinosaurs and expeditions to the polar regions and interior Africa. Exhibit curators Kirsten van der Veen (Special Collections, Dibner Library, Smithsonian Libraries) and Doug Dunlop (Metadata Librarian, Smithsonian Libraries) not only walk visitors through some of the remarkable scientific discoveries of the Victorian era but also demonstrate the profound impact these advances had on popular fiction.

Kingsley, Charles. Glaucus. 4th Ed. (1859). http://biodiversitylibrary.org/page/29363521.

In the exhibit section entitled "Sea Change: Underwater Worlds," visitors can experience 19th century ocean exploration through the lens of publications, both scientific and fictional, produced during the time period. As the exhibit articulates:

"The sea was a vital part of 19th-century life: distant travel, commerce, and the livelihoods of many depended on it. Tales of sea voyages, both fact and fiction, were immensely popular. As scientists explored the depths of the oceans, however, stories began to take place not just on the sea, but in it.

In the early 1800s, scientists believed the deep sea simply could not sustain life. Knowledge of the oceans had largely been limited to shores and shallow waters, but the mid-19th century saw the start of our exploration of this immense underwater world. Technological improvements to submersible vessels and diving gear helped make the seas more accessible. The bold plan to lay a telegraph cable across the Atlantic Ocean made understanding the ocean floor essential, and helped drive deep-sea exploration further.

Victorian Britain had a fascination with the sea, and with the natural world in general. The pastime of shell collecting became very popular in the mid-1800s. As the middle class grew and people found themselves with leisure time, the seaside became a frequent holiday destination. Amateur naturalists and vacationers scoured the shores for specimens to add to their collections. Collecting and cataloging one's findings was considered a morally appropriate, enriching activity, and a worthy antidote to idleness. This fascination mirrored the interests of the scientific community, as newly coordinated efforts to dredge for marine fauna and survey the coasts were initiated, to address the notable lack of new knowledge of the undersea world.

Kingsley, Charles. Glaucus. 4th Ed. (1859). http://biodiversitylibrary.org/page/29363529.

Books on the identification of sea life, like Rev. Charles Kingsley’s Glaucus, or, The Wonders of the Shore, were very popular. Perhaps best known for his children’s book The Water Babies, Kingsley was a prolific writer of non-fictional works as well, including sermons, social commentaries, and scientific treatises. He was a capable amateur naturalist, too, well-versed in the scientific issues of the day (he and Charles Darwin corresponded) and a proponent of science education. Glaucus, named for an ancient Greek sea-god, encouraged personal and religious improvement through knowledge of the natural world, in this case the corals, mollusks, and anemones found at the seashore.

Interest in sea life found its way into the home in the 1850s as the first aquariums (or “aqua-vivariums”) appeared. Having a miniaturized version of the ocean floor at home became a mid-19th century fad. The first public aquarium opened in 1853 in London. Purveyors of aquatic plants and animals catered to aquarium enthusiasts. Books [such as Henry Noel Humphreys'Ocean Gardens: The History of the Marine Aquarium. London, 1857] offered advice to enthusiasts on creating and maintaining their indoor “ocean gardens."

Humphreys, Henry Noel. Ocean gardens : the history of the marine aquarium, and the best methods now adopted for its establishment and preservation (1857). http://biodiversitylibrary.org/page/43084496.

As the exhibit shows, the public's growing interest in the deep ocean can be clearly seen in the popularity of many of the fictional works of the time, especially Vingt Mille Lieues Sous les Mers (Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Seas in English) by Jules Verne. Within the work, the famous Captain Nemo takes his captive guests on a journey through the oceans in his submarine. The work draws on many of the scientific advances, such as self-propelled submarines and diving suits, and features many of the exotic underwater species, that were captivating the public during the era.

Not only were the inventions and species featured in works like Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Seas a reflection of the advances of the time, but the very idea of extended underwater expeditions like that undertaken by Captain Nemo also mirrored the scientific endeavors being launched. According to the exhibit:

"Britain’s Challenger expedition, a massive four-year undertaking begun in 1872, vastly increased knowledge about the deep sea. Its goal: to circumnavigate the globe and study the ocean's depths. It was the first large-scale government-funded scientific expedition. The HMS Challenger was a British naval warship outfitted for scientific study and included a chemistry lab and a workroom for the study of specimens.

The expedition resulted in 50 volumes of scientific reports. More than 4,500 new species of marine life were recorded, and scientists were finally able to prove that life did indeed exist in the ocean's depths. The hundreds of crates of specimens were painstakingly studied and illustrated by experts worldwide, like those by Ernst Haeckel [Report on the Scientific Results of the Voyage of H.M.S. Challenger during the years 1873–76...Zoology: Report on the Deep-Sea Keratosa. Edinburgh, 1889], and formed the basis for the marine collections at the Natural History Museum in London."

Haeckel, Ernst. Report on the scientific results of the voyage of H.M.S. Challenger during the years 1873-76. Zoology v. 32, pt. 82 (1889). http://biodiversitylibrary.org/page/2225158.

Many of the books featured in the "Sea Change: Underwater Worlds" section of the exhibit, such as Glaucus, Ocean Gardens, and Report on the Scientific Results of the Voyage of H.M.S. Challenger during the years 1873–76, can be found in BHL. You can learn more about underwater science and fiction in the Victorian period in the Fantastic Worlds online exhibit from Smithsonian Libraries. The exhibit at the Smithsonian National Museum of American History runs through February 26, 2017, and is free to the public. Be sure to visit the exhibit if you're in Washington, D.C., or browse the online exhibit to learn more about the fantastic intersection of science and fiction in the Victorian era.

Exhibit Text Featured in this Post by:
Kirsten van der Veen
Special Collections, Dibner Library of the History of Science and Technology, Smithsonian Libraries

Ronnie Broadfoot

A number of BHL staff attended the American Library Association (ALA) Midwinter Meeting & Exhibits in an unseasonably warm Boston, MA during the run of the conference, January 8-12, 2016. Taking advantage of the meeting's location near BHL Members, The Ernst Mayr Library (Museum of Comparative Zoology, Harvard University) and the Harvard Botany Libraries, staff at those institutions hosted visits by BHL Program Director Martin Kalfatovic and Program Manager Carolyn Sheffield, as well as staff from The Field Museum Library (Christine Giannoni, Diana Duncan, and Melissa Anderson).

BHL staffer Matthew Person, from the MBLWHOI Library in nearby Woods Hole, MA, said of the meetings, "After attending ALA Midwinter sessions on 'linked data' and cooperatively developed tools to help researchers communicate on an inter-institutional level, I felt good about the work BHL is putting into aligning metadata for BHL published science literature with publishing standards and requirements for discovery systems. This work will make BHL content and metadata available through multiple avenues of research exploration, which assists inter-institutional research worldwide." Added the Mayr Library's Ronnie Broadfoot, "Overall, I had a great conference for the usual reasons -- good conversations with colleagues I know from previous conferences and with colleagues just met. That's what keeps me coming back."

During a visit to the Mayr Library, staff Joe DeVeer and Broadfoot provided tours of the general and special collections as well as an overview of the Internet Archive Table Top Scribe scanner.

Mayr Library (Joe DeVeer, left and right; Ronnie Broadfoot, center)

Herbals

Judy Warnement, librarian of the Harvard Botany Libraries, provided an overview of the botany collections of the botanical libraries in Cambridge, including the Economic Botany Library of Oakes Ames, the Oakes Ames Orchid Library, and the Farlow Reference Library of Cryptogamic Botany. Among the treasures Judy showed us were botanical specimens collected by Henry David Thoreau and some of the amazing early herbals in the libraries' collections.

Harvard Botany Libraries

During the conference, Giannoni met with Kalfatovic and Sheffield to discuss scanning operations as well as the upcoming "BHL @ 10" meetings to be held at the Natural History Museum (London) and the Royal Botanical Gardens, Kew. Said Giannoni, "ALA is a great way to reconnect with colleagues from all over the country. While folks are oftentimes surprised to encounter a 'museum' librarian at ALA, there are still a lot of great opportunities to connect with librarians dealing with the same issues we encounter: intellectual property, digitization initiatives, marketing. We're more alike than many folks realize!"

Participating in the conference exhibitions was the Internet Archive, which brought one of the Table Top Scribes from their Boston scanning facility.

Tim Bigelow of the Internet Archive

Matthew Person

The conference also included a reception at the New England Aquarium, hosted by ProQuest.

During the reception, Matthew Person noted "I attended an ALA Midwinter session on organizational change and leadership during which it was discussed that in building and growing organizations, when transparency is practiced, it can have a huge payoff in the success and sustainability of the organization. BHL has been unique as it was conceived as a transparent organization from the bottom to the top, and BHL successes are a positive example that transparency works!"

Compiled by:
Anne-Lise Fourie
Assistant Director, SANBI Libraries
The South African National Biodiversity Institute

In 2013, BHL Africa officially launched with the mission to provide open access to the valuable biodiversity literature found within African libraries and institutions. Today, eleven institutions have signed the BHL Africa MOU and, thanks to support from the JRS Biodiversity Foundation, each is working to contribute content from their collections to BHL. The South African National Biodiversity Institute (SANBI), which has been a member of BHL Africa since its inception, leads the current JRS-funded work.

SANBI has two libraries: the Harry Molteno Library at the Kirstenbosch National Botanical Garden in Cape Town, and the Mary Gunn Library at the Pretoria National Botanical Garden. The mission of SANBI libraries is to meet the information needs of all SANBI staff and to address a public demand for comprehensive, easily accessible information on the biodiversity of southern Africa.

The Mary Gunn Library dates back to 1916 and will celebrate its centenary this year. Today, Ms Mary Gunn’s efforts are reflected in this library’s being one of the most important botanical and biodiversity resources in Africa. Subjects covered in the collection include taxonomy, biodiversity, climate change, global warming, morphology, plant anatomy, plant geography, ethnobotany, conservation ecology, history of botany, palaeobotany and plant exploration.

Mary Davidson Gunn (1899–1989)

Mary Davidson Gunn. 1919-20.

Mary Davidson Gunn was born on 15 May 1899 in Kirriemuir, Scotland. Her father served in a Scottish regiment during the Anglo Boer War in South Africa and after the war, he decided to immigrate his family to South Africa. They settled in Pretoria where Ms Gunn attended the now defunct State Gymnasium. In September 1916, Ms Gunn was appointed as a clerk with ‘knowledge of typing’ in the Department of Agriculture’s Botany Division. She was not constantly busy and to keep herself occupied, she would dismantle and study the workings of her watch. Caught in the act by the chief of the division, Dr Pole Evans, she was tasked with the job of taking care of the books and building up a library. She approached her new responsibilities with great enthusiasm even though the few books did not even fill one shelf. Every night at home, she would describe each book she catalogued in detail to her father.

As Ms Gunn did not have a botanical background, she studied the catalogues of well-known antiquarian booksellers to establish which works were available and how she could purchase them. She became more and more interested in botanical literature and her knowledge developed rapidly. With enthusiasm and dedication she purchased relevant books and journals and even obtained a great number of publications as gifts – the basis of the current extensive antiquarian collection of the library. Her love for old botanical works became one of her main passions in life and made her one of the country’s most knowledgeable persons on rare botanical books and plant collectors of southern Africa.

Because of limited funds, various ways and means were devised to acquire treasures. She was very persuasive in getting rare and expensive books donated or sponsored to the library during her time as librarian. In her own words, ‘I frequently had to go hat-in-hand asking for money from influential people so that I can buy what I wanted!’ Her acquiring gifts, as well as purchasing and exchanging books and journals, populated Ms Gunn’s library until she had enough of a variety for the public. To this day, the global exchange programme remains one of the chief ways in which the Mary Gunn Library receives new journals.

Redouté, Pierre Joseph. Les liliacees. v. 1 (1805). http://biodiversitylibrary.org/page/287202. Image from the copy in BHL digitized by the Missouri Botanical Garden, Peter H. Raven Library.

The Mary Gunn Library houses a magnificent Rare Antiquarian Book Collection that includes publications such as the broadsheet edition of Pierre-Joseph Redouté’s Les Liliacées. Redouté published Les Liliacées from 1802–1816 and the institute’s copy is one of only 18 broadsheet editions published. Redouté himself finished the plates in this edition by hand. Ms Gunn bought this rare work in England and conveyed it to South Africa in General Jan Smuts’ personal luggage after attending the signing of the Versailles Treaty. Smuts was a good friend of Ms Gunn and introduced her to businessmen such as Myles Bourke, Charles Maggs and J.J. Kirkness who donated funds to the library for purchasing rare books.

Nikolas Joseph Jacquin published Stapeliarum in 1808. The book contains 64 colour plates of stapeliads grown in the botanic garden of the University of Vienna. In 1938, Ms Gunn spotted the book in a booksellers’ catalogue and, with donations, she managed to purchase this rare book. The library now also houses other rare works by Jacquin.

Bergius, Peter Jonas. Descriptiones plantarum ex Capite Bonae Spei. (1767). http://bibdigital.rjb.csic.es/ing/Libro.php?Libro=5028. Image from the copy in BHL digitized by the Biblioteca Digital del Real Jardin Botanico de Madrid.

One of the rarest and oldest works on the botany of the Cape of Good Hope is Descriptions plantarum ex Capite Bonae Spei (1767) by Peter Jonas Bergius, based in part on specimens collected at the Cape by the Swede, Mikael Grubb. It predates Linnaeus’s famous Mantissa Plantarum by one month. The library’s copy of this work was once owned by Prof. W.H. Harvey, the co-initiator of Flora Capensis. A handwritten note in the book explains that the book once belonged to a young botanist, George Forster, who, with his father, accompanied Captain Cook on his second voyage around the world with this very book.

Xylotheque (wooden) book set by C.H. Wehdemann.

The unique 52 xylotheque (wooden) book set by C.H. Wehdemann is the only South African example ever made. Wehdemann came to the Cape Colony in the early 1800s as part of the army of the Dutch East India Company. After his dismissal in 1806, he moved to the Eastern Cape settling on a farm near Somerset East where he died in 1836. Each wooden book represents an indigenous tree. At the top of the book is a slide which gives you access to the inside of the book. Inside is a short description of the tree, some illustrations and a small cane tube with seeds inside. Of the original set of 60, the Mary Gunn Library has the remaining 52 books.

Selection from the Xylotheque (wooden) book set by C.H. Wehdemann held in The Mary Gunn Library.

Other treasures in the library:

J.C. Commelin: Horti medici Amstelodamensis rariorum tam orientalis, qum occidentalis Indiae, aliaumque Peregrinarum plantarum; descriptio et icones. (colour copy, BHL has the black and white) •
E. Sweert: Florilegium Amplissimum et Selectissimum.
Curtis’s Botanical Magazine.
C.J. Trew: Plantae Selectae, with illustrations by Georg Dionysius Egret.
C.-L. L'Hèritier de Brutelle: Geraniologia, seu Erodii, Pelargonii, Geranii, Monsoniae et Grieli historia icanibus illustrata.
H. Andrews: The botanist’s repository, for new and rare plants.
C.W.L. Pappe: Florae capensis medicae prodromus: or, An enumeration of South African indigenous plants, used as remedies by the colonists of the Cape of Good Hope.
W.H. Harvey: The genera of South African plants: arranged according to the natural system (1st Ed.). This book is considered to be the first scientific book published in South Africa. The library’s copy contains handwritten notes by the author. (BHL has the 2nd Ed.)

Dr Pole Evans’ continuous queries about botanical explorers led Ms Gunn to her second passion, namely biographical research of early botanists and plant collectors. Information on Thunberg, Burchell, Masson, Ecklon, Drège and more were collected from all corners of the world. In 1981 the major part of this information was used to publish Botanical exploration of southern Africa: an illustrated history of early botanical literature on the Cape flora. This work, produced in collaboration with Dr Leslie Codd, was the culmination of more than 60 years of research. In 2010 the work was revised and published as part of SANBI’s Strelitzia series.

Ms Gunn possessed charm, coupled with a sharp wit, a sense of humour, steely determination and a high regard for those she felt warranted respect. After her official retirement in 1954, she continued working at the institute until 1973. In honour of Ms Gunn’s devotion to botanical literature for 60 years of her life, the National Herbarium Library was renamed the Mary Gunn Library in 1969.

The official opening of the Mary Gunn Library, 15th January 1970. From left to right: Dr. B de Winter, Deputy Director, Botanical Research Institute; Dr JW Geyer, Chief Director of Research, Department of Agriculture; Ms Gunn and Dr. LE Codd, Director, Botanical Research Institute.

Through their participation in BHL Africa, SANBI will work to digitize the treasures in the Mary Gunn Library and make them openly, globally, and freely available in BHL. In the meantime, you can view many of the books mentioned in this post in the BHL collection thanks to contributions from several of our other partner libraries.

We are excited to see the continued growth of BHL and its collections thanks to the dedicated efforts of our partners around the world. We have a feeling that Ms Gunn would heartily concur.

Ms Gunn in her later years.

References

Fourie, D. Obituary of Mary Davidson Gunn. Bothalia 20, 1: 127-130 1990.
Fourie, D. The history of the Botanical Research Institute 1903-1989. Bothalia 28, 2 1998.
Glen, H.F. Botanical Exploration of Southern Africa: An illustrated history of early botanical literature on the Cape Flora, Biographical accounts of the leading plant collectors and their activities in southern Africa form the days of the East India Company until the modern times. 2nd ed. Pretoria: SANBI, 2010.
Gunn, M. and Codd, L. Botanical exploration of southern Africa: an illustrated history of early botanical literature on the Cape flora. Cape Town: Balkema, 1981.
Killick, D.J.B. The Mary Gunn Library. 1992. Pamphlet.

Today, January 29, 2016, the U.S. Postal Service released 10 new postage stamps featuring images from catalogs in The New York Botanical Garden's nursery and seed catalog collection.

The Botanical Art Forever stamps featuring illustrations from nursery catalogs in The New York Botanical Garden's nursery and seed catalog collection.

The 10 Botanical Art Forever stamps feature illustrations from American nursery catalogs printed between 1891 and 1912. NYBG's nursery and seed catalog collection is one of the largest and most important collections in the United States. The collection and similar collections in other institutions are treasure troves of historical information for scholars and scientists studying a wide range of subjects, including the history of botany, horticulture, commercial agriculture, landscape design, plant exploration, graphic arts and publishing.

John Lewis Childs. Childs' fall catalogue of bulbs, plants & seeds. http://biodiversitylibrary.org/page/44290234. Digitized by the U.S. Department of Agriculture, National Agricultural Library.

The flowers featured on the stamps include corn lilies, tulips, stocks, roses, petunias, dahlias, Japanese Iris, daffodils and jonquils. The artists responsible for the work seen on early nursery catalogs are mostly unknown, but thanks to these stamps, the catalogs, and ongoing work to digitize the catalogs and make them freely available worldwide, the incredible works of these artists live on.

Dreer. Dreer's autumn catalogue : 1899 bulbs plants, seeds, etc. http://biodiversitylibrary.org/page/42696608. Digitized by the U.S. Department of Agriculture, National Agricultural Library.

You can find most of the catalogs featured in the stamps in BHL. Below is the list of catalogs featured on the stamps and, where available, the links to them in BHL. The copies in BHL were digitized by the U.S. Department of Agriculture, National Agricultural Library. The remaining catalogs will be uploaded to BHL by NYBG.

John Lewis Childs. Catalogue of bulbs and plants.
John Lewis Childs. Childs' fall catalogue of bulbs, plants & seeds.
Dreer. Dreer's garden book : seventy-fourth annual edition 1912.
Dreer. Dreer's 72nd annual edition garden book : 1910.
Dreer. Dreer's garden calendar : 1898.
Dreer. Dreer's autumn catalogue 1907.
Farquhar, R. & J. Company. Farquhar's 1910 garden annual.
Dreer. Dreer's garden book : seventy-fourth annual edition 1912.
Dreer. Dreer's autumn 1901 catalogue.
Dreer. Dreer's autumn catalogue : 1899 bulbs plants, seeds, etc.

We're excited that so many letters will now be adorned with stunning botanical art thanks to the Botanical Art Forever stamps. You can browse over 20,000 seed and nursery catalogs contributed by both NYBG and other BHL partner institutions in BHL. Learn more about the importance of these catalogs in our Garden Stories campaign.

Get your colored pencils ready!

Join us for the Color Our Collections event this week, February 1-5, 2016. Led by The New York Academy of Medicine, the event invites you to download images from library and cultural institution collections, color them, and share them on social media using the event hashtag #ColorOurCollections. With millions of natural history illustrations produced over 500 years in our collection, BHL is thrilled to participate in the event.

How to Download Images from BHL for Color Our Collections

BHL Flickr

We've gathered over 1,000 black and white images from books in the BHL collection into a new Flickr collection. Browse the images, download your favorites, and color away! https://www.flickr.com/photos/biodivlibrary/sets/72157663149641612/

BHL Pinterest

While BHL is full of beautiful black and white images that are just waiting to be colored, there are also thousands of stunning color illustrations in our library that are great candidates for a coloring book. We've selected some of our favorites and turned them into coloring pages. They're available for you to browse, download, and color in Pinterest: https://www.pinterest.com/biodivlibrary/bhl-coloring-pages/

To download one of the images in Pinterest, right click on the pin and choose "save image as" to save the image to your computer. You can then print and color at your leisure!

BHL Coloring Book

Want to download all of the coloring pages in the BHL Pinterest at once? We've prepared a handy PDF, which you can download for free here: https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B00hDkSQMhfDMXdIVng0NGd0WlU/view?usp=sharing

Source Books in BHL

You can browse the books that the images in our Color Our Collections Flickr and Pinterest sets come from in our BHL Collection here: http://biodiversitylibrary.org/browse/collection/ColorOurCollections

Many other institutions will also be participating in the event and sharing images from their own collections for you to download and color. Check out this list to see who else is involved. Be sure to follow the hashtag #ColorOurCollections on social media to learn more, and don't forget to share your masterpieces with that same hashtag (and tag @BioDivLibrary if it's from a BHL image). We look forward to seeing your works of art!

Emile-Allain Séguy was a popular French designer throughout the Art Deco and Art Nouveau movements of the 1920s. Often confused with the French entomologist Eugene Séguy who was active during the same time period, E.A. Séguy designed primarily patterns and textiles and was heavily influenced by the natural world. He was particularly fond of the intricate patterns and beauty of insects (Eugene would have approved), which he saw as "mechanic wonders" that provided abundant inspiration for interior design.

Séguy, Emile-Allain. Papillons. 1925. http://biodiversitylibrary.org/page/48852979. Digitized by Smithsonian Libraries.

In 1920, the American textile manufacturer F. Schumacher and Co. commissioned the work Papillons, which was to include stunning compositions of butterflies intended for use as wallpaper, textiles, and other interior and fashion design purposes. Referring to scientific illustrations for reference, Séguy reproduced 81 butterflies within 16 compositions, as well as four additional plates of decorative patterns inspired by butterfly wings, using the pochoir technique. The pochoir technique is based on an ancient method that uses stencils for color application. A costly and labor-intensive technique, pochoir was especially popular in Paris in the 1920s. Each color in a design has its own stencil and layers of gouache or other pigments are applied through each stencil by hand with a brush or sponge. The result is an intense and accurate representation of the colors intended for each composition.

Séguy, Emile-Allain. Papillons. 1925. http://biodiversitylibrary.org/page/48852961. Digitized by Smithsonian Libraries.

Though the butterflies and plates are ultimately meant for design applications, Séguy emphasized his use of scientific illustrations to inspire his art and included a table of scientific names within Papillons identifying the species depicted in each plate and its place of origin. The work includes species from across the globe.

Séguy, Emile-Allain. Papillons. 1925. http://biodiversitylibrary.org/page/48852957. Digitized by Smithsonian Libraries.

Séguy's designs were reproduced extensively in textiles, wallpapers, and other decorative applications for nearly a century. You can view all of the plates from this work in Flickr. This week, we put the artwork to another use in the Color Our Collections event. The event invites you to download images from library and cultural institution collections, color them, and share them on social media using the event hashtag #ColorOurCollections. We created a plethora of content for the event, including a Flickr collection containing over 1,000 black and white illustrations from BHL's collection. We also created a set of coloring pages from colored illustrations in our collection, which are available separately in Pinterest and also as a single PDF.

A coloring page made from Séguy's Papillons. Digitized for BHL by Smithsonian Libraries.

A significant portion of the coloring pages we created are from Séguy's Papillons, which was digitized for BHL by Smithsonian Libraries. While the colors chosen and so carefully applied by Séguy may reflect the true hues of the natural world, we invite you to design your own butterflies! Download the PDF, choose your own colors for Séguy's outlines, and share the results on social media by tagging @BioDivLibrary and using the #ColorOurCollections hashtag.

A coloring page made from Séguy's Papillons. Digitized for BHL by Smithsonian Libraries.

The natural world is alive with artistic inspiration. It's your turn to color your world!

Hardwicke's bloodsucker is an agamid lizard found in western and central India. It is a small, stocky, and pot-bellied lizard with a short tail that is currently recognized under the scientific name Brachysaura minor. This species, however, has a rather convoluted taxonomic history.

The first scientific description of the species comes from Hardwicke and Gray in 1827 and is based on a color sketch by Hardwicke which now resides in the Archives of the Natural History Museum, London. They named the species Agama minor. Later, in 1856, Blyth provided a new name and description for what was likely the same species, calling it Brachysaura ornata. He did not refer to Hardwicke and Gray's previous description. Over the years, the description, name and placement of the species was questioned by many, and it has subsequently been placed in the additional genera Charasia and Laudakia as well.

In 1999, Manthey and Schuster placed the species back within the genus Brachysaura, and it has since be most commonly referred to as Brachysaura minor - the only species within the Brachysaura genus.

Close up of Calotes minor, a species with a confusing taxonomic history. Photo credit: Varad Giri.

A recent study has called this placement into question. Using molecular and morphological data, V. Deepak, Raju Vyas, Varad B. Giri, and K. Praveen Karanth analyzed the identity and systematic position of Brachysaura minor. Their results, published in the paper "A Taxonomic Mystery for More than 180 Years: The Identity and Systematic Position of Brachysaura minor (Hardwicke and Gray, 1827)" (Vertebrate Zoology. 65(3): 371-381), suggest that Brachysaura is actually nested within the genus Calotes, and that the species should henceforth be referred as Calotes minor. They also note that one of the previous primary impediments to placing this species within the Calotes genus is the fact that, compared to other members of the genus, this species has a very short tail. However, the researchers note that, unlike other members of this genus, this species is ground-dwelling, and in other ground-dwelling agamids, reduced tail length is a common characteristic. Thus, the authors propose that the length of the tail is an adaptation related to the species' habitat and not a justification for placement in a new genus. Not only does the paper propose a new placement for Brachysaura minor, but by re-evaluating other specimens that were previously believed to be representatives of this species, the authors also suggest that members of Agaminae are limited to a distribution in arid regions of Western India.

Dr. Varad Giri. Photo credit: Zeeshan Mirza.

According to co-author Dr. Varad B. Giri, a Post Doctoral Fellow at the National Centre for Biological Sciences in Bangalore, India, this paper would not have been possible without the Biodiversity Heritage Library.

Varad has been studying the taxonomy of Indian reptiles and amphibians since 2000. While exploring records in the Reptile Database, he discovered links to literature in BHL and was introduced to our open access digital library. The discovery had profound effects on his work.

"For a taxonomist like me, BHL is an amazing resource. One of the vital things of taxonomy is to understand the morphological characters of known species. With this knowledge, one can do a proper diagnosis of the species known or hitherto unknown to science. One way to do this is by referring to the type specimens, but most of the types of Indian amphibians and reptiles are in museums abroad and thus are difficult to access. The other way is to refer to the original descriptions, which were again inaccessible as they were published in old journals. BHL has made this latter thing possible by putting all of the historical literature online where one can access it with ease. I strongly feel that if BHL would not have been available, I would not have performed good taxonomic work with such ease due to a lack of historical literature. BHL has a big positive impact on my research."

When he is working on a paper, Varad uses BHL several times a day. He usually downloads relevant papers using BHL's custom PDF service, which allows him to select precisely the pages he wishes to save. This feature is one of his favorites on BHL. When appropriate, Varad will also download entire books as PDFs and, having now been exposed to the many illustrations available from BHL through his interaction with BHL staff, he also plans to download relevant images in the future.

While the ability to perform full-text search is a feature that Varad would like to see added to BHL, he notes that BHL's general search is quite effective and has in fact exposed him to many relevant items that he was previously unaware of.

While BHL's many value-add features make Varad's experience with our library all the more positive, the most important thing that BHL provides him with is access to the literature that he needs to conduct his research. Research like the taxonomic placement of Brachysaura minor (or should we say Calotes minor?).

The original description of Calotes minor. This paper was downloaded using BHL! The Zoological Journal. v. 3 (1827-1828). http://biodiversitylibrary.org/page/27485744. Digitized by Smithsonian Libraries.

"BHL is doing a wonderful service for researchers like me, who work with limited resources in developing countries like India. For our recent paper dealing with a 180 year old taxonomic mystery, we needed to refer to many historical articles. Without the help of BHL, this would have taken more time or been very difficult. There are many such publications pertaining to Indian amphibians and reptiles where we will need BHL!"

We are certainly thrilled to hear about the lasting and ongoing impact that BHL will have on Varad's research and his investigation into taxonomic mysteries. For, after all, as Varad told us, "To properly solve the mystery, one has to clearly understand the history." We couldn't have said it better ourselves!

Do you use BHL to support your work? Want to be featured on our blog? Write us at biodiversitylibrary@gmail.com!

Charles Darwin, the famous naturalist known around the world for his publication On the Origin of Species and contributions to evolutionary theory, was born on February 12, 1809. As such, February 12 is known as International Darwin Day - a celebration with a vision to:

"Inspire people throughout the globe to reflect and act on the principles of intellectual bravery, perpetual curiosity, scientific thinking, and hunger for truth as embodied in Charles Darwin. It will be a day of celebration, activism, and international cooperation for the advancement of science, education, and human well-being."

February 12 also happens to be just days before Valentine's Day, a holiday now associated with love and the presentation of valentines as expressions of affection. How might these two, seemingly disparate holidays, be brought together? Why not by thinking about who Darwin himself might give a valentine to in the natural world?

Many people, when thinking of Darwin, might associate him with finches, mockingbirds, rheas, or Galápagos tortoises. But when Darwin began to investigate natural history while studying medicine in Edinburgh in the 1820s, it was marine invertebrates that first sparked his interest. While still a teenager, Darwin became a member of the Plinian Society, which was dedicated to the study of natural history amongst Edinburgh students. The zoologist Robert Edmond Grant nurtured Darwin's interest in natural history, especially marine invertebrates, and taught him how to collect and rear specimens. Darwin's first scientific paper, which was presented to the Plinian Society in March of 1827, was about bryozoan larvae and the black spots sometimes seen on oyster shells, which he demonstrated were the eggs of marine leeches. Sadly, Darwin's mentor Grant had presented these same findings just days before Darwin at another venue, leading Darwin to feel betrayed and prompting his exodus from Edinburgh (Stiassny, 83).

Darwin, Charles. A monograph on the sub-class Cirripedia, with figures of all the species. (1851-54). http://biodiversitylibrary.org/page/2007053. Digitized for BHL by the MBLWHOI Library.

Time passed, Darwin spent some time at Cambridge, and eventually he joined the voyage of the HMS Beagle thanks to a recommendation from his new mentor, botanist and geologist John Stevens Henslow. Darwin's observations and research during the voyage would fuel his later revolutionary theories. But, as Dr. Melanie L.J. Stiassny, a curator at the American Museum of Natural History, points out in her article on Darwin within the book Natural Histories: Opulent Oceans, Darwin felt somewhat hesitant about his ideas during the early stages of their development. After all, they represented an entirely new way of looking at the natural world and thinking about its origins. So, while he fleshed out his theories on natural selection, Darwin also turned his attention back to, as Stiassny calls it, "his early love" - marine invertebrates. It was his work on barnacles that arguably helped pave the way for the acceptance of his later theories. As Stiassny states on page 84 of Opulent Oceans:

"It was the study of one group, the barnacles (Cirripedia), that would solidify his credentials as a taxonomic expert and provide him with empirical evidence for many of his evolutionary ideas...such as the loss of unnecessary structures (barnacles have no trace of the abdominal segments and swimming appendages of other crustaceans), and evidence that features inherited from a common ancestor can transform in anatomy and function (the typical walking limbs of crustaceans are modified into specialized feeding cirri in barnacles)."

Darwin, Charles. A monograph on the sub-class Cirripedia, with figures of all the species. (1851-54). http://biodiversitylibrary.org/page/2007061. Digitized for BHL by the MBLWHOI Library.

Darwin spent eight years working on his barnacle studies, and from 1851-54 finally published his work in a four-part series: A monograph on the sub-class Cirripedia, with figures of all the species. Within the work, Darwin provides a classification for the crustacean Subclass Cirripedia, making it "the first based on the evolutionary principle of common descent" (Stiassny, 85). His On the Origin of Species, published in 1859, five years after his Cirripedia work, references cirripedes twenty-six times, demonstrating the impact this research had on Darwin's evolutionary ideas.

Darwin, Charles. A monograph on the sub-class Cirripedia, with figures of all the species. (1851-54). http://biodiversitylibrary.org/page/2011425. Digitized for BHL by the MBLWHOI Library.

Darwin's name is arguably the most well-known from the world of natural history. Knowing Darwin's history with the Cirripedia, one might wonder if he would have realized the heights of his scientific achievements without his barnacles.

So, we think, if Darwin were to give a Valentine to someone in the non-human animal kingdom, there's a good chance it would go to a barnacle.

Darwin, Charles. A monograph on the sub-class Cirripedia, with figures of all the species. (1851-54). http://biodiversitylibrary.org/page/2007081. Digitized for BHL by the MBLWHOI Library.

See books and articles written by Charles Darwin in BHL.
Explore digitized versions of the books in his personal library in Charles Darwin's Library in BHL.
Explore images from books in Charles Darwin's Library in Flickr.

Reference:
Stiassny, Melanie L.J. (2014). Darwin's "Beloved Barnacles." Natural Histories Opulent Oceans: Extraordinary Rare Book Selections from the American Museum of Natural History Library (pp. 82-85). New York: Sterling Publishing.

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