[Taxacom] a question of Latin ...

Thu Aug 2 16:04:27 CDT 2012

I doubt he was paid by the number of specimens catalogued. He was a paid staff member of the BMNH.

The cataloguing that took place that was organized by J.E. Gray were done by museum staff and had only a few persons on contract (the museum discontinued contracts in the 1860s but kept Francis Walker as the lone contractee). The contracted cataloguers got paid a fixed fee for publications delivered by a certain time (the Trustee's account books can be checked for verification and were for Francis Walker). No one got paid by the specimens -- a bad rumor to help justify why someone was viewed as a bad taxonomist....

Get the facts straight. No need to keep perpetuating false rumors. If the guy was a bad taxonomist, he was.

-Neal

On 8/2/12 10:09 AM, "Stephen Thorpe" <stephen_thorpe at yahoo.co.nz<mailto:stephen_thorpe at yahoo.co.nz>> scribbled the following tidbit:

Apparently, Smith was paid by the number of specimens cataloged - hardly a recipe for precision<

Oh, how we have come such a long way from those days ... now we get paid by citation rates! Hardly a recipe ...

S :)

From: Mark Wilden <mark at mwilden.com<mailto:mark at mwilden.com>>
To: Michael Heads <m.j.heads at gmail.com<mailto:m.j.heads at gmail.com>>
Cc: Taxacom at mailman.nhm.ku.edu<mailto:Taxacom at mailman.nhm.ku.edu>
Sent: Friday, 3 August 2012 5:14 AM
Subject: Re: [Taxacom] a question of Latin ...

n Wed, Aug 1, 2012 at 10:22 PM, Michael Heads <m.j.heads at gmail.com<mailto:m.j.heads at gmail.com>> wrote:

(The point was really that biologists in the 18th and 19th centuries knew
their Latin).

Understood.

Do you have a reference for that, or a name of the source if it's a pers.
comm.?

The remark is by W.L. Brown in Ant taxonomy. 1955. In E.L. Kessel, ed.
A century of progress in the natural sciences, 1853-1953. pp. 569-572.
California Academy of Sciences, San Francisco. I may have misquoted it
slightly, but not much.

I came across this article when I got the job as the AntCat developer
at Cal Academy. Before I started working there, I started reading
Holldobler and Wilson's Ants, where they mention that "a perceptive
and  entertaining account of the early history of ant taxonomy has
been written by Brown" (p. 23). It was fun to be able to just wander
up to the library at the museum and read the original article on my
first day of work.

It's opinionated overall, but Brown really opens up a can of whoop-ass
on the British Museum's F. Smith. Apparently, Smith was paid by the
number of specimens cataloged - hardly a recipe for precision.

A small group of prominent myrmecologists trekked to the top of a
mountain in Borneo, consumed numerous beers, and alternately read
aloud from this article.

///ark

Mark Wilden
Web Applications Developer
California Academy of Sciences
www.antcat.org

Michael

On Thu, Aug 2, 2012 at 5:08 PM, Mark WIlden <mark at mwilden.com<mailto:mark at mwilden.com>> wrote:

On Aug 1, 2012, at 9:41 PM, Michael Heads <m.j.heads at gmail.com<mailto:m.j.heads at gmail.com>> wrote:

> . Frederick Smith
> (British Museum, President of the Royal Entomological Society, Darwin
> correspondent etc.) named Prolasius advenus and Cabro advenus. (He was
> the
> first entomologist to publish descriptions of more than a hundred ant
> species that still hold validity).

Smith's work was of such low quality that one myrmecological giant said
that "it would have been better if he had never seen an ant".

///ark
Mark Wilden
California Academy of Sciences
www.antcat.org

> Amos Eaton (who taught James Dwight
> Dana, Asa Gray, John Torrey etc.) named the fly Telmatoscopus advenus.
> Vernon Kellogg, professor of entomology at Stanford for 26 years (he
> taught
> the scientist president Herbert Hoover) named the louse Rallicola
> adventus.
> Baron Karl-Robert von Osten-Sacken was the Russian consul general in New
> York in the American civil war, and is also known as an entomologist (he
> introduced the trem chaetotaxy); he named the tephritid Torymus advenus
> Alcide d'Orbigny, the well-known student of Cuvier, named the foram
> Cibicides advenus.
> Michael
>
> On Thu, Aug 2, 2012 at 3:27 PM, Stephen Thorpe
> <stephen_thorpe at yahoo.co.nz<mailto:stephen_thorpe at yahoo.co.nz>>wrote:
>
>> well, just because you can find binomials which use advenus doesn't
>> mean
>> that they are correct -  it could be a common mistake ...
>>
>> Brown (1956) Composition of Scientific Words makes no reference to
>> anyadjectival advenus ...
>>
>> Stephen
>>
>>  *From:* Michael Heads <m.j.heads at gmail.com<mailto:m.j.heads at gmail.com>>
>> *To:* Curtis Clark <lists at curtisclark.org<mailto:lists at curtisclark.org>>
>> *Cc:* Taxacom at mailman.nhm.ku.edu<mailto:Taxacom at mailman.nhm.ku.edu>
>> *Sent:* Thursday, 2 August 2012 2:46 PM
>> *Subject:* Re: [Taxacom] a question of Latin ...
>>
>> Hi Stephen and Curtis,
>>
>> It seems to be a bit more complicated than that. In classical Latin
>> 'advena' was used mainly (only?) as a noun in apposition. It's also
>> used
>> this way in many binomials (e.g. the beetle Ahasverus advena).
>>
>> But in a great many binomials it has been used as an adjective - a
>> quick
>> Google search revealed genera with masculine names in plants,
>> Coleoptera,
>> Diptera, Hymenoptera, Homoptera, Phthiraptera, fishes, birds and
>> mammals
>> that include species named 'advenus'. Lewis and Short (still the
>> standard
>> reference for later Latin) lists 'advena' as both a noun and an
>> adjective.
>>
>> So, no need to change all the names with advenus.
>> Michael Heads
>> On Thu, Aug 2, 2012 at 12:27 PM, Curtis Clark <lists at curtisclark.org<mailto:lists at curtisclark.org>>
>> wrote:
>>
>>> On 8/1/2012 4:56 PM, Stephen Thorpe wrote:
>>>> Does anyone know if the specific epithet advena is unchangeable when
>> the
>>> gender of the genus changes? In other words, is there such an epithet
>>> as
>>> advenus?
>>>
>>> It's a noun in apposition, so it would always be advena. The
>>> corresponding adjective seems to be adventicius.
>>>
>>> --
>>> Curtis Clark        http://www.csupomona.edu/~jcclark
>>> After 2012-01-02:
>>> Biological Sciences                  +1 909 869 4140
>>> Cal Poly Pomona, Pomona CA 91768
>>>
>>>
>>> _______________________________________________
>>>
>>> Taxacom Mailing List
>>> Taxacom at mailman.nhm.ku.edu<mailto:Taxacom at mailman.nhm.ku.edu>
>>> http://mailman.nhm.ku.edu/mailman/listinfo/taxacom
>>>
>>> The Taxacom archive going back to 1992 may be searched with either of
>>> these methods:
>>>
>>> (1) by visiting http://taxacom.markmail.org/
>>
>>>
>>> (2) a Google search specified as:  site:
>>> mailman.nhm.ku.edu/pipermail/taxacom  your search terms here
>>>
>>
>>
>>
>> --
>> Wellington, New Zealand.
>>
>> My new book: *Molecular panbiogeography of the tropics. *University
>> of California Press, Berkeley.
>>
>> _______________________________________________
>>
>> Taxacom Mailing List
>> Taxacom at mailman.nhm.ku.edu<mailto:Taxacom at mailman.nhm.ku.edu>
>> http://mailman.nhm.ku.edu/mailman/listinfo/taxacom
>>
>> The Taxacom archive going back to 1992 may be searched with either of
>> these methods:
>>
>> (1) by visiting http://taxacom.markmail.org/
>>
>>
>> (2) a Google search specified as:  site:
>> mailman.nhm.ku.edu/pipermail/taxacom  your search terms here
>>
>>
>>
>
>
> --
> Wellington, New Zealand.
>
> My new book: *Molecular panbiogeography of the tropics. *University
> of California Press, Berkeley.
> _______________________________________________
>
> Taxacom Mailing List
> Taxacom at mailman.nhm.ku.edu<mailto:Taxacom at mailman.nhm.ku.edu>
> http://mailman.nhm.ku.edu/mailman/listinfo/taxacom
>
> The Taxacom archive going back to 1992 may be searched with either of
> these methods:
>
> (1) by visiting http://taxacom.markmail.org/
>
> (2) a Google search specified as:
> site:mailman.nhm.ku.edu/pipermail/taxacom  your search terms here

--
Wellington, New Zealand.

My new book: Molecular panbiogeography of the tropics. University
of California Press, Berkeley.

_______________________________________________

Taxacom Mailing List
Taxacom at mailman.nhm.ku.edu<mailto:Taxacom at mailman.nhm.ku.edu>
http://mailman.nhm.ku.edu/mailman/listinfo/taxacom

The Taxacom archive going back to 1992 may be searched with either of these methods:

(1) by visiting http://taxacom.markmail.org/

(2) a Google search specified as:  site:mailman.nhm.ku.edu/pipermail/taxacom  your search terms here
_______________________________________________

Taxacom Mailing List
Taxacom at mailman.nhm.ku.edu<mailto:Taxacom at mailman.nhm.ku.edu>
http://mailman.nhm.ku.edu/mailman/listinfo/taxacom

The Taxacom archive going back to 1992 may be searched with either of these methods:

(1) by visiting http://taxacom.markmail.org

(2) a Google search specified as:  site:mailman.nhm.ku.edu/pipermail/taxacom  your search terms here

________________________________
This message is only intended for the addressee named above. Its contents may be privileged or otherwise protected. Any unauthorized use, disclosure or copying of this message or its contents is prohibited. If you have received this message by mistake, please notify us immediately by reply mail or by collect telephone call. Any personal opinions expressed in this message do not necessarily represent the views of the Bishop Museum.