[Taxacom] Being paid by the new species: BM(NH) in the good old days

Tue Aug 14 07:22:37 CDT 2012

Chris,

It is no longer even THE Natural History Museum (once known fondly to a few merely as "THE"). The name changed a few years ago to the Natural History Museum.

Walker also had a fondness for alcohol to maintain as well as a large family. He also described several species many times under different names. Whether this was to improve his income we do not know.

John

John Noyes
Scientific Associate
Department of Entomology
Natural History Museum
Cromwell Road
South Kensington
London SW7 5BD 
UK
jsn at nhm.ac.uk
Tel.: +44 (0) 207 942 5594
Fax.: +44 (0) 207 942 5229

Universal Chalcidoidea Database (everything you wanted to know about chalcidoids and more):
www.nhm.ac.uk/chalcidoids 

-----Original Message-----
From: taxacom-bounces at mailman.nhm.ku.edu [mailto:taxacom-bounces at mailman.nhm.ku.edu] On Behalf Of Chris Thompson
Sent: 02 August 2012 22:08
To: Stephen Thorpe; Mark Wilden; Michael Heads
Cc: Taxacom at mailman.nhm.ku.edu
Subject: [Taxacom] Being paid by the new species: BM(NH) in the good old days

Stephen:

People forget or never knew, but ...

Once years ago, the brits wanted to make a great Natural History, so the 
keeper decided to pay his staff by the number of new species they described. 
Smith was just one. The most famous (or infamous) was Francis Walker who 
described more that 14 thousand species, but remember he had a very large 
family to feed, etc.

HOWEVER, unlike impact factors / citation rates, the BM(NH) [now THE Natural 
History Museum] has the most important collection of types and other 
specimens because of this policy.

Oh, well ...

Chris

from home

-----Original Message----- 
From: Stephen Thorpe
Sent: Thursday, August 02, 2012 4:09 PM
To: Mark Wilden ; Michael Heads
Cc: Taxacom at mailman.nhm.ku.edu
Subject: Re: [Taxacom] a question of Latin ...

>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>
To: Michael Heads <m.j.heads at gmail.com>
Cc: 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> 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> wrote:
>>
>> On Aug 1, 2012, at 9:41 PM, Michael Heads <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>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>
>> >> *To:* Curtis Clark <lists at curtisclark.org>
>> >> *Cc:* 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>
>> >> 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
>> >>>
>> >>>
>> >>> _______________________________________________
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>> >>
>> >>
>> >> --
>> >> Wellington, New Zealand.
>> >>
>> >> My new book: *Molecular panbiogeography of the tropics. *University
>> >> of California Press, Berkeley.
>> >>
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>> > --
>> > Wellington, New Zealand.
>> >
>> > My new book: *Molecular panbiogeography of the tropics. *University
>> > of California Press, Berkeley.
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>
>
>
> --
> Wellington, New Zealand.
>
> My new book: Molecular panbiogeography of the tropics. University
> of California Press, Berkeley.
>
>
>

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