A visit to the Oxford Natural History Museum

Gavin Lloyd Wilson is one of the most tireless labourers in the CFZ Vinyard. He single handedly does the Daily News blog (and always refuses assistants when I offer them to him), and on sunday he posted no less than 31 stories. I don't know how he does it. Over on his own blog he recently visited the Oxford Natural History Museum, and his account was so interesting that I decided to pinch it...

I only visited the Oxford University Museum of Natural History for the first time last November, but I instantly fell in love with the place and wondered why on earth I'd never been before. I'm not going to give its whole history here, but to say that the museum came into being following a competition in 1854, when Deane and Woodward's design for the museum was selected, and then in 1860 the building was opened despite being unfinished in parts. (The museum sells a booklet entitled Oxford University Museum: Its architecture and art for £2.50, and which will fill in all the historical details should you want them). Read On

A Fantastic Resource

Yesterday whilst reading the latest edition of The Entomologist's Record I was pleased to find that early editions of this invaluable publication, edited by the seminal entomologist James Tutt (no relation to Elvis's drummer as far as I am aware) are available digitised at:


http://www.biodiversitylibrary.org/bibliography/8408


So I went there, and was amazed at what I found.

"Ten major natural history museum libraries, botanical libraries, and research institutions have joined to form the Biodiversity Heritage Library. BHL partners will digitize the published literature of biodiversity held in their respective collections, providing basic, important content for immediate research and for multiple bioinformatics initiatives. For the first time in history, the core of our natural history and herbaria library collections will be available to a truly global audience. Web-based access to these collections will provide a substantial benefit to people living and working in the developing world. "

They even have a blog. What a fantastic project!!!



http://biodiversitylibrary.blogspot.com/2009/03/bhl-on-twitter.html

MUIRHEAD'S MYSTERIES: 600 snakes and a very big fish

Just a pair of short items today from the archives of the Macclesfield Courier in keeping with my custom of presenting pairs of cryptozoological or Fortean stories from the past,an aspect of cryptozoological research I hope to build upon in the months and years ahead.

Could this item below have been a seal or small whale? Not being a marine biologist,or even much of a zoologist I am unaware of the normal weight of these creatures.

“An extraordinary fish was caught last week near Chertsey-bridge (1): it has no scales upon it, is of a lead colour, and weighs 300lb.” Macclesfield Courier July 25th 1812 p.3.

“On Tuesday last 600 snakes which had nestled in some old manure,lying on a field at Boltham,near Lincoln,were destroyed.” Macclesfield Courier August 1st 1812. p.3

Tragically this was the all too common fate of these “snake swarms” which turned up in huge numbers all at once like this in the 19th century.

(1) In S.W. London probably

THANKS TO THEO

http://cgi.ebay.com/Vintage-Postcard:-Famous-ALLENDALE-WOLF,-Killed-in-1904_W0QQitemZ360134475025QQcmdZViewItemQQimsxZ20090225?IMSfp=TL090225129002r28284#ebayphotohosting

Theo Paijmans writes telling us that a small piece of cryptozoological, or at least fortean zoological history is for sale on eBay.

Thanks Theo, you have just cost me $14 because the CFZ museum should really own a copy :)

MIKE MAJERUS IS DEAD

http://www.cambridgenetwork.co.uk/news/article/default.aspx?objid=56257

It is with great sadness that we note the passing of Professor Mike Majerus, a senior officer in the Army of Darwinism, who died of cancer in January at a tragically early age.

I would like to have claimed him as one of the `CFZ People` but although I admired him greatly, we never made contact with him. I was particularly interested in his work about the invasive Harlequin ladybird, but possibly his most important achievement was that he was "the first to show that female mating preferences could be genetically determined, thereby confirming a critical aspect of Darwin's theory of sexual selection by female choice".

He was also a staunch defender of the doctrine of the peppered moth as an indicator of evolution through natural selection, and was probably the most important person in the fight to re-establish the bona fides of this particular case after it had been discredited in the mid 1990s.

He will be sadly missed.

The role of the Amateur Naturalist in Cryptozoology

I very nearly did something very silly. About three minutes ago, (and you must remember that I am writing this last night from where you are today), I nearly started another blog as part of the CFZ bloggo family. This blog was to be entitled `The Amateur Naturalist`, and would have been partly a tie-in with the periodical of the same name, and partly a place for the more Natural History related posts on the bloggo.

But then I came to my senses. A couple of Weird Weekends ago Darren Naish made the point that the concept of cryptozoology as a separate discipline is a relatively new one. A hundred years ago, most zoologists were cryptozoologists. It is only with the rise of the blinkered specialist that it has needed to be codified into a separate discipline.

This morning I received the latest editions of the Amateur Entomological Society Bulletin, the Entomologist's Record, and Invertebrate Conservation News. It was the first time that I have read any of these publications in years, and two things struck me. The first was how good they were, and the second was how much cryptozoology (by my definition of the word) was in there.

Just look. In the January/February issue of the Entomologist's Record and Journal of Variation there are the following articles:

1 Reappearance of Celypha rosaceana (Schläger) (Lep.: Tortricidae) as a Scottish species after over 100 years. Keith P. Bland

2 Moths new to the Isle of Wight in 2008. Sam Knill-Jones

3 Westward spread of the Toadflax Brocade Calophasia lunula (Hufn.) (Lep.: Noctuidae). A. M. George

4 Larvae of the Argent & Sable Rheumaptera hastata (L.) (Lep.: Geometridae) discovered in Northern Ireland apparently for the first time, with notes on pupation. Paul Waring, David Allen and Clive Mellon

5 An unusual aberration of Mellicta sp. probably parthenoides (Keferstein) (Lep.: Nymphalidae) in SW France. Catherine Wellings and Graham Wenman

6 Emmelina argoteles (Meyrick) (Lep.: Pterophoridae) recorded in Greece – new country, new habitat and new season. Colin W. Plant and Stoyan Beshkov 44-45

New species, new records, aberrant morphs - just the stuff of what cryptozoology, at least the cryptozoology that we practise is made.

The other two magazines are equally full of stuff of interest, and I spent a happy afternoon curled up with the cat (who is called `Spider` which is a suitably entomological name) devouring these journals with an appetite that I have not had for much of the stuff we are sent for many years.

So, I am glad that I resisted the temptation to start a new blog, because articles like this deserve to be on the main bloggo pages, not shoved away to the side like an afterthought because they are not credulous bunkum dealing in surviving dinosaurs or apemen coming out of flying saucers.

TODAY'S UPDATES

2nd March:CRYPTOZOOLOGY: Episode 18 of CRYPTOZOOLOGY: On The Track is now online..
Click here for further details...

2nd March: CRYPTOZOOLOGY: New documentary about the hunt for the Ivory Billed Woodpecker
Click here for further details...

2nd March: ZOOLOGY: What killed this unfortunate pussycat?
Click here for further details...

2nd March: CFZ: Have you ever fancied being an indexer? Come and join the bloggo team.
Click here for further details...