Doing Some Digging
I've been spending most of my time recently updating the UK Butterflies website. Having updated the phenology charts, the next item on my list is to update the subspecies descriptions. I think that Adrian Riley's
British and Irish Butterflies: The Complete Identification, Field and Site Guide to the Species, Subspecies and Forms is superb, but I was keen to see the original subspecies descriptions and started to find them on the Internet. However, in order to really understand a subspecies description, you also need to understand what comprises the
nominate form. And so I've also been digging into this also - and this has taken a huge chunk of time; looking at more websites than I care to remember. But there are some great resources out there - the top 3 being:
Google Books -
http://books.google.co.uk/
Internet Archive -
http://archive.org/index.php
Biodiversity Heritage Library -
http://www.biodiversitylibrary.org
Having been through this exercise, when I read a reference such as
Esper (1777) it actually means something! In this case, it's a reference to a work that contains the first definition of the Scotch Argus nominate form (
Erebia aethiops aethiops);
Die Schmetterlinge in Abbildungen nach der Natur mit Beschreibungen (also known as
Die europäischen Schmetterlinge) - with the definition at
http://www.archive.org/stream/dieschmet ... 2/mode/1up, and a plate at
http://www.archive.org/stream/dieschmet ... 8/mode/1up. I've had to brush up on Latin, French and German in the process
![Smile :)](./images/smilies/icon_smile.gif)
I'm really amazed at how much good-quality material is out there. Just take a look at the plate above. Or even better, start at the following link and work your way forward; some stunning illustrations:
http://www.archive.org/stream/dieschmet ... 0/mode/1up
I'm glad to say that my first pass through all of the species, subspecies and forms on the British list (including the secondary species) is now complete - some references taking over an hour to track down (really!). I've found the vast majority and have linked them into the website, both within the species descriptions, and on a new "References" page (
http://www.ukbutterflies.co.uk/references.php) where you can access links to the individual descriptions and plates within each reference. As ever, all comments welcome. I now need to track down the missing references, locate actual physical copies of those not freely available online, and then I'll finally be in a position to update the subspecies descriptions, making my life complete
![Very Happy :D](./images/smilies/icon_biggrin.gif)
Until next week, that is.
The reason for posting this in my personal diary is that I do want to revisit my memories of this moment in time at some point. Despite the sheer amount of work involved (it really has been a long hard slog), I've really enjoyed it. Names that I've lived with since my youth, such as Esper, Fabricius, Denis & Schiffermüller, Oberthür, Rottemburg, Verity and, of course, Linnaeus, have all been "brought to life" during my analysis - it's been fascinating just digging into the lives of these luminaries and reading up on the literature they've produced. And this may sound
really weird, but I feel I've definitely made a connection with times gone by and have a renewed appreciation of what the collectors of old have done for our understanding of butterfly fauna today. Although we seem to have moved from paintings to photography, and collecting to conservation! I've also got a real sense of where the entomological centres were - not just London, but also in Germany, France, Sweden, Austria and others. To see that the
type locality for the Common Blue is Germany says it all!
And if you must know - it took me 1 hour and 45 minutes to track down the original naming of the Indian Red Admiral (
Vanessa indica). The main reason for this is that its moniker was inscribed on a plate (not in the text) and most copies of the associated work (
Natursystem aller bekannten in- und ausländischen Insekten), credited to Johann Friedrich Wilhelm Herbst (we're on first name terms now), have had their plates sold off (each plate sells for a few hundred ££) and all of the scanned works available online are missing the plates. It turns out that his collaborator, Carl Gustav Jablonsky, was the Lewington of his time (as well as the private secretary to the Queen of Prussia) and his work in high demand! I even ended up trawling around online artshops and eBay! The plate in question can be found at
http://gdz-srv1.sub.uni-goettingen.de/c ... 000053.jpg. I also include it here to make this post more colourful
![Smile :)](./images/smilies/icon_smile.gif)
Taken from the "Center for Retrospective Digitization, Göttingen" (Seiten des Göttinger Digitalisierungszentrums):
http://gdz.sub.uni-goettingen.de/dms/lo ... =PHYS_0001
Cheers,
- Pete