All but one are member of large groups that are represented everywhere and anywhere, though collected here. That one is not rare, but it is interesting…
Tag: Collecting
Obscure Objects of Desire
Nobody NEEDS any of these, and my chances of getting any range from possible to slim to no way on earth, but as an over- the- top wish list… From Aero Art, who do remarkable military miniatures (I have a Mongol drummer on a Bactrian camel and a Mogul warrior with a monitor lizard), comes …
Old- Fashioned Ornithology
Before there was Birding, there was Collecting, with a shotgun. Many people don’t realize that type specimens still must be collected to be valid; even a blood sample for DNA is not considered sufficient. And skins of common birds that die are useful for education, and as beautiful as a kind of mortal art. The …
Art, Science, Insect Hunting, and Nabokov
John Wilson’s butterfly photos remind me of one of the great neglected stories of 20th century intellectual life; that Vladimir Nabokov was not just a writer and teacher but a great taxonomist, this despite being denigrated as a dilettante in his time. Joseph Conrad is legitimately revered for becoming a great English novelist in his …
Two old (or old- fashioned) naturalists, and new photo series
Two old farts in the bar courtyard. John Wilson is an old style bug catching (or photographing) “stamp collector” naturalist like me, an Ohioan who retired from an Audubon sanctuary there to a remote homestead in the Mags– somebody I can talk bugs, birds, and taxonomy with! Luckily he likes beer too. I am starting …
Lawrence’s bookplate
…. free- associating here, for Pluvi: my almost accidentally acquired rebound copy of Norman Douglas’s Together, from T.E.L.’s library. I picked it up in Berkeley 20 years ago for nothing; when I pointed at the plate and asked why so cheap, the clerk replied that I was the first person in five years to notice… …