Journeys
The expeditions, reassembled
Every dated label is a diary entry. Read a collector’s labels in order and the voyage comes back: the islands in sequence, the days at each, the specimens from every stop. 11 journeys so far, 1903 to 1981, 3,475 specimens between them.
9 collectors and expeditions538 days in the field186,822 km between stops2,395 photographed specimens
11 journeys match
Leonard J. Brass
13 islands · Jul 1932 – Jan 1933
Leonard J. Brass across 13 islands, July 1932 – January 1933816 specimens · 69 stops · 206 days · 10,057 km
Grady L. Webster
10 islands · Jun – Sep 1968
Grady L. Webster across 10 islands, June – September 1968510 specimens · 60 stops · 111 days · 38,525 km
M.M. Fleischer
13 islands · Feb – Jun 1903
M.M. Fleischer across 13 islands, February – June 1903411 specimens · 33 stops · 113 days · 52,279 km
Harold St.John
11 islands · Oct 1957 – Feb 1958
Harold St.John across 11 islands, October 1957 – February 1958325 specimens · 61 stops · 125 days · 23,583 km
Leonard J. Brass
5 islands · Jan – May 1932
Leonard J. Brass across 5 islands, January – May 1932291 specimens · 44 stops · 120 days · 1,876 km
Richard Hildreth
6 islands · Jul – Sep 1968
Richard Hildreth across 6 islands, July – September 1968322 specimens · 44 stops · 75 days · 8,666 km
Benjamin C. Stone
7 islands · Mar – Sep 1971
Benjamin C. Stone across 7 islands, March – September 1971236 specimens · 43 stops · 182 days · 10,793 km
H.U. Stauffer
10 islands · Dec 1963 – Apr 1964
H.U. Stauffer across 10 islands, December 1963 – April 1964165 specimens · 43 stops · 140 days · 17,939 km
Benjamin C. Stone
5 islands · Jul – Sep 1981
Benjamin C. Stone across 5 islands, July – September 1981220 specimens · 21 stops · 49 days · 9,878 km
F. Raymond Fosberg
8 islands · Sep – Oct 1960
F. Raymond Fosberg across 8 islands, September – October 1960112 specimens · 22 stops · 56 days · 12,270 km
Judson Linsley Gressitt
New Guinea · Aug – Dec 1958
Judson Linsley Gressitt in New Guinea, August – December 195867 specimens · 26 stops · 110 days · 956 km
How a journey is found
Every specimen with a full date (year, month and day; a bare “1 January” is treated as a missing day) and a named collector is a diary entry. For each collector the days are read in order, each day given the place most of its labels name. The place where a collector spent more than forty percent of their days, and at least sixty of them, is home: days there are left out.
A gap of more than 21 days between collecting days ends one journey and begins the next. A journey must run five to four hundred days, hold at least forty specimens and touch at least two places. Within it, consecutive days inside the same or a neighbouring tenth-of-a-degree cell (about eleven kilometres) are one stop; the stop’s point is the mean of its labels’ coordinates, or the island’s centre when none carry any.
Companions are collectors whose own labels put them in the same cell on the same days. Staff can name a journey, write about it, feature it or hide it; those words survive every rebuild. Everything else is read off the specimens and rebuilt by harvest.mjs expeditions as the records improve.