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. 5 journeys so far, 1950 to 1957, 1,286 specimens between them.
5 collectors and expeditions205 days in the field182,282 km between stops543 photographed specimens
5 journeys match
F. Raymond Fosberg
5 islands · Nov 1953 – Feb 1954
F. Raymond Fosberg across 5 islands, November 1953 – February 1954343 specimens · 50 stops · 83 days · 28,095 km
Maxwell S. Doty
11 islands · Sep 1953 – Aug 1954
Maxwell S. Doty across 11 islands, September 1953 – August 1954309 specimens · 40 stops · 315 days · 78,333 km
Benjamin C. Stone
22 islands · Feb – Aug 1957
Benjamin C. Stone across 22 islands, February – August 1957301 specimens · 47 stops · 169 days · 33,594 km
Donald Anderson
8 islands · Apr – Jun 1950
Donald Anderson across 8 islands, April – June 1950193 specimens · 19 stops · 54 days · 16,195 km
Harold St.John
16 islands · Jun – Aug 1956
Harold St.John across 16 islands, June – August 1956140 specimens · 31 stops · 69 days · 26,065 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.