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, 1924 to 1957, 6,528 specimens between them.
5 collectors and expeditions301 days in the field87,256 km between stops5,059 photographed specimens
5 journeys match



Clarence H. Cooke Jr.
26 islands · Apr – Oct 1934
Clarence H. Cooke Jr. across 26 islands, April – October 19343,369 specimens · 39 stops · 184 days · 14,736 km
F. Raymond Fosberg
32 islands · Apr – Oct 1934
F. Raymond Fosberg across 32 islands, April – October 19342,503 specimens · 85 stops · 201 days · 23,387 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


Gerrit Parmele Wilder
18 islands · Nov 1924 – May 1925
Gerrit Parmele Wilder across 18 islands, November 1924 – May 1925244 specimens · 43 stops · 188 days · 15,411 km
Johnson Randall
5 islands · Feb – May 1956
Johnson Randall across 5 islands, February – May 1956111 specimens · 14 stops · 108 days · 128 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.
