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. 3 journeys so far, 1973 to 1976, 486 specimens between them.
1 collectors and expeditions67 days in the field5,493 km between stops431 photographed specimens
3 journeys match
J.R. Croft
3 islands of Papua New Guinea · Aug – Oct 1974
J.R. Croft in Lavongai, New Ireland and Fergusson Island, August – October 1974152 specimens · 14 stops · 60 days · 4,346 km
J.R. Croft
3 islands of Papua New Guinea · May – Jun 1973
J.R. Croft in New Britain, Ott Island and Kakolan, May – June 1973185 specimens · 9 stops · 38 days · 542 km
J.R. Croft
3 islands of Papua New Guinea · Nov – Dec 1976
J.R. Croft in Fergusson Island, Normanby Island and Fergusson Island., November – December 1976149 specimens · 8 stops · 39 days · 605 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.