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. 7 journeys so far, 1929 to 1981, 2,136 specimens between them.
7 collectors and expeditions253 days in the field65,334 km between stops709 photographed specimens
7 journeys match
Benjamin C. Stone
20 islands · Sep 1957 – Feb 1958
Benjamin C. Stone across 20 islands, September 1957 – February 1958507 specimens · 64 stops · 154 days · 21,480 km
Johnson Randall
12 islands · Jun – Sep 1973
Johnson Randall across 12 islands, June – September 1973770 specimens · 45 stops · 83 days · 15,630 km
J.M. Powell
6 islands · Apr – Jul 1972
J.M. Powell across 6 islands, April – July 1972377 specimens · 34 stops · 109 days · 11,538 km
Gerald R. Allen
7 islands · Jul – Aug 1973
Gerald R. Allen across 7 islands, July – August 1973241 specimens · 22 stops · 48 days · 2,361 km
D. Mueller-Dombois
12 islands · Oct – Dec 1981
D. Mueller-Dombois across 12 islands, October – December 1981139 specimens · 18 stops · 53 days · 3,711 km
J. Barrau
6 islands · Jan – Apr 1958
J. Barrau across 6 islands, January – April 195856 specimens · 22 stops · 81 days · 4,806 km
A.W.C.T. Herre
10 islands · Mar – Jun 1929
A.W.C.T. Herre across 10 islands, March – June 192946 specimens · 15 stops · 93 days · 5,808 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.