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. 2 journeys so far, 1951 to 1956, 905 specimens between them.
2 collectors and expeditions108 days in the field25,488 km between stops430 photographed specimens
2 journeys match
F. Raymond Fosberg
21 islands · Nov 1951 – Apr 1952
F. Raymond Fosberg across 21 islands, November 1951 – April 1952672 specimens · 57 stops · 145 days · 13,644 km
Benjamin C. Stone
13 islands · Nov 1955 – Feb 1956
Benjamin C. Stone across 13 islands, November 1955 – February 1956233 specimens · 36 stops · 93 days · 11,844 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.