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, 1898 to 1966, 1,290 specimens between them.
6 collectors and expeditions191 days in the field67,526 km between stops1,083 photographed specimens
7 journeys match
F. Raymond Fosberg
14 islands · Mar – Sep 1956
F. Raymond Fosberg across 14 islands, March – September 1956258 specimens · 81 stops · 177 days · 16,398 km
Maxwell S. Doty
32 islands · Jun – Aug 1966
Maxwell S. Doty across 32 islands, June – August 1966360 specimens · 19 stops · 92 days · 24,280 km
L.E. Hair
25 islands · Jun – Aug 1966
L.E. Hair across 25 islands, June – August 1966263 specimens · 10 stops · 73 days · 5,300 km
Maxwell S. Doty
11 islands · Dec 1964 – Feb 1965
Maxwell S. Doty across 11 islands, December 1964 – February 1965158 specimens · 14 stops · 38 days · 6,438 km
T.K. Newell
9 islands · Aug – Nov 1966
T.K. Newell across 9 islands, August – November 1966116 specimens · 27 stops · 91 days · 12,029 km
Harold St.John
Singapore and Penang · May – Jul 1960
Harold St.John in Singapore and Penang, May – July 196082 specimens · 18 stops · 53 days · 3,081 km
M.M. Fleischer
Sri Lanka and Singapore · Feb – Mar 1898
M.M. Fleischer in Sri Lanka and Singapore, February – March 189853 specimens · 16 stops · 43 days
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.