By Emily Tilby
During my time as an Undergraduate I spent several weeks as an intern in the Archives of the Oxford University Museum of Natural History, cataloguing and digitising the letters of the prominent naturalist James Charles Dale (1792-1872). Dale’s particular interest was entomology, and his letters and notebooks give an insight into the life and work of an early 19th-century entomologist. Whilst the lists of species and their locations will perhaps be the details most useful to modern ecologists and entomologists, it was the details of every day life and the interactions between rival naturalists that I found most interesting. One particularly notable example is a description of how a rival group of entomologists tracked a friend of Dale around the country, even taking up lodgings in the same house as him, in order to keep an eye on the collecting abilities of their rival.
Image: The Lulworth Skipper, the most famous discovery by Dale. Public domain via Pixabay – https://pixabay.com/en/butterfly-thistle-insect-2464839/.
Doing History in Public 