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Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D. C. Registry of Periodical Phenomena.
Washington, D. C., [ca. 1853]. Circular, 12.5” x 7.875”. 4 unnumbered pp. CONDITION: Very good, light soiling to top right corner of p. 1, slight toning and separation along old horizontal fold at p. 4. A circular issued to citizen scientists by the first curator of the Smithsonian, Spencer Fullerton Baird, to collect data on flora and fauna across the U.S.—an effort whose participants included Commodore Matthew Perry, and which coincided with the beginning of Henry David Thoreau’s phenological record-keeping. The first citizen science initiative at the Smithsonian, instigated by its first secretary, Joseph Henry, in 1846, was meteorological; the circular offered here represents another early and ambitious effort on the part of the fledgling institution to collect natural scientific data, this time pertaining to plants (almost 150 of them), birds, reptiles, fish, and insects. The first of these circulars was sent in the spring of 1851 or 1852. An introduction with instructions is printed at the top of the form, below which are the names of species and columns for observers to record the dates of “Leafing,” “Flowering,” “Fructification,” “Arrival in Spring,” “Commencement of nesting,” “First appearance, cries, and general peculiarities of habits,” and so on. The program proved such a success that its organizer, Spencer Fullterton Baird, the first curator of the Smithsonian, “soon wrote that he felt like the sorcerer’s apprentice, who could not stop or even slow the flow of materials into the Institution. But Baird reveled in these relationships, maintaining a personal correspondence with hundreds of volunteers” and sometimes writing more than 6,000 letters to citizen scientists in a year (“Citizen Science”). He and his data collection were helped by the support of his father-in-law, U.S. Army Inspector General Sylvester Churchill, thanks to whose outreach he was joined by such illustrious volunteers as Commodore Matthew Perry and General George McClellan. Baird died in 1887, but despite the increasing professionalization of science, the tradition of amateur correspondents continued, from the young Teddy Roosevelt (who resumed collecting and donating to the Institution after leaving the White House) to the World War II soldiers who submitted South Pacific specimens to Alexander Wetmore, the sixth secretary of the Smithsonian, and beyond. A circular representing one of the earliest citizen science initiatives of the Smithsonian Institution. REFERENCES: “Citizen Science at the Smithsonian” and “Registry of Periodical Phenomena Established” at the Smithsonian Institution Archives online; Dean, Bradley. Wild Fruits : Thoreau’s Rediscovered Last Manuscript (New York: W. W. Norton, 2000), p. x; Sixth Annual Report of the Board of Regents of the Smithsonian Institution (Washington, 1852), p. 42.
Item #10168
On Hold
Price: $475.00
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