J.W. Bond's Insect Collecting Journal 1825-1858.
Nov 4, 2017 11:13:05 GMT
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Post by nomad on Nov 4, 2017 11:13:05 GMT
J.W. Bond's Insect Collecting Journal 1825-1858.
Recently I received a message via the forum from a new member microscopia, who had read some of my articles on the early butterfly collectors. He had acquired a British insect collecting journal written by James William Bond (1803–1887), an individual familiar among antique microscope slide collectors and recognized as one of the earliest slide mounters. The journal consists of 50 pages of records by Bond documenting early 19th century collecting localities in the countryside around London. In his journal Bond provides details of the entomologists who accompanied him during his field trips and some of the insects that he captured. When Bond was writing about the capture of Butterflies he would use the English names of that period. English names were also used for some of the larger moths but for many of the smaller species, Bond used scientific names and this was often the case when referring to species of Coleoptera. In the following parts of this article, I have used both the English vernacular names, accompanied by the correct scientific names.
The journal begins in 1825 and the records are quite comprehensive until 1832. There is a long gap of 17 years before the journal commences again in 1849, with just one record of a field trip that year but Bond was more active in 1850-1851. Then there is another gap until 1857 and the last record in the journal is of a single excursion in 1858.
This early part of Bond's Journal is a valuable historical document and concerns his collecting activities between 1825 and 1832. Many of the localities where Bond and his companions hunted insects have disappeared under the growth of Greater London and its outlying suburbs. Among the localities that Bond mentions in his journal, Darenth Wood in Kent, Coombe Wood in Surrey and Colney Hatch wood in Middlesex were famous collecting grounds and were visited by many well known entomologists, but others such as Hainault Forest, Wanstead Forest, Hackney Marshes & Temple Mills, East Ham & West Ham Marshes, Collier Road Common are less well known and have largely been forgotten.
James William Bond and many of his companions, such as George and Daniel Bydder, H.J. Harding, Sam Plowman and others were not gentleman collectors of the upper and middle classes. They came from the working class and lived in the East End of London. Many of these early London entomologists became very knowledgeable field workers.
Bond and his fellow brothers of the net were among the last entomologists who would enjoy the unspoiled countryside around London. Bond's journal entries between 1849 and 1858 are also full of interest ; already the urban spread of London had swallowed up much of his favourite collecting grounds but with the coming of the industrious revolution, Bond and his companion collectors were able to enjoy a few day excursions in Kent by the new North Kent Railway.
We know more about the author of the journal, J.W. Bond than many of the other entomologists mentioned by him because of his profession as an early microscopic slide producer. Brian Stevenson made a special study of J.W. Bond and is the source of the following details. He was born in Bethnal Green in London in 1803. In 1822 he married Eliza Bragg and their first child was born in 1827 and on the christening record his occupation is given as a weaver, which was also his profession when his next child was born in 1829. By the time of the birth of his fourth child in 1836, he exaggerated his station to that of gentleman perhaps as a result of his contributions to the Entomological Magazine and his interest in microscope preparing. On the birth certificate of his daughter Evelina in 1844, James described himself as being an optician. The term “optician” was applied to anyone who worked with optics or lenses of any sort, including microscopists and photography. His work preparing microscope slides as a business may have limited his amount of time for entomological collecting and this may be the reason for the large gaps in his journal or his interest in collecting may have waned in favour of his new occupation.
Figure 1. A map of London in 1825.
Figure 2. A typical London East End silk weavers house in the early 19th century. Bond and many of his fellow collectors would have lived in a similar dwelling.
Bond sent a series of short articles to Edward Newman the editor of Entomological Magazine that were published in the journal's first edition in 1833, and later he contributed one other note to the journal in 1836 but that is the extent of his contribution to this or any other entomological publication. In spite of being well thought of by John Quekett in the 1850s as a pioneer in the use of balsam as a mounting medium for slides in the 1830s, he never became a member of a related scientific society. In 1836 Bond donated to the Entomological Club a collection of rare British Cerambycidae (Longhorn Beetles). That exclusive society, the oldest surviving Entomological institution in the world, was founded by George Samouelle (c.1790?- 1846)
in 1826 and by its constitution, the club is limited to a membership of eight, and vacancies are filled by invitation.
Bond's first entry in his insect collecting journal is in the winter of February 1825, when he went to one of his favourite collecting localities, Hackney Marsh North of London. He would have made the journey to Hackney Marsh by foot from his terraced house in Shoreditch. The fresh air of the then open countryside of Hackney would have been a welcome relief from his work at the Silk factory.
Although the fathers of British Entomology, the old Aurelians had been active in the 18th century, when Bond started insect collecting in 1825, much was still unknown about British insects. Entomologists at that time still used the strange Clap net, sometimes called the Bat fowler. James Tutt later called this early type of net, "Crude & Clumsy" but Edward Newman would use no other and he and others seem to have been very adapt in its use.
Most of Bond's early field trips to collect insects were on a Sunday, as his job in the silk factory involved long hours, six days a week. James William Bond has all the keen enthusiasm of a beginner and was lucky in that he was helped by a Mr William Weatherhead, a coleopterist and lepidoperist who took keen young entomologists under his wing and accompanied them to collecting localities. At this time, Bond's friend, young H. J. Harding was another enthusiastic entomologist who lived in Shoreditch. H. J. Harding first went on a collecting trip with Weatherhead when he was just 15 and was instructed in the arts of entomology. Weatherhead's first tution in entomology was to take his young friends to Colney Hatch Wood, situated to the north of London. Bond collected all insects especially moths but probably at the instigation of Weatherhead he became a keen beetle collector. In Spitalfields, close to Shoreditch in the East End of London, lived the father and son collectors, George and Daniel Bydder. George Bydder also helped young entomologists such as Bond. Daniel Bydder worked in the silk factories and became a skilled field entomologist who in 1812 was employed by Simon Wilkins, a wealthy landowner in Norfolk to collect insects in the New Forest. Here Bydder discovered a number of special insects of the forest, including The Cicada, Cicadetta montana which is now extinct.
Daniel Bydder like his father would at times become a collecting companion of both Bond and Harding. Two local collectors who were friends of Bond were the two Plowmans, Senior and Sam junior and there were others such as Mr Gogay. Many of Bond's later visits to North Kent were in the company of a Mr Williams. There was certainly a thriving entomological community in the East End of London, which eventually resulted in the forming of the Hagglestone Entomology Society in 1858, which would later become the London Natural History Society that is still flourishing today. A few years later the East End Entomological Society was formed and attracted a large number of Spitalfield weavers to its ranks. By the time these early Entomological Societies appeared, Bond's main interest as his journal suggests was then largely elsewhere. Bond's friend H.J. Harding who also lived in Shoreditch and is often mentioned in his Journals, became a professional field collector and was a well known figure in entomological circles of the middle part of the 19th century. By 1860 Harding became the president of the Hagglestone Entomological Society.
Early Collecting methods.
Richard Ford who took over the well known entomological Supplier of Watkins and Doncaster, once said that anybody without any knowledge of moth collecting or field craft could buy a Robinson mercury vapour moth trap and form a large collection, without any real interest in the life cycles or the habitats of the moths that they pinned into their store boxes and cabinets. This was very different to the activities of the early entomologists. At the time that Bond, Harding, Bydder and their friends started collecting, it was not generally known that light attracted moths in any numbers. The lighting on London streets in the 1820s-1830s consisted of gas lights but most homes used either candles or oil lights. Sugaring for moths, adding bait to tree trunks had yet to be discovered. So how did these early collectors obtain their moths specimens. For many of the larger showy moths, they diligently searched the foodplants for their caterpillars. Bonds journal is full of searching for Drinker Moths, Garden & Cream Spot Tigers, Eyed and Poplar Hawk Moth larvae etc. Bond would have quickly gained a knowledge of the foodplants of the larvae he was hunting for. The most popular method for obtaining larva and other small insects was to beat the foliage of trees using a home made beating tray or an old umbrella. It was also well know by Bond and his fellow collectors that the Geometer moths could be disturbed by beating the foliage and vegetation during the daytime and other many choice moths could be found at rest by searching the tree trunks. Another favourite collecting method rarely used nowadays was to dig for pupa around the bases of trees during the winter.
Returning from his fields trips in the spring and summer, William Bond's collecting tins were often full of specimens and caterpillars. At the height of the collecting season every conceivable space in his house and small yard must have been full of breeding cages with many larvae and chrysalises. Bond became soon became adapt at collecting the Coleoptera, especially the rare longhorns that occurred among the oaks and hornbeams in the huge medieval forest of Hainault in Essex, which became his favourite hunting ground for these insects. Often while visiting localities, Bond would meet other friends and acquaintances there while hunting for insects. Bond certainly collected rare insects, some of which, today are sadly extinct, however the charm of his journal, is that it is not just a list of rare species, but his satisfaction at bringing home the more frequent species as well, an entomological journey that many of us have shared, but in a much less green and pleasant land.
Travel.
In his early collecting days, many of the localities that Bond visited were probably reached by foot. In the 19th the roads outside of London were notorious for their bad state of repair, being deep and rutted and in places filled with water. The work of a skilled silk weaver in the 1820s, was comparatively well paid, more than double the almost poverty stricken and starvation wage of the 6 or 7 shillings earned by an agricultural labourer. However, after 1826 the weaving industry in London suffered a deep recession. It is likely that Bond had little or no schooling and went into the factories at an early age, perhaps as early as seven or eight years of age. He may have had to teach himself to read and write. The earlier part of Bond's Journal is full of information regarding 19th century inns where he mentioned he stopped, but how he reached these public houses, he neglects to say. Such enthusiastic collectors as Bond and his companions would have thought little about walking long distances to collecting localities and returning by the same method. In May 1826, when Bond's friend H.J. Harding set out for Whittlesea Mere, he did so on foot, finally hitching a ride with a waggoneer. On his return journey Harding had to walk the 80 miles back to London with a large box full of his collecting equipment and his collection of many swallowtail butterflies. Sometimes it seems, Bond was able to afford the fair for the stage coach or early horse drawn omnibus, for by 1829 Bond used steam packet ferries on a few occasions to visit North Kent. The decline of the weaving trade almost certainly prompted intelligent men such as Bond to seek a living elsewhere and his slide business seems to have began at some point in the 1830s. Later from 1851 Bond and his companions used the new North Kent Railway to visit localities in northern part of that county. Bond seems to have had a wide range of interests and in 1848 joined the list of subscribers to John Ralfs’ 1848 book, The British Desmidieae.
Next. A series of articles on the collecting localities and some of the insects captured by James William Bond.
Recently I received a message via the forum from a new member microscopia, who had read some of my articles on the early butterfly collectors. He had acquired a British insect collecting journal written by James William Bond (1803–1887), an individual familiar among antique microscope slide collectors and recognized as one of the earliest slide mounters. The journal consists of 50 pages of records by Bond documenting early 19th century collecting localities in the countryside around London. In his journal Bond provides details of the entomologists who accompanied him during his field trips and some of the insects that he captured. When Bond was writing about the capture of Butterflies he would use the English names of that period. English names were also used for some of the larger moths but for many of the smaller species, Bond used scientific names and this was often the case when referring to species of Coleoptera. In the following parts of this article, I have used both the English vernacular names, accompanied by the correct scientific names.
The journal begins in 1825 and the records are quite comprehensive until 1832. There is a long gap of 17 years before the journal commences again in 1849, with just one record of a field trip that year but Bond was more active in 1850-1851. Then there is another gap until 1857 and the last record in the journal is of a single excursion in 1858.
This early part of Bond's Journal is a valuable historical document and concerns his collecting activities between 1825 and 1832. Many of the localities where Bond and his companions hunted insects have disappeared under the growth of Greater London and its outlying suburbs. Among the localities that Bond mentions in his journal, Darenth Wood in Kent, Coombe Wood in Surrey and Colney Hatch wood in Middlesex were famous collecting grounds and were visited by many well known entomologists, but others such as Hainault Forest, Wanstead Forest, Hackney Marshes & Temple Mills, East Ham & West Ham Marshes, Collier Road Common are less well known and have largely been forgotten.
James William Bond and many of his companions, such as George and Daniel Bydder, H.J. Harding, Sam Plowman and others were not gentleman collectors of the upper and middle classes. They came from the working class and lived in the East End of London. Many of these early London entomologists became very knowledgeable field workers.
Bond and his fellow brothers of the net were among the last entomologists who would enjoy the unspoiled countryside around London. Bond's journal entries between 1849 and 1858 are also full of interest ; already the urban spread of London had swallowed up much of his favourite collecting grounds but with the coming of the industrious revolution, Bond and his companion collectors were able to enjoy a few day excursions in Kent by the new North Kent Railway.
We know more about the author of the journal, J.W. Bond than many of the other entomologists mentioned by him because of his profession as an early microscopic slide producer. Brian Stevenson made a special study of J.W. Bond and is the source of the following details. He was born in Bethnal Green in London in 1803. In 1822 he married Eliza Bragg and their first child was born in 1827 and on the christening record his occupation is given as a weaver, which was also his profession when his next child was born in 1829. By the time of the birth of his fourth child in 1836, he exaggerated his station to that of gentleman perhaps as a result of his contributions to the Entomological Magazine and his interest in microscope preparing. On the birth certificate of his daughter Evelina in 1844, James described himself as being an optician. The term “optician” was applied to anyone who worked with optics or lenses of any sort, including microscopists and photography. His work preparing microscope slides as a business may have limited his amount of time for entomological collecting and this may be the reason for the large gaps in his journal or his interest in collecting may have waned in favour of his new occupation.
Figure 1. A map of London in 1825.
Figure 2. A typical London East End silk weavers house in the early 19th century. Bond and many of his fellow collectors would have lived in a similar dwelling.
Bond sent a series of short articles to Edward Newman the editor of Entomological Magazine that were published in the journal's first edition in 1833, and later he contributed one other note to the journal in 1836 but that is the extent of his contribution to this or any other entomological publication. In spite of being well thought of by John Quekett in the 1850s as a pioneer in the use of balsam as a mounting medium for slides in the 1830s, he never became a member of a related scientific society. In 1836 Bond donated to the Entomological Club a collection of rare British Cerambycidae (Longhorn Beetles). That exclusive society, the oldest surviving Entomological institution in the world, was founded by George Samouelle (c.1790?- 1846)
in 1826 and by its constitution, the club is limited to a membership of eight, and vacancies are filled by invitation.
Bond's first entry in his insect collecting journal is in the winter of February 1825, when he went to one of his favourite collecting localities, Hackney Marsh North of London. He would have made the journey to Hackney Marsh by foot from his terraced house in Shoreditch. The fresh air of the then open countryside of Hackney would have been a welcome relief from his work at the Silk factory.
Although the fathers of British Entomology, the old Aurelians had been active in the 18th century, when Bond started insect collecting in 1825, much was still unknown about British insects. Entomologists at that time still used the strange Clap net, sometimes called the Bat fowler. James Tutt later called this early type of net, "Crude & Clumsy" but Edward Newman would use no other and he and others seem to have been very adapt in its use.
Most of Bond's early field trips to collect insects were on a Sunday, as his job in the silk factory involved long hours, six days a week. James William Bond has all the keen enthusiasm of a beginner and was lucky in that he was helped by a Mr William Weatherhead, a coleopterist and lepidoperist who took keen young entomologists under his wing and accompanied them to collecting localities. At this time, Bond's friend, young H. J. Harding was another enthusiastic entomologist who lived in Shoreditch. H. J. Harding first went on a collecting trip with Weatherhead when he was just 15 and was instructed in the arts of entomology. Weatherhead's first tution in entomology was to take his young friends to Colney Hatch Wood, situated to the north of London. Bond collected all insects especially moths but probably at the instigation of Weatherhead he became a keen beetle collector. In Spitalfields, close to Shoreditch in the East End of London, lived the father and son collectors, George and Daniel Bydder. George Bydder also helped young entomologists such as Bond. Daniel Bydder worked in the silk factories and became a skilled field entomologist who in 1812 was employed by Simon Wilkins, a wealthy landowner in Norfolk to collect insects in the New Forest. Here Bydder discovered a number of special insects of the forest, including The Cicada, Cicadetta montana which is now extinct.
Daniel Bydder like his father would at times become a collecting companion of both Bond and Harding. Two local collectors who were friends of Bond were the two Plowmans, Senior and Sam junior and there were others such as Mr Gogay. Many of Bond's later visits to North Kent were in the company of a Mr Williams. There was certainly a thriving entomological community in the East End of London, which eventually resulted in the forming of the Hagglestone Entomology Society in 1858, which would later become the London Natural History Society that is still flourishing today. A few years later the East End Entomological Society was formed and attracted a large number of Spitalfield weavers to its ranks. By the time these early Entomological Societies appeared, Bond's main interest as his journal suggests was then largely elsewhere. Bond's friend H.J. Harding who also lived in Shoreditch and is often mentioned in his Journals, became a professional field collector and was a well known figure in entomological circles of the middle part of the 19th century. By 1860 Harding became the president of the Hagglestone Entomological Society.
Early Collecting methods.
Richard Ford who took over the well known entomological Supplier of Watkins and Doncaster, once said that anybody without any knowledge of moth collecting or field craft could buy a Robinson mercury vapour moth trap and form a large collection, without any real interest in the life cycles or the habitats of the moths that they pinned into their store boxes and cabinets. This was very different to the activities of the early entomologists. At the time that Bond, Harding, Bydder and their friends started collecting, it was not generally known that light attracted moths in any numbers. The lighting on London streets in the 1820s-1830s consisted of gas lights but most homes used either candles or oil lights. Sugaring for moths, adding bait to tree trunks had yet to be discovered. So how did these early collectors obtain their moths specimens. For many of the larger showy moths, they diligently searched the foodplants for their caterpillars. Bonds journal is full of searching for Drinker Moths, Garden & Cream Spot Tigers, Eyed and Poplar Hawk Moth larvae etc. Bond would have quickly gained a knowledge of the foodplants of the larvae he was hunting for. The most popular method for obtaining larva and other small insects was to beat the foliage of trees using a home made beating tray or an old umbrella. It was also well know by Bond and his fellow collectors that the Geometer moths could be disturbed by beating the foliage and vegetation during the daytime and other many choice moths could be found at rest by searching the tree trunks. Another favourite collecting method rarely used nowadays was to dig for pupa around the bases of trees during the winter.
Returning from his fields trips in the spring and summer, William Bond's collecting tins were often full of specimens and caterpillars. At the height of the collecting season every conceivable space in his house and small yard must have been full of breeding cages with many larvae and chrysalises. Bond became soon became adapt at collecting the Coleoptera, especially the rare longhorns that occurred among the oaks and hornbeams in the huge medieval forest of Hainault in Essex, which became his favourite hunting ground for these insects. Often while visiting localities, Bond would meet other friends and acquaintances there while hunting for insects. Bond certainly collected rare insects, some of which, today are sadly extinct, however the charm of his journal, is that it is not just a list of rare species, but his satisfaction at bringing home the more frequent species as well, an entomological journey that many of us have shared, but in a much less green and pleasant land.
Travel.
In his early collecting days, many of the localities that Bond visited were probably reached by foot. In the 19th the roads outside of London were notorious for their bad state of repair, being deep and rutted and in places filled with water. The work of a skilled silk weaver in the 1820s, was comparatively well paid, more than double the almost poverty stricken and starvation wage of the 6 or 7 shillings earned by an agricultural labourer. However, after 1826 the weaving industry in London suffered a deep recession. It is likely that Bond had little or no schooling and went into the factories at an early age, perhaps as early as seven or eight years of age. He may have had to teach himself to read and write. The earlier part of Bond's Journal is full of information regarding 19th century inns where he mentioned he stopped, but how he reached these public houses, he neglects to say. Such enthusiastic collectors as Bond and his companions would have thought little about walking long distances to collecting localities and returning by the same method. In May 1826, when Bond's friend H.J. Harding set out for Whittlesea Mere, he did so on foot, finally hitching a ride with a waggoneer. On his return journey Harding had to walk the 80 miles back to London with a large box full of his collecting equipment and his collection of many swallowtail butterflies. Sometimes it seems, Bond was able to afford the fair for the stage coach or early horse drawn omnibus, for by 1829 Bond used steam packet ferries on a few occasions to visit North Kent. The decline of the weaving trade almost certainly prompted intelligent men such as Bond to seek a living elsewhere and his slide business seems to have began at some point in the 1830s. Later from 1851 Bond and his companions used the new North Kent Railway to visit localities in northern part of that county. Bond seems to have had a wide range of interests and in 1848 joined the list of subscribers to John Ralfs’ 1848 book, The British Desmidieae.
Next. A series of articles on the collecting localities and some of the insects captured by James William Bond.