“NARRATIVE HISTORY” AMOUNTS TO FABULATION, THE REAL STUFF BEING MERE CHRONOLOGY
“Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project William MacGillivray HDT WHAT? INDEX
WILLIAM MACGILLIVRAY WILLIAM MACGILLIVRAY
1796
January 25, Monday: William MacGillivray was born in Aberdeen, Scotland, the product of William MacGillivray upon Ann Wishart out of wedlock. We are unable to track the father and one possibility is that while a “Cameron Highlanders” fighting in the Peninsular wars, he was one of the battle casualties. This child would be brought up on the isle of Harris off the north coast of Scotland by the family of the father and would then as an adult go to reside in Edinburgh. Bastardy would seem to have been consequential as, although Charles Darwin would in private notations make reference to MacGillivray as “accurate,” we also can now observe that there had been a side comment by the gentleman naturalist of Down — that this ornithologist with whom he had dealings was not in possession of “the manners or appearance of a gentleman.”
NOBODY COULD GUESS WHAT WOULD HAPPEN NEXT
William MacGillivray “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project HDT WHAT? INDEX
WILLIAM MACGILLIVRAY WILLIAM MACGILLIVRAY
1815
William MacGillivray graduated from King’s College at Aberdeen. He would attempt but not complete the course in medicine, deciding that instead he would “devote his attention exclusively to natural history.” Back home on the island of Harris to the north of Scotland, he would for a period teach at his old school, while studying a dead walrus, and while stuffing a bear he had been asked to kill.
LIFE IS LIVED FORWARD BUT UNDERSTOOD BACKWARD? — NO, THAT’S GIVING TOO MUCH TO THE HISTORIAN’S STORIES. LIFE ISN’T TO BE UNDERSTOOD EITHER FORWARD OR BACKWARD.
“Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project William MacGillivray HDT WHAT? INDEX
WILLIAM MACGILLIVRAY WILLIAM MACGILLIVRAY
1819
William MacGillivray made a hiking pilgrimage to the British Museum in London, to inspect its bird collections (collections that today are at the Natural History Museum). Along the way, due to lack of funds, he would sleep in hedges.
THE FUTURE IS MOST READILY PREDICTED IN RETROSPECT
“Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project William MacGillivray HDT WHAT? INDEX
WILLIAM MACGILLIVRAY WILLIAM MACGILLIVRAY
1823
At the University of Edinburgh, William MacGillivray became a curator assistant to Robert Jameson, Regius Professor of Natural History. While in this post he would get married, with Marion Macaskill (this couple would produce 13 offspring).
THE FUTURE CAN BE EASILY PREDICTED IN RETROSPECT
“Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project William MacGillivray HDT WHAT? INDEX
WILLIAM MACGILLIVRAY WILLIAM MACGILLIVRAY
1830
William MacGillivray’s revision of W.H. Withering’s A SYSTEMATIC ARRANGEMENT OF BRITISH PLANTS. A friend of John James Audubon, from this year to 1839 would be writing extensively for the projected ORNITHOLOGICAL BIOGRAPHY, OR AN ACCOUNT OF THE HABITS OF THE BIRDS OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA; ACCOMPANIED BY DESCRIPTIONS OF THE OBJECTS REPRESENTED IN THE WORK ENTITLED THE BIRDS OF AMERICA, AND INTERSPERSED WITH DELINEATIONS OF AMERICAN SCENERY AND MANNERS. BY JOHN JAMES AUDUBON.... I feel pleasure in here acknowledging the assistance ... received from ... Mr. William Macgillivray ... in completing the scientific details ... of my ornithological biographies. — Author’s “Introductory address,” pages xviii-xix
(Audubon named the “MacGillivray’s Warbler” in his honor)
During the 1830s MacGillivray would be serving as the editor of the Edinburgh Journal of Natural History and Physical Science, would be serving as the conservator of the Museum of the Royal College of Surgeons and compiling for them a new catalogue, and would contribute the section on web-footed birds to the 7th edition of ENCYCLOPAEDIA BRITANNICA. HDT WHAT? INDEX
WILLIAM MACGILLIVRAY WILLIAM MACGILLIVRAY
1831
William MacGillivray became curator of the museum of the Royal College of Surgeons of Edinburgh.
DO I HAVE YOUR ATTENTION? GOOD.
William MacGillivray “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project HDT WHAT? INDEX
WILLIAM MACGILLIVRAY WILLIAM MACGILLIVRAY
1832
Professor Thomas Nuttall reported in the initial volume, on land birds, of his A MANUAL OF THE ORNITHOLOGY OF THE UNITED STATES AND OF CANADA (Cambridge: Hilliard and Brown; Boston: Hilliard, Gray), that according to Governor Winthrop, the “Pinnated Grous” [Heath Hen Tympanuchus cupido cupido] had been “so common on the ancient brushy site of Boston, that laboring people or servants stipulated with their employers not to have the Heath-Hen brought to table oftener than a few times in the week!”
NUTTALL’S LAND BIRDS
John James Audubon traveled to Florida. Meanwhile, in Edinburgh, the firm of A. Black was issuing the initial HDT WHAT? INDEX
WILLIAM MACGILLIVRAY WILLIAM MACGILLIVRAY HDT WHAT? INDEX
WILLIAM MACGILLIVRAY WILLIAM MACGILLIVRAY
volume of the 5-volume ORNITHOLOGICAL BIOGRAPHY, OR AN ACCOUNT OF THE HABITS OF THE BIRDS OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA; ACCOMPANIED BY DESCRIPTIONS OF THE OBJECTS REPRESENTED IN THE WORK ENTITLED THE BIRDS OF AMERICA, AND INTERSPERSED WITH DELINEATIONS OF AMERICAN SCENERY AND MANNERS. BY JOHN JAMES AUDUBON.... I feel pleasure in here acknowledging the assistance ... received from ... Mr. William Macgillivray ... in completing the scientific details ... of my ornithological biographies. — Author’s “Introductory address,” pages xviii-xix1
Here is a review of this initial volume, which appeared during May: REVIEW OF THE BOOK
And here is this initial Audubon volume, in its entirety: ORNITHO. BIOG. VOL. I
Volumes 2 through 5 would be published in Edinburgh by A. & C. Black, Volume 2 in 1834, Volume 3 in 1835, Volume 4 in 1838 (the title of this 4th volume would be ORNITHOLOGICAL BIOGRAPHY, OR AN ACCOUNT OF THE HABITS OF THE BIRDS OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, ACCOMPANIED BY DESCRIPTIONS OF THE OBJECTS REPRESENTED IN THE WORK ENTITLED BIRDS OF AMERICA, TOGETHER WITH AN ACCOUNT OF THE DIGESTIVE ORGANS OF MANY OF THE SPECIES, ILLUSTRATED BY ENGRAVINGS ON WOOD....), and Volume 5 in 1839.
The initial folio edition of THE BIRDS OF AMERICA was being published meanwhile, made up of the images only without text. This initial volume of ORNITHOLOGICAL BIOGRAPHY describing plates I-C, Volume 2 describing plates CI-CC, Volume 3 describing plates CCI-CCC, Volume 4 describing plates CCCI- CCCLXXXVII, and Volume 5 describing plates CCCLXXXVIII-CCCCXXXV and in addition containing, on pages 305-336, “Descriptions of species found in North America, but not figured in the BIRDS OF AMERICA,” and, on pages 337-646, “Appendix: comprising additional observations on the habits, geographical distribution, and anatomical structure of the birds described in this work; together with corrections of errors relative to the species.”
(Later, in followup editions entitled THE BIRDS OF AMERICA, FROM DRAWINGS MADE IN THE UNITED STATES AND THEIR TERRITORIES, Audubon would marry text with images.)
October: William MacGillivray’s THE TRAVELS AND RESEARCHES OF ALEXANDER VON HUMBOLDT; BEING A CONDENSED NARRATIVE OF HIS JOURNEYS IN THE EQUINOCTIAL REGIONS OF AMERICA, AND IN ASIATIC RUSSIA: — TOGETHER WITH ANALYSES OF HIS MORE IMPORTANT INVESTIGATIONS. MACGILLIVRAY ON HUMBOLDT
1. Later on, better situated ornithologists would be able to charge that this upstart was plagiarizing from Audubon’s famous ORNITHOLOGICAL BIOGRAPHY when the passages in question had in fact originated as his own writing (so goes the world). HDT WHAT? INDEX
WILLIAM MACGILLIVRAY WILLIAM MACGILLIVRAY HDT WHAT? INDEX
WILLIAM MACGILLIVRAY WILLIAM MACGILLIVRAY
1833
William MacGillivray illustrated Henry Witham’s THE INTERNAL STRUCTURE OF FOSSIL VEGETABLES FOUND IN THE CARBONIFEROUS AND OOLITIC DEPOSITS OF GREAT BRITAIN.
CHANGE IS ETERNITY, STASIS A FIGMENT
William MacGillivray “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project HDT WHAT? INDEX
WILLIAM MACGILLIVRAY WILLIAM MACGILLIVRAY
1834
June: William MacGillivray’s LIVES OF EMINENT ZOOLOGISTS, FROM ARISTOTLE TO LINNÆUS: WITH INTRODUCTORY REMARKS ON THE STUDY OF NATURAL HISTORY, AND OCCASIONAL OBSERVATIONS ON THE PROGRESS OF ZOOLOGY. FROM ARISTOTLE TO LINNAEUS
The zoologists considered were Aristotle, Pliny the Elder, Conrad Gesner, Pierre Belon, Hippolito Salviani, Guillaume Rondelet, Ulysses Aldrovandi, John Jonson, John Goedard, Francis Redi, John Swammerdam, the Reverend John Ray, René Antoine Ferchault de Reaumur, and Charles Linné or Carolus Linnæus. HDT WHAT? INDEX
WILLIAM MACGILLIVRAY WILLIAM MACGILLIVRAY
1837
William MacGillivray’s A HISTORY OF BRITISH BIRDS, INDIGENOUS AND MIGRATORY, in five volumes the final one of which would not appear until 1852. HDT WHAT? INDEX
WILLIAM MACGILLIVRAY WILLIAM MACGILLIVRAY
1838
William MacGillivray’s A HISTORY OF BRITISH QUADRUPEDS. HDT WHAT? INDEX
WILLIAM MACGILLIVRAY WILLIAM MACGILLIVRAY
1840
William MacGillivray’s A MANUAL OF BOTANY, COMPRISING VEGETABLE ANATOMY AND PHYSIOLOGY. From this year into 1842, his A MANUAL OF BRITISH ORNITHOLOGY. HDT WHAT? INDEX
WILLIAM MACGILLIVRAY WILLIAM MACGILLIVRAY
1841
William MacGillivray resigned as curator of the museum of the Royal College of Surgeons of Edinburgh to become Regius Chair of Natural History at Marischal College in Aberdeen, Scotland (his 1st academic appointment). HDT WHAT? INDEX
WILLIAM MACGILLIVRAY WILLIAM MACGILLIVRAY
1843
William MacGillivray’s A HISTORY OF THE MOLLUSCOUS ANIMALS OF ABERDEEN, BANFF AND KINCARDINE. HDT WHAT? INDEX
WILLIAM MACGILLIVRAY WILLIAM MACGILLIVRAY
1852
William MacGillivray’s eldest son John MacGillivray (1822-1867) published an account of the voyage round the world of HMS Rattlesnake, aboard which he had been the naturalist, as NARRATIVE OF THE VOYAGE OF H.M.S. RATTLESNAKE, COMMANDED BY THE LATE CAPTAIN OWEN STANLEY, R.N., F.R.S. ETC. DURING THE YEARS 1846-1850. INCLUDING DISCOVERIES AND SURVEYS IN NEW GUINEA, THE LOUISIADE ARCHIPELAGO, ETC. TO WHICH IS ADDED THE ACCOUNT OF MR. E.B. KENNEDY'S EXPEDITION FOR THE EXPLORATION OF THE CAPE YORK PENINSULA. BY JOHN MACGILLIVRAY, F.R.G.S. NATURALIST TO THE EXPEDITION. IN TWO VOLUMES.2 HMS RATTLESNAKE, I HMS RATTLESNAKE, II
WHAT I’M WRITING IS TRUE BUT NEVER MIND YOU CAN ALWAYS LIE TO YOURSELF
2. After abandoning his sick wife and children in London, and then being dismissed from a similar post aboard a research vessel, this man would die as a hopeless unknown drunkard. HDT WHAT? INDEX
WILLIAM MACGILLIVRAY WILLIAM MACGILLIVRAY
September 4, Saturday: The Chambers’ Edinburgh Journal carried a synopsis of the introduction to Harriet Beecher Stowe’s UNCLE TOM’S CABIN:
READ THE FULL TEXT
Edmund James Banfield, the “beachcomber of Dunk Island,” was born in Liverpool, England. He would be taken by his family to Australia during the years of gold fever.
William MacGillivray had been working on a natural history of Deeside and Braemar in Scotland which he would not himself be able to get published, and in the process had fallen ill (also, his wife Marion Askill MacGillivray, mother of the couple’s 13 children, had recently succumbed). On this day he died at the age of 56 in Aberdeen. The body would be placed in Edinburgh’s New Calton cemetery. Testament of Dr William MacGillivray At Aberdeen the Thirteenth day of December, in the Year one thousand Eight hundred and fifty two. In presence of Archibald Davidson Esquire Advocate, Commissary of the Commissariot of Aberdeen Compeared John Clark Advocate in Aberdeen as procurator, and gave in the Testament underwritten, of the after designed now deceased Doctor William MacGillivray, and craved that the Same might (along with the Inventory of the said deceased’s personal Estate) be insert and registered in the Commissary Court Books of Aberdeen, in terms of the Acts of Parliament 44 Geo[rge] III C[h]ap[ter] 98, and 48 Geo: III Cap: 149. Which request the Commissary foresaid finding reasonable, ordained the same to be done accordingly, and of which Testament the tenor follows, vi[delicet]z:- I William MacGillivray Doctor of Laws, Professor of Natural and Civil History in Marischal College, Aberdeen, being desirous to provide for the Management and disposal of my personal Estate after my death, do hereby make, Constitute and Appoint Mrs Marion MacCaskill or MacGillivray, my spouse, William Jamieson Writer in Airdrie, my son in law, Miss Isabella MacGillivray my eldest daughter, Alexander Thomson Esquire of Banchory, the Reverend David MacTaggart Minister of Greyfriars Parish in Aberdeen and John Clark Advocate in Aberdeen and the acceptors or acceptor, survivors or survivor of them to be my sole Executors and Administrators, with full power to them to intromit with my whole moveable Estate and Executry of every description, to give up Inventories thereof to confirm the same, and Generally to do everything in the premises competent to Executors. And I do hereby direct and appoint my said Executors after making payment of my whole just and lawful debts and death bed and funeral expenses and the necessary expenses Annexed with my Executry affairs, to lend out or invest, on sufficient securities, the residue of my said Estate and to pay the whole free yearly interest and profits arising form the same to my said spouse for the support and maintenance of herself and of such of our Children as may necessarily remain in family with her, and that during all the days of her life, and after her decease, to distribute and divide my said Estate between and among all my Children equally, share and share alike. But declaring that the shares of such of my said Children as may not then have attained majority and, if females, may be unmarried, HDT WHAT? INDEX
WILLIAM MACGILLIVRAY WILLIAM MACGILLIVRAY
shall not be eligible by them until their^ marriage or majority, whichever of these events shall first happen, until which time my said Executors shall apply the interest of their respective shares towards their support and education. But declaring that it shall be lawful to, and in the power of my said Executors if WRITTEN IN MARGIN: they shall see cause, to advance, form time to time, for the ^majority or if maintenance education or advancement in life of any of my said females until their children in minority, out of their respective provisions, such sums as they may judge proper for these purposes, and that before the said provisions became eligible. Declaring that the provisions to my said children shall not be held to have rested in them until after the death both of me and my said spouse. Further declaring that if any of my said Children shall repudiate this Settlement and claim their legal provisions in place of the provisions hereby made for them or shall by any means prevent this Settlement from taking effect in whole or in part, then such of my said Children as shall so act, shall thereby forfeit all right to any share or shares of that part of my Executry which I may freely dispose of by law and shall have right only to their respective legal provisions, exclusive of those portions which I am by law entitled to dispose of, which shall in that event accresce and belong equally to my other Children who shall abide by these presents and accept of the provisions herein contained. And it is hereby declared that my said Executors (a majority of whim accepting and acting at the time shall be a quorum) shall not be liable for omissions, errors or neglect of management nor singuli in solidum but each for himself or herself and his or her actual intromissions only. Reserving always to myself my own liferent of the premises with full power to me to alter, innovate or revoke these presents I Whole or in part at any time in my life or even on deathbed But declaring that in so far as these presents shall not be altered or revoked the same shall be valid and effectual though found lying in my own custody or in the custody of any other person for my behoof, undelivered at the time of my death. And I Consent to the Registration hereof in the Books of Council and Session or other Competent therein to remain for preservation and for that purpose Constitute My Procurators &c In Witness Whereof I have subscribed these presents (written on this and the two preceding pages by John Clark Advocate in Aberdeen above mentioned) At Aberdeen the fifteenth day of December Eighteen hundred and fifty one before these Witnesses James Farquharson Student of Divinity in Aberdeen and Thomas Milne Clerk to the said John Clark, Witness also to my subscription of the marginal note, written as the body. (signed) W. MacGillivray. James Farquharson Witness. Thomas Milne Witness. — Enacted on this and the eight preceding pages by me Commissary Clerk of Aberdeenshire C. Warrack Written & Collated by Charles Warrack HDT WHAT? INDEX
WILLIAM MACGILLIVRAY WILLIAM MACGILLIVRAY
1853
Paul Howard MacGillivray’s A CATALOGUE OF THE FLOWERING PLANTS AND FERNS GROWING IN THE NEIGHBOURHOOD OF ABERDEEN was completed with some help from his father Professor William MacGillivray. This was the son who would become an Australian physician and in 1892 donate his father’s unpublished 214 watercolors of birds, fish, and mammals to the Natural History Museum. HDT WHAT? INDEX
WILLIAM MACGILLIVRAY WILLIAM MACGILLIVRAY
1855
William MacGillivray’s NATURAL HISTORY OF DEESIDE AND BRAEMAR (published posthumously on his behalf by order of Queen Victoria, herself a rare old bird).
April 9, Monday [1855]. 5.15 A.M — To Red Bridge just before sunrise. Fine clear morning, but still cold enough for gloves. A slight frost, and mist as yesterday curling over the smooth water. I see half a dozen crows on an elm within a dozen rods of the muskrats’ bodies, as if eying them. I see thus often crows very early in the morning near the houses, which soon after sunrise take their way across the river to the woods again. It is a regular thing with them. Hear the hoarse rasping chuck or chatter of crow blackbirds [Common Grackle Quiscalus quiscula] and distinguish their long broad tails. Wilson3 says that the only note of the rusty grackle is a chuck, though he is told that at Hudson’s Bay, at the breeding-time, they sing with a fine note. [EDITORIAL FOOTNOTE in 1806 edition: “The only song they are known to possess is the whistle that Thoreau here describes.”] Here they utter not only a chuck, but a fine shrill whistle. They cover the top of a tree now, and their concert is of this character: They all seem laboring together to get out a clear strain, as it were wetting their whistles against their arrival at Hudson’s Bay. They begin as it were by disgorging or spitting it out, like so much tow, from a full throat, and conclude with a clear, fine, shrill, ear-piercing whistle. Then away they go, all chattering together. Hear a phœbe [Eastern Phoebe Sayornis phoebe] near the river. The golden willow is, methinks, a little livelier green and begins to peel a little, but I am not sure the bark is any smoother yet. Heard a loud, long, dry, tremulous shriek which reminded me of a kingfisher, but which I found proceeded from a woodpecker which had just alighted on an elm: also its clear whistle or chink afterward. It is probably the hairy woodpecker [Hairy Woodpecker Picoides villosus], and I am not so certain I have seen it earlier this year. Wilson does not allow that the downy one makes exactly such a sound. Did I hear part of the note of a golden-crowned (?) wren this morning? It was undoubtedly a robin, the last part of his strain. Some twenty minutes after sundown I hear the first booming of a snipe [Common Snipe Gallinago gallinago]. The forenoon was cloudy and in the afternoon it rained, but the sun set clear, lighting up the west with a yellow
3. AMERICAN ORNITHOLOGY, BY [ALEXANDER] WILSON; WITH NOTES, BY JARDINE: TO WHICH IS ADDED, A SYNOPSIS OF AMERICAN BIRDS; INCLUDING THOSE DESCRIBED BY BONAPARTE, AUDUBON, NUTTALL, AND RICHARDSON, BY T.M. [THOMAS MAYO] BREWER. WITH 29 PAGES OF STEEL PLATES OF NEARLY 400 BIRDS (8vo. New York: H.S. Samuels, 1852). HDT WHAT? INDEX
WILLIAM MACGILLIVRAY WILLIAM MACGILLIVRAY
light, which there was no green grass to reflect, in which the frame of a new building is distinctly seen, while drops hang on every twig, and producing the first rainbow I have seen or heard of except one long ago in the morning. With April showers, methinks, come rainbows. Why are they so rare in the winter? Is the fact that the clouds are then of snow commonly, instead of rain, sufficient to account for it? At sunset after the rain, the robins and song sparrows fill the air along the river with their song. MacGillivray4 says that divers, mergansers, and cormorants actually fly under water, using their wings fully expanded. He had seen them pursuing sand eels along the shores of the Hebrides. Had seen the water-ouzel [American dipper Cinclus mexicanus] fly in like manner. Several flocks of geese went over this morning also. Now, then, the main body are moving. Now first are they generally seen and heard.
4. William MacGillivray. DESCRIPTIONS OF THE RAPACIOUS BIRDS OF GREAT BRITAIN (Edinburgh: Maclachlan & Stewart, 1836). RAPACIOUS BIRDS OF GB [This volume found in Henry Thoreau’s personal library is now in Special Collections at the Concord Free Public Library.] HDT WHAT? INDEX
WILLIAM MACGILLIVRAY WILLIAM MACGILLIVRAY
1858
September 7, Tuesday: A total eclipse of the sun was viewable across South America.5
Samuel Storrow Higginson brought some eggs from Deerfield to show Henry Thoreau “among others apparently that of the Virginia rail”:
September 7: P.M. – To Assabet Bath. I turn Anthony’s corner. It is an early September afternoon, melting warm and sunny; the thousands of grasshoppers leaping before you reflect gleams of light; a little distance off the field is yellowed with a Xerxean army of Solidago nemoralis between me and the sun; the earth-song of the cricket comes up through all; and ever and anon the hot z-ing of the locust is heard. (Poultry is now fattening on grasshoppers.) The dry deserted fields are one mass of yellow, like a color shoved to one side on Nature’s palette. You literally wade in yellow flowers knee-deep, and now the moist banks and low hollows are beginning to be abundantly sugared with Aster Tradescanti. [Channing, pages 104, 105.] J. Farmer calls those Rubus sempervirens berries, now abundant, “snake blackberries.” Looking for my Maryland yellow-throat’s nest, I find that apparently a snake has made it the portico to his dwelling, there being a hole descending into the earth through it! In Shad-bush Meadow the prevailing grasses (not sedges) now are the slender Panicum clandestinum, whose seeds are generally dropped now, Panicum virgatum, in large tufts, and blue-joint, the last, of course, long since done. These are all the grasses that I notice there. What a contrast to sink your head so as to cover your ears with water, and hear only the confused noise of the rushing river, and then to raise your ears above water and hear the steady creaking of crickets in the aerial universe! While dressing, I see two small hawks, probably partridge hawks, soaring and circling about one hundred feet above the river. Suddenly one drops down from that height almost perfectly perpendicularly after some prey, till it is lost behind the bushes. Near the little bridge at the foot of Turtle Bank, Eragrostis capillaris in small but dense patches, apparently in prime (the Poa capillaris of Bigelow). What I have thus called in press is E. pectinacea (P. hirsuta of Bigelow). On the flat hill south of Abel Hosmer, Agrostis scabra, hair grass, flyaway grass, tickle grass, out of bloom; branches purplish. That of September 5th was the A. perennans, in lower ground. On the railroad between tracks above Red House, Aristida dichotoma, half a dozen inches high, hardly yet out; 5. This was part of the well understood “Saros cycle 142” which repeats itself, for a series of 72 eclipse events, every 18 years plus 11 days and began with the partial solar eclipse of April 17, 1624. This cycle of 72 regular eclipse events will provide total eclipses somewhere on the face of the earth from July 25, 1786 through October 29, 2543. The longest duration of totality during this regular 72-occurrence series will come on May 28, 2291, when the totality will persist for 6 minutes and 34 seconds. The 72d and final event in the series will be a partial eclipse that will occur, God willing, on June 5, 2904. Lt. James Melville Gilliss of the US Naval Observatory would prepare, in 1859, AN ACCOUNT OF THE TOTAL ECLIPSE OF THE SUN ON SEPTEMBER 7, 1858 (Washington DC). HDT WHAT? INDEX
WILLIAM MACGILLIVRAY WILLIAM MACGILLIVRAY
forked aristida, or poverty grass.
Storrow Higginson brings from Deerfield this evening some eggs to show me, – among others apparently that of the Virginian rail. It agrees in color, size, etc., according to Wilson, and is like (except, perhaps, in form) to one which E. Bartlett brought me a week or ten days ago, which dropped from a load of hay carried to Stow’s barn! So perhaps it breeds here.6 Also a smaller egg of same form, but dull white with very pale dusky spots, which may be that of the Carolina rail. He had also what I think the egg of the Falco fuscatus,7 it agreeing with MacGillivray’s sparrow hawk’s egg.8
6. Yes. Vide September 9th. Vide September 21st and December 7th, and June 1st, 1859. Vide 18th. 7. [Question by Austin Meredith: Does anyone have any idea what this Falco fuscatus might be?] 8. William MacGillivray. DESCRIPTIONS OF THE RAPACIOUS BIRDS OF GREAT BRITAIN (Edinburgh: Maclachlan & Stewart, 1836). RAPACIOUS BIRDS OF GB [This volume found in Thoreau’s personal library is now in Special Collections at the Concord Free Public Library.] HDT WHAT? INDEX
WILLIAM MACGILLIVRAY WILLIAM MACGILLIVRAY
A RAPACIOUS BIRD OF GREAT BRITAIN (FROM 1836 WILLIAM MACGILLIVRAY SOURCE) HDT WHAT? INDEX
WILLIAM MACGILLIVRAY WILLIAM MACGILLIVRAY
1892
Dr. Paul Howard MacGillivray donated his father William MacGillivray’s 214 watercolors of birds, fish, and mammals to the Natural History Museum. (Some of these watercolors had been exhibited at the Wernerian Society during the 1830s and had been well received. Audubon himself had commented that they were “decidedly the best representations of birds I have seen.” However the only such work published during his lifetime had been some mammal portraits in A HISTORY OF BRITISH QUADRUPEDS.) HDT WHAT? INDEX
WILLIAM MACGILLIVRAY WILLIAM MACGILLIVRAY
1900
November 20, Tuesday: A memorial tablet was created and a new grave marker emplaced: In memory of William MacGillivray, M.A., LL.D., born 1796, died 1852. Author of a History of British Birds, and other standard works in natural science; Professor of Natural History and Lecturer on Botany in Marischal College and University from 1841 to 1852. Erected in 1900, together with a monument at his grave in New Calton Cemetery, Edinburgh, by his relatives and surviving students, who affectionately cherish his memory, and by others desirous of doing honour to his character as a man and to his eminence as a naturalist. HDT WHAT? INDEX
WILLIAM MACGILLIVRAY WILLIAM MACGILLIVRAY HDT WHAT? INDEX
WILLIAM MACGILLIVRAY WILLIAM MACGILLIVRAY
The eagle of his new grave marker of Peterhead granite was executed on the basis of MacGillivray’s sketch:
“MAGISTERIAL HISTORY” IS FANTASIZING: HISTORY IS CHRONOLOGY
“Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project William MacGillivray HDT WHAT? INDEX
WILLIAM MACGILLIVRAY WILLIAM MACGILLIVRAY
COPYRIGHT NOTICE: In addition to the property of others, such as extensive quotations and reproductions of images, this “read-only” computer file contains a great deal of special work product of Austin Meredith, copyright 2014. Access to these interim materials will eventually be offered for a fee in order to recoup some of the costs of preparation. My hypercontext button invention which, instead of creating a hypertext leap through hyperspace —resulting in navigation problems— allows for an utter alteration of the context within which one is experiencing a specific content already being viewed, is claimed as proprietary to Austin Meredith — and therefore freely available for use by all. Limited permission to copy such files, or any material from such files, must be obtained in advance in writing from the “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project, 833 Berkeley St., Durham NC 27705. Please contact the project at
“It’s all now you see. Yesterday won’t be over until tomorrow and tomorrow began ten thousand years ago.” – Remark by character “Garin Stevens” in William Faulkner’s INTRUDER IN THE DUST
Prepared: December 2, 2014 HDT WHAT? INDEX
WILLIAM MACGILLIVRAY WILLIAM MACGILLIVRAY
ARRGH AUTOMATED RESEARCH REPORT
GENERATION HOTLINE
This stuff presumably looks to you as if it were generated by a human. Such is not the case. Instead, someone has requested that we pull it out of the hat of a pirate who has grown out of the shoulder of our pet parrot “Laura” (as above). What these chronological lists are: they are research reports compiled by ARRGH algorithms out of a database of modules which we term the Kouroo Contexture (this is data mining). To respond to such a request for information we merely push a button. HDT WHAT? INDEX
WILLIAM MACGILLIVRAY WILLIAM MACGILLIVRAY
Commonly, the first output of the algorithm has obvious deficiencies and we need to go back into the modules stored in the contexture and do a minor amount of tweaking, and then we need to punch that button again and recompile the chronology — but there is nothing here that remotely resembles the ordinary “writerly” process you know and love. As the contents of this originating contexture improve, and as the programming improves, and as funding becomes available (to date no funding whatever has been needed in the creation of this facility, the entire operation being run out of pocket change) we expect a diminished need to do such tweaking and recompiling, and we fully expect to achieve a simulation of a generous and untiring robotic research librarian. Onward and upward in this brave new world.
First come first serve. There is no charge. Place requests with