Everyone with an interest in animals should bookmark the site:
http://www.19thcenturyscience.org/HMSC/HMSC-INDEX/index-linked.htm

Then go down the page to “Links to the Zoological Reports” and start reading.
It’s a complete set of reports of the zoological findings of the voyage of the Challenger expedition, a 19th century oceanic voyage through all the world’s oceans.

It doesn’t matter if you’re interested in foraminifera, deep sea fish, seashells, weird invertebrates, the human skeleton, birds, or the anatomy of the thylacine, you’ll find something to interest you there.

Ta moll.

If you click on Expedition Photography you get to see all the photos taken during the voyage.

mollwollfumble said:

Everyone with an interest in animals should bookmark the site:
http://www.19thcenturyscience.org/HMSC/HMSC-INDEX/index-linked.htm

Then go down the page to “Links to the Zoological Reports” and start reading.
It’s a complete set of reports of the zoological findings of the voyage of the Challenger expedition, a 19th century oceanic voyage through all the world’s oceans.

It doesn’t matter if you’re interested in foraminifera, deep sea fish, seashells, weird invertebrates, the human skeleton, birds, or the anatomy of the thylacine, you’ll find something to interest you there.

Two centuries out of date… Before I dedicate time to reading it, I’d like an indication of how accurate it is, regardless of how interesting it might be.

esselte said:

Two centuries out of date… Before I dedicate time to reading it, I’d like an indication of how accurate it is, regardless of how interesting it might be.

I can say is a reading of old literature is most beneficial since us scientists tend to keep reinventing the wheel when it comes to natural history. Historical records are not only engaging and wonderful in their embracing of classical morphology in this world dominated by sexy molecular systematics, but you rediscover your wonder at organismal diversity as it was described so long ago.

They’re very fine for c. 130 year old documents, and a person learned in zoology would understand this as you cover the same information again – whether you are a second year student or a systematist revising a group for Taxon, J. Biol. Lin. Soc., J. Zool. or similar journal.

This is prettier (and much more helpful) version of the above link to the Challenger reports. It contains all the woodcut illustrations from the various reports as well as the links to the reports themselves.
http://19thcenturyscience.org/HMSC/HMSC-INDEX/index-illustrated.htm

The way I came across that website is a bit interesting in itself.

Looking at ancient maps relating to the discovery of Australia led me to think about early navigation which led me to the ‘lead line’.

“The lead line is for measuring the depth of water. Like all good inventions it has the grace of simplicity. The lead weight, usually weighing 7 pounds for a 25-fathom line and 14 pounds for a 100-fathom line, is cup-shaped at its base. This hollow is filled with tallow (known as arming the lead) so that when the lead strikes bottom, particles of the seabed stick to the tallow: sand, mud, stones, shells, etc.”

This made me wonder if this would be an interesting science project for me or someone on the forum. Hire a boat and map the local sea bed. Nylon fishing line is available up to and perhaps beyond 1 km in length. Some modern glues might be better than tallow.

So I went looking for old maps that showed the seabed composition. One for Nantucket shows entries including “dine dark grey sand, black specks, stones, broken shells” as “fne.dk.gy.S.bk,Sp,St,brk,Sh”. I was beginning to despair of finding a map of Australia showing seabed composition until I ran across the following map from 1884 (1924 edition):
http://digital.slv.vic.gov.au/view/action/singleViewer.do?dvs=1367793122079~29

At first sight this appears to be just a map of the southern half of Australia, but look closer and it shows water depths down to 3100 fathoms (5.7 km). Even more, it shows seabed composition at that depth. A companion map of northern Australia and New Guinea from 1934 shows water depth and seabed composition down to 4300 fathoms (7.8 km). The index on the 1884 map includes pt. for pteropod and gl. for globigerina. Pteropods are swimming snails and globigerina are globe-shaped foraminifera.

That got me interested in who was investigating the sea bed down to 3100 fathoms prior to 1884. The Challenger expedition of 1873-76 was. It turns out that only one point south of mainland Australia on the 1884 map comes from the Challenger expedition, at sample site 160, west of Tasmania and south of Ayre Peninsula. Even that point is specially interesting in that they found manganese nodules there.

Am now about to follow up the report “ANALYTICAL EXAMINATION OF MANGANESE NODULES, with special reference to the PRESENCE or ABSENCE of the RARER ELEMENTS. By John Gibson, Ph.D., F.R.S.E.”. http://19thcenturyscience.org/HMSC/HMSC-Reports/1891-DeepSeaDeposits/htm/doc.html
Was very surprised to learn that the detailed chemical analysis of deep ocean manganese nodules had been done by 1891, I’d thought it was a recent finding.

Interestingly, radiolarians were discovered on the Challenger missions. A couple of years later the first radiolarian fossils were recognised in rocks – Devonian aged fine grained tuffaceous cherts, that outcropped near Tamworth hospital. Edgeworth David described them.