Brad Scott

Great. Roughly what date is this?

This is the first known photograph of a snowman.
It was taken in Swansea, Wales, in 1853 by Victorian photography pioneer Mary Dillwyn.
📷 National Library of Wales - Llyfrgell Genedlaethol Cymru
#christmas #snow

Introduction to Palaeography and Manuscript Studies This course introduces students to key skills for the study of medieval manuscripts, from the making of parchment to reading text and imagery

We’ll be running our introduction to manuscript studies again in June 2026. There’s an early bird discount if you book this month, but if students are interested please encourage them to book early as this course has limited places 👇 📚📖✏️💻
ies.sas.ac.uk/study-traini...

They do indeed! It was another family affair

I have a reasonable dataset, but getting it imaged would not be straightforward. I will make some enquiries at NHM. I also have good data for a late 19th century moss herbarium at Portsmouth Museum which also needs to go on gbif @portsmouthnh.bsky.social

I love social media posts like this. Have created a #Wikidata item for Jane & linked her to her cousin & adding information about her social & family network www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q137219... Unfortunately this herbarium doesn't appear to be in @gbif.org so no @bionomia.net specimen links #Bryology

Thank you! As soon as I saw you had liked the post I thought "I should have added Jane to wikidata"! The herbarium has barely been examined. I describe it in May's issue of Field Bryology and have partly listed its contents. Not sure how I would add details to gbif though...

Forthcoming with the
CSMBR ONLINE LECTURE SERIES

To register for this lecture: csmbr.fondazionecomel.org/.../natural-...

#CSMBR #MedicalHistory #Rumphius #NaturalHistory #OnlineLecture

Moss packets attached to a page of the moss herbarium of William Henry Fox Talbot

One of the packets in the herbarium opened to reveal a specimen of Andraea rupestris collected by Lewis Weston Dillwyn on Ben Nevis

Specimens of Bartramia ithyphylla from Uscoed Fendry collected by Jane Talbot

Specimens of ‘Bryum compactum’ from Crymlyn Bog, Glamorganshire, supplied by Jane Talbot to her cousin

Moss specimens from the 1810s in the herbarium of William Henry Fox Talbot, the photography pioneer, at the British Library, including some supplied by his cousin Jane Talbot (1796–1874)

You can read about the family and their moss interests in BJHS: dx.doi.org/10.1017/S000... #bryology #bryophytes

Discover the rare species found only in Britain with Endemic by James Harding-Morris.

Order from the Bloomsbury website by midnight on Sunday to get 30% off.

A must-read for nature lovers this Christmas!

Maria Dragoi stood in the Micrarium at the Grant Museum of Zoology.

What’s missing from natural history collections? Maria Dragoi, @ucl.ac.uk Museum Studies alumna and current PhD candidate, discusses her research into our entomology collection and the importance of interpreting collections through a decolonial lens. www.ucl.ac.uk/museums-coll...

The thing that struck me was how they were almost all mammals. I was thinking, hasn't anyone seen a jellyfish?

The thread starts here

www.belltoons.co.uk/bellworks/in...

What makes historic collections difficult? And how do researchers work with “difficult” collections?

New CFP from Paper Trails here:

blogs.ucl.ac.uk/special-coll...

Deadline for proposals 31/1/2026
🗃️

Sorry to have missed it

I Have An Idea To Open 16,000 Newsrooms In The U.S. What happens when journalism lives inside the public library?

My @jskstanford.bsky.social year at Stanford centers on one question: What grows when you build a community newsroom inside a public library? I've been testing it in Brooklyn neighborhood. It's works.

We can do this in the 16,000+ library buildings in the U.S. Seriously.

medium.com/jsk-class-of...

'Study of a Piece of Brick, to show Cleavage in Burnt Clay' a very detailed look at a piece of brick with moss and lichens, watercolor by John Ruskin, a Victorian English polymath whose Wikipedia article is quite something. It shows an irregular lump, probably about apple-sized, with dark red and brown inner surfaces and brighter bluish green and dark green mosses and lichens very carefully shown, textures like velvet and tiny leaves.

‘Mosses and wandering lichens’, as Ruskin puts it in ‘The Poetry of Architecture’ (1837), ‘though beautiful, constitute a kind of beauty from which the ideas of age and decay are inseparable’.

This whole essay. I had no idea Victorians thought about lichen.

courtauld.ac.uk/research/res...

Petition: Call a public inquiry into Russian influence on UK politics & democracy We are concerned about reported efforts from Russia to influence democracy in the US, UK, Europe and elsewhere. We believe we must establish the depth and breadth of possible Russian influence campaig...

Please sign this petition for a public inquiry into Russian influence on UK politics.

I don't care if you're left or right, Reform or Corbynite - we can't allow a hostile foreign nation to run riot in our political ecosystem.

Sign and share.

petition.parliament.uk/petitions/74...

Exciting new project with a great PhD opportunity just announced

Medieval Philosophical and Scientific Manuscripts – an online short course taught by Anna Somfai This course will run online from 14:00-17:00: Monday 26 January – Thursday 29 January 2026. The course explores medieval Western philosophical and scientific manuscripts produced over the spa…

How have books shaped the way we think? In January Anna Somfai will teach an online short course on books about science and philosophy in the Middle Ages. Book now 👇 #MedievalSky @ies-sas.bsky.social @warburginstitute.bsky.social @sas-news.bsky.social palaeography.uk/study/short-...

And then....?

Coloured lithograph dated 1832 drawn by Henry de la Beche, titled 'The Light of Science dispelling the Darkness which covered the World', it shows a fashionable woman in a huge bonnet and dress with large sleeves holding a geological hammer and lighting the Earth with a gas lantern, dispersing the dark clouds and demons of ignorance surrounding the planet.

Lovely unusual coloured version of Henry De la Beche's 1832 cartoon The Light of Science for sale at auction next month. Seeking government support for science, De la Beche draws a fashionable female figure with gas lamp, wristwatch & of course a geological hammer.
www.christies.com/en/lot/lot-6...

Reform UK and Russian bribes: a Nathan Gill timeline As Reform’s former leader in Wales is sentenced to ten and a half years for taking bribes from a pro-Russian actor, here's a chronology of his actions and the wider context of Putin, Ukraine and Brexi...

NEW: If you have *any* interest in the Nathan Gill story, you need to look at this.

We’ve put all the dates into a timeline & it’s incredibly revealing.
1/

www.thenerve.news/p/nathan-gil...

Cloth and Complicity: Seth Rockman on Plantations, Textiles, and the Art of Weaving - Public Books “But I had found a set of instructions in the archives of one of New England's leading manufacturers of low-end woollen cloth for enslaved wearers.”

An interview with a historian who set out to weave a textile of the type that would have been sold to plantations for use by enslaved people, using period equipment.

www.publicbooks.org/cloth-and-co...

Repurposing Digitised Natural History Collections CCC Michaelmas Keynote Lecture 2025 delivered by Pamela S. Soltis, Distinguished Professor, Curator, Director, UF Biodiversity Institute

Join us in Cambridge on 10 December for the @camglamresearch.bsky.social Michaelmas Term Keynote Lecture,
‘Repurposing Digitised Natural History Collections for 21st-Century Challenges’, delivered by Pam Soltis.

Register here: www.eventbrite.com/e/repurposin...

I still can't believe that "expences" isn't the modern spelling, despite Word and many humans correcting me

Read this whole thread.
It is worth it!

The cover of the book Coastal Seas by Frances Dipper and Paul Naylor

A view inside the book, showing a periwinkle and some wonderfully colourful sea slugs

Delighted to see this beautiful book turn up in the post. Part of the terrific British Wildlife Collection, published by Bloomsbury @chiffchat.bsky.social. I have loved the forms of marine phyla since A level biology

Red Bark and Empire: Unearthing the Colonial Roots of Kew Gardens | MBC Part One – Kew Gardens This project began with a single plant. While researching in the archives of the Royal […]

In the second instalment of her blog series concerning the botany and the British Empire, Esme Barrell reflects on the colonial roots of the Royal Botanical Gardens and the appropriation of Indigenous botanical knowledge by British scientists.

museumofbritishcolonialism.org/red-bark-and...

Isis Focus Issue: "Is Deep History White?"