Collection Building in Ichthyology and Herpetology (Special Publication / American Society of Ichthyologists and Herpetologists)

In the mid-1980s, as a result of our mutual interest in the history of natural history, we began discussing the desirability of organizing a symposium on collection building in ichthyology and herpetology. These discussions led to a symposium entitled "Collection Building in Ichthyology and Herpetologyin the 18th, 19th, and 20th Centuries," which constituted the Fifth North American Meeting of The Society for the History of Natural History, held in conjunction with the 70th Annual Meeting of the American Society of Ichthyologists and Herpetologists, in Charleston, South Carolina. Twenty-three papers were presented in the sessions of the symposium held on the 18th and 19th of June 1990 on the campus of the College of Charleston. Since that time, at the suggestion of speakers and members of the audience of the symposium, and with the idea of publishing an expanded volume on the subject, we contacted numerous ichthyologists and herpetologists around the world, with the request that they write chapters on collection building related to their own institution or geographic region. Many workers replied in the affirmative, with the result that this volume contains 38 papers, representing the combined work of 55 authors. Despite considerable efforts, the coverage is by no means complete: we were unable to obtain commitments from anyone to write on several important collections and geographic areas. Nevertheless, this volume does contain a wide variety of histories that span much of the world in their combined scope and that range in subject from small regional examples of collection building to mammoth world-renowned institutions, and from little known collectors to some of the ichthyological and herpetological giants of the last three centuries. Together, these studies paint a considerable part of the picture of the rich history of the study of poikilothermic vertebrates.