Those busy victorians, how many plant and animal names do we credit them cataloging?

[Harmonious Discord]

The victorians went exploring and named a lot of plants and animals. How many of the cataloged names, do the victorians account for? The fact that the scientific name is latin doesn't matter, if they named them. I'm looking for a general percentage not something precise, which would be impossible to figure. I realise that the french and other nations were exploring also. How many do all the countries in that era account for as a group.

[Giles]

When you say "Victorian", do you mean people from the United Kingdom in 1837-1900? That figure might be hard to get, because there were a lot of British and European botanists and zoologists al over the world during that period. However, they would generally have given each plant and animal a scientific name, and that name would always have been in Latin. They might have assigned a common name too, in English, French, German, etc., but Latin is the universal language of biological taxonomy.

[bonzer]

I'd actually be astonished if there haven't been serious attempts to quantify the historical growth of taxonomy - though I wouldn't necessarily expect to see a breakdown by nationality.
As one stab in the dark, Figure 1 in this paper (a pdf) plots the growth in the number of named North American fossil mammals. There's virtually nothing before 1850, then perhaps about a fifth of the current total were named by 1900.

[Harmonious Discord]

Victorian is to mean the citizens of the United Kindom during the reign of Queen Virtoria. I said the fact it's latin doesn't matter, the fact it was cataloged then does. I realise how hard it is, and also asked for the percentage cataloged then by all countries that were exploring. I wondered if we can at least get something liike 10% or 50% or 90% as a measure of how much that period added.

bonzer: That is a good start for adding in the fossils. We know that it's a subset of the worlds total for that time. Everybody shouldn't think I'm looking for fossils, but it a good item to add in, with living animals and plants.

[bonzer]

FWIW, this page, based on a 1910 article, discusses the increase in the number of known animal species in the years prior to 1881.

By way of comparison, this factsheet (a pdf) has figures for the number of species currently named in different animal groups.

[Harmonious Discord]

bonzer the first one was very interesting for a small segment of time.

From 372 to 6070 worms in 43 years. Who'ld have thunk that.

I wonder who is the organization that keeps all these species records at this time?

[bonzer]

Originally Posted by Harmonious Discord

I wonder who is the organization that keeps all these species records at this time?

For animals, there's the International Commission on Zoological Nomenclature's ZooBank.

[twickster]

Slight hijack: Anyone interested in the OP's question might enjoy Bright Paradise: Victorian Scientific Travelers. I did, FWIW.

[Harmonious Discord]

bonser I see that there is no official collecting agency at this point, but there is a hope that a registry can be agreed apon for zoological regestering. Thanks for the link. Anybody know about the plants?

[Martini Enfield]

Bill Bryson's A Short History Of Nearly Everything covers this subject (the OP's question) quite well, too.

[Colibri]

Originally Posted by Harmonious Discord

bonser I see that there is no official collecting agency at this point, but there is a hope that a registry can be agreed apon for zoological regestering. Thanks for the link. Anybody know about the plants?

There is no central species registry for either plants and animals. Compounding the problem is the fact that frequently the same species has been given different names by different scientists in the past. Also, different scientists may disagree on whether a particular species is valid or not (or is just a subspecies.)

The first attempt to develop a comprehensive species catalog is now under way.

[Harmonious Discord]

Colibri thanks for the link and information. When it comes to stuff not being quantified, and people saying it's to big a project, I find the internet has some group working towards it as a goal. I specified I was looking for a close percentage, because I know that there is always disputes over if something is new or a duplicate.


Thanks for the help everybody.