TY - JOUR
TI - Letters from Władysław Taczanowski to Alexander Strauch in the Russian Academy of Sciences Collections. An Interesting Contribution to the History of Zoology in the Nineteenth Century
AU - Daszkiewicz, Piotr
AU - Mierzwa-Szymkowiak, Dominika
TI - Letters from Władysław Taczanowski to Alexander Strauch in the Russian Academy of Sciences Collections. An Interesting Contribution to the History of Zoology in the Nineteenth Century
AB - The article presents the Polish translation and analysis of the letters from Władysław Taczanowski (1819–1890) to Aleksander Strauch (1832–1893). The correspondence is stored in the Archive of the Russian Academy of Sciences in St. Petersburg and comprises 29 letters written between 1870 and 1889. The main theme of these letters is specimens of reptiles and amphibians sent to Warsaw by Polish naturalists, such as Benedykt Dybowski from Siberia, Konstanty Jelski from French Guiana and Peru, Jan Kalinowski from Korea, as well as specimens brought by Taczanowski from Algeria. Strauch determined the species and used them in his publications. This correspondence is also a valuable testimony of the exchange of specimens between the Warsaw Zoological Cabinet and the Zoological Museum of the Imperial Academy of Sciences in St. Petersburg. In return for herpetological specimens, the Warsaw collection received numerous fish specimens from the Russian Empire and a collection of birds from Mikołaj Przewalski’s expedition to Central Asia. The content of the letters allows a better understanding of the functioning of natural history museography but also the organization of shipments, preparation, determination, and exchange of specimens. They are a valuable document of the history of nineteenth-century scientific museography.
VL - 2021
IS - Volume 66, Issue 1
PY - 2021
SN - 0023-589X
C1 - 2657-4020
SP - 161
EP - 186
DO - 10.4467/0023589XKHNT.21.006.13390
UR - https://ejournals.eu/en/journal/kwartalnik-historii-nauki-i-techniki/article/listy-wladyslawa-taczanowskiego-do-aleksandra-straucha-w-zbiorach-rosyjskiej-akademii-nauk-interesujacy-przyczynek-historii-zoologii-w-xix-wieku
KW - Warsaw Zoological Cabinet
KW - Alexander Strauch
KW - history of herpetology
KW - Polish-Russian scientific exchange in the 19th century
KW - Polish naturalists in South America and Asia