Jacob Whitman Bailey Diatom Collection

Introduction

The initial systematic investigations of American algae - fossil and recent, microscopic and macroscopic, freshwater and marine - were conducted between 1837 and 1857 by Jacob Whitman Bailey (1811 - 1857), a professor of chemistry, mineralogy and geology at the United States Military Academy at West Point, New York. During this period of expanding and intensifying geographical and natural history explorations of the North American continent and the oceans of the world, Bailey served as the American focus for the investigations of the algae, especially the microscopic infusoria. Among his microscopic algal collections are samples from

In addition, he communicated and exchanged samples extensively with American and European workers and thus procured a collection representing many regions of the globe. By the early 1840's Bailey had earned the accolade of "America's Ehrenberg", and by the mid-1850's he had amassed the finest and most extensive collection of algae in America. About two years before his death as a result of his increasingly failing health, he began to organize his collection for the use of those that would continue his work. Upon his death in 1857, Bailey bequeathed the collection, both organized and unorganized portions, plus the bulk of his scientific books, pamphlets, notes and correspondence to the Boston Society of Natural History. In 1941, the Society donated the Bailey Collection to the Farlow Herbarium of Harvard University, where it currently resides.

Since 1976, I have worked at the Farlow Herbarium restoring those portions of the Bailey Collection which contained diatoms to a condition that would make them useful to contemporary taxonomists and historians of science. As the initial step in this restoration, I prepared a bibliography of Bailey's scientific contributions (Edgar, 1977). In promoting further this restoration this present work defines the present extent of the collection and indexes the taxa, geographical locations and persons associated with the diatom portions of it.

The Bailey Collection: 1857 - 1941

The general contents of the Bailey bequest to the Boston Society of Natural History are clear, but an itemized account of most parts of the collection has not been found, and doubtfully was one made. Consequently, the extent of the diatom contents of the original collection can be approximated only.

The bequest circumscribes initially the collection (Proc. Boston Soc. nat. Hist. 6:179 - 181. 1857.): Bequest of Prof. J.W. Bailey.

Upon receipt of these materials the Society appointed a committee consisting of Augustus A. Gould, John Bacon and Silas Durkee to report on the bequest. On the basis of their reports (Proc. Boston Soc. nat. Hist. 6:194-200. 1857) samples of diatoms were contained in the materials described in the first, second and thirds parts of the bequest. Bacon's report on the "Microscopical Collection" indicated that it contained 24 octavo slide boxes (Table 1), and it generally described the contents of 19 of them and specified that 550 slides were contained in 21 boxes. A description of the three octavo boxes unaccounted for in Bacon's report was misplaced into Durkee's report on the algae; these boxes contained 69 slides but apparently no diatoms. The only disagreement between the original descriptions of these 24 boxes and the 24 octavo volumes found in the Farlow Herbarium in 1976 is that Bacon reported that two of the boxes contained "Test Objects and miscellaneous Organic Bodies," whereas I have found the collection to contain only a single box with this title. In that none of the 24 numbered volumes is missing I believe Bacon's report was in error. In addition to the formally boxed slides, Bacon indicated that the collection contained more than 800 "specimens mounted on glass slides" and 200 other specimens "mounted as opaque objects." Assuming these 800+ and 200 specimens represented an equal number of slides, the total number of slides contained in the original bequest was minimally 1,619.

TABLE 1. The 24 octavo slide boxes of the original Bailey "Microscopical Collection."

Box No.* Title* Slide Serial No. **
1 Test objects and organic bodies 1422-1476
2 Vegetable tissues - Recent 1224-1274
3 Vegetable tissues - fossil 1275-1306
4 Animal tissues - Vertebrata 1307-1339
5 Animal tissues - Articulata 1340-1376
6 Animal tissues - Mollusca & Radiata 1377-1421
7 American diatoms 967-1007
8*** Foreign diatoms 1008-1048
9 Atlantic soundings A to R' 567 - 608
10 Atlantic soundings R' to Q" 609-640
11 Atlantic soundings A'A' to Z'Z' 641-668
12 Atlantic soundings Berryman's 1-16 669-706
13 Atlantic soundings Berryman's 17-24 707-742
14 Soundings - Gulf of Mexico 859-883
15 Fossil diatoms - Virginia & Maryland, Bermuda 1128-1179
16 Fossil polycistines and diatoms, Barbadoes 1180-1223
17*** Soundings - Para River, etc., South America 894-925
18 Soundings - Arctic and Pacific Oceans 1567-1595
19 Fossil diatoms - Monterey, California 743-776
20 Fossil diatoms - Suisun Bay, Bodega Bay, San Luis, O.B., etc 777-803 .
21 Diatoms in guano 1071-1102
22 Fossil polythalamia - American 1103-1127
23 Casts of polythalamia 1049-1069
24 Oregon, California, Puget Sound, etc. 811-858

* Numbers and titles are taken directly from the original boxes.
** This range of serial numbers delimits all slide numbers contained in each box in 1976, when restoration of the collection was begun; it does not imply that all numbers within the range were represented by slides found at this time.
*** In 1976, Boxes #8 and #17 were on loan to the Academy of Natural Sciences of Philadelphia and consequently not found initially with the rest of the collection. They have subsequently been returned to the collection.

In accounting for the second part of the bequest, Durke reported that among the approximately 4,500 algae or seaweeds contained in 15 portfolios that "The Diatomacease are in one volume and amount of 425." Finally, the geographical locations from which samples in the "boxes, paper, vials," etc. in the third part of the bequest were derived imply that they contained diatoms. In summary, the bequest included diatom materials in the partially defined microscopic slide collection, in a clearly segregated portion of the algal collection, and in the poorly defined "rough material for microscopic research."

The Society produced in 1860 a Catalogue of the Unmounted Materials [of the] Bailey Collection..., presumably describing materials in the third part of the bequest. It itemized the collection notes of 705 bottles of materials containing primarily infusoria, but the proportion of the "rough material" that these represent is unknown.

In the Annual Report of 1877 the contents of the "Microscopical Collection" were given as 1,838 slides "presented in the bequest of Professor Bailey" (Proc. Boston Soc. nat. Hist. 19:188-189. 1877.). However, this report additionally indicated that

This new Catalogue of the Bailey Microscopical Collection consisting of 372 foolscap pages is in the Farlow Herbarium and according to the above report assimilated completely and without change in serially numbered slides previously registered in the Catalogue of the Bailey Microscopical Slides, which I have not found. The report promotes the expectation of the new Catalogue containing 2,184 entries -- 793 by Bailey and 1,391 by Miss Washburn. However, the Catalogue describes only slides numbered from 567 to 2,185. Although rarely were numbers in this series omitted or used more than once, e.g. 780 and 780-1/2, the series should encompass c. 1,619 slides. Interestingly, entries numbered 567 through 2,185 are contained within c. 372 foolscap pages, and the handwriting break in the Catalogue between Bailey and Washburn (which is additionally marked by a notation that the transcribers had changed) occurs between serial numbers 793 and 794. At present I have no explanation of why the series commences with number 567 and not number 1, but I have found neither slides nor references to slides in the collection bearing numbers in the range 1 to 566. I interpret the annual report to be misleading in the number of slides that Bailey registered; he registered only probably the 227 of them having numbers between 567 and 793. Also, based primarily on the fact that the Catalogue appears complete in having 372 pages, the range of serial numbers provides the best estimate of the extent of the collection in 1877 (independent of the 1,838 slides reported elsewhere), which I judge to be c. 1,619 slides.

In his historical sketch of the Society, Bouvé (1880) reported that the Bailey Collection consisted of 1,839 slides, a figure almost identical to that in the 1877 Annual Report.

The Society's Annual Report of 1892 contained a description of the "present condition" of the Bailey Collection: 24 boxes of "about 874 slides, in fairly good condition," about 568 slides in odd boxes and parcels plus an additional 27 slides labelled by Durkee (Proc. Boston Soc. nat. Hist. 25:438-439. 1892). The parcels were described as "loose bundles, [containing] 160 native and 71 foreign diatom-slides." This description indicates there were 1,469 slides in the collection.

During the late 1850's and 1860's, the Proceedings of the Society alludes occasionally to the collection being less well organized than it might be and to its being heavily used and borrowed from, especially shortly after its receipt by the Society. H.L. Smith (1872) reported in The Lens concerning the Bailey Collection that

DeToni (1891) notes also, possibly based on Smith's earlier remarks, that the Society's collection "Devrait contenir tous les types de J. W. Bailey, mais la plupart ont été volé."

A summary of the estimates of the extent of the Bailey Collection involving diatoms is presented in Table 2. No records other than those described above have been found useful in determining the extent of the Collection between 1892 and 1941, when the Society relinquished care of it.

TABLE 2. A summary of estimates of the extent of parts of the J. W. Bailey Collection containing diatoms.

Date Microscopical Slide
Collection 		Exsiccatae
Collection 		Collection of
Unmounted Materials 		Reference*
1857 1,619+ slides 425 specimens Unknown PBSNH 6:194-200
1860 . . 705 samples Catalogue of Unmounted
Materials [of the] Bailey Collection ...
1877 1,838 slides . . PBSNH 19:188
1877 c. 1,619 slides . . PBSNH 19:188-189
1880 1,839 slides . . Bouvé, 1880, p. 239
1892 1,469 slides . . PBSNH 25:438-441
1976 1,216 slides 303 specimens 48 vials
64 slides		 R. K. Edgar
inventory

* PBSNH = Proceedings of the Boston Society of Natural History

The Bailey Collection: 1941-present

The use of the Bailey Collection since its receipt by the Farlow Herbarium in 1941 has been apparently meagre. I have found only that the Academy of Natural Sciences of Philadelphia had borrowed a small portion of it, that N. Ingrahm Hendey had used it in 1953 and designated several types of Bailey's species' names of diatoms, and that Robert Ross had perused it in 1962 and left notes concerning its reorganization.

The present Bailey Collection primarily with respect to its diatom materials is composed of three major parts, each deriving its organization from the 1857 bequest:

A) A MICROSCOPIC SLIDE COLLECTION including related paleographs and a catalogue of the slides and their contents.

The 1,216 slides contained in this collection are the remnants of the "Microscopical Collection" described in the 1857 bequest. With a few exceptions, each slide bears a number between 567 and 2,185 scratched into the glass. This collection currently includes slides that I found in 1976 in 1) 24 octavo cardboard slide boxes, each possessing a label on its inside cover indicating "Boston Society of Natural History/Bequest of /Prof. J.W. Bailey/April, 1857" (Table 1), 2) two century wooden slide boxes each containing c. 100 slides, 3) two wooden folders bearing 30 large and odd-sized glass slides, 4) an unnumbered small green box with J.W. Bailey's name on it found at the Academy of Natural Sciences of Philadelphia and containing slides numbered from 1527 to 1537, and 5) an octavo slide box from the Boston Society of Natural History general slide (non-Bailey) collection containing slides numbered from 1538 to 1542 and from 1752 to 1796. All these materials were found in the Farlow Herbarium unless I have indicated otherwise. Slides placed in this collection have been verified as being Bailey's based on their having 1) serial numbers between 567 and 2,185, 2) descriptions consistent with those of similarly numbered entries in the Catalogue of the Bailey Microscopical Collection, 3) notations in Bailey's handwriting scratched on the slide, 4) notations in Bailey's handwriting on papers associated directly with them, and 5) a system of standard reference lines, orientation arrows or numbers characteristic of Bailey's "Universal Indicator" method of locating individual specimens (Bailey, 1855). Slides falling harmoniously into a series ordered on the basis of the preceding criteria were also included. I have marked each slide appropriate to this collection by placing on it a round, 0.8 cm diameter, white label bearing the slide serial number. The slides have been placed in numerical order in 18 wooden slide boxes, which were remilled to accommodate the varying dimensions of the slides; grossly oversized slides have been housed separately in Box #19.

A paleograph collection has been established incorporating all papers bearing notes, numbers or any writing whatsoever that were found associated with the slides. The paleographs have been referenced under the serial number of the slide with which they were found associated in 1976 unless this association was clearly in error.

The serial list in this work describing the slide collection is arranged in groups of slides, partially of Bailey's design as reflected is the Catalogue and partially my own, and it includes all slide serial numbers between 567 and 2,185 even though some groups do not contain diatom material. This list records all information available on the slide and in the Catalogue and paleographs, except taxa determinations which have been separately indexed. The current existence at the Farlow Herbarium of slides, Catalogue entries and paleographs for each number is noted also in the list. Clarifying information has been added to the description of some slides; information which is bracketed is speculative or specifically not derived the source materials described above.

B) A DIATOM EXSICCATAE COLLECTION

The algal herbarium which the Boston Society of Natural History donated to the Farlow Herbarium in 1941 contained 303 sheets of diatom exsiccatae that I have determined to have come from Bailey and to represent materials described in the second part of the 1857 bequest. Most of these sheets bear specific notations in Bailey's handwriting. I have attributed other sheets to his bequest because they represent specimens from collectors, such as Brébisson, Lenormand, Dickie and Ralfs, with whom Bailey exchanged materials extensively, and because I have found no evidence that they entered the Society's collection by a means other than Bailey. The 303 sheets from Bailey's herbarium were part of a slightly larger collection of diatom exsiccatae donated by the Society; upon receipt of these materials by the Farlow Herbarium, all sheets in the collection were pinned or glued to larger herbarium sheets, and thus their arrangement was largely fixed. I have numbered all the exissicatae in this collection and prefixed each number with an "E", e.g., E131; each number has been placed on a round, 0.8 cm diameter, white label on the sheet. The numerical series describing the exsiccatae approximates an alphabetical arrangement of the taxa. Numbers not listed in this series in the index correspond to non-Bailey diatom exsiccatae. The authors of taxa names presented in the list are those given on the original exsiccatae labels.

C) A COLLECTION OF UNMOUNTED MATERIALS comprising bottles of original material and slides derived from them.

This portion of the collection contains specimens derived originally from the unmounted non-exsiccati materials described in the third part of the 1857 bequest. A Catalogue of the Unmounted Materials [of the] Bailey Collection in the Boston Society of Natural History, which was produced in 1860, has been the sole measure of materials appropriate to this part of the Collection. This Catalogue was initially the property of the Society, but by 1938 and by unknown means it had passed into the possession of Clarence A. Cheever, an amateur Massachusetts diatomist. It lists 705 samples, primarily infusoria, representing an unknown proportion of the original amount of material, but also contains notes by Cheever indicating that many of the samples were either missing or contained so little material as to be useless. I have found in the Farlow Herbarium a loosely grouped collection of 100 vials designated collectively as "Bailey Collection ex B.S.N.H." These vials were apparently the gift of Cheever in 1941 or 1943 along with the 1860 Catalogue, but these vials have plastic screw caps indicating they are not the original containers of Bailey even though the material inside may be his. However, because none of these vials bears any identifying notes or numbers and because I have been unable to determine how Cheever secured them, I have not included them in this accounting of the collection.

Also, in 1976, I found loose among miscellaneous papers pertaining to the diatom collections in the Farlow Herbarium an undated unsigned three-page note entitled "Bailey Collection. Unmounted Materials." describing a collection of boxes, dry mounts, etc. contained in a small cabinet; the materials were in accord with entries in the 1860 Catalogue. Because the note makes reference to the cabinet being associated with several volumes of Bailey's letters and notes, which are still in the possession of the Boston Society of Natural History (now Boston's Museum of Science), the note describes the materials probably while they were at the Society and not at the Farlow Herbarium. The materials described in the note have not been found in the Society's archives, the Farlow Herbarium or the Peabody Museum (as suggested in an appended notation on the note).

A small wooden box containing 46 vials bearing numbers and labels corresponding to entries in the 1860 Catalogue was found in the Farlow Herbarium in 1976. It contained an unsigned note indicating

These diatoms were collected by [Louis Francois de] Pourtales and sent to Bailey (J.W.) to name. They were found in the Agassiz Museum [in] October, 1912 and given to [the] Cryptogamic Herbarium [by Samuel Henshaw]. The numbers probably correspond to lists of J.W. Bailey in the Boston Soc. Nat. Hist.

In the 1940's David Linder produced a list of the contents of the vials based on data in the 1860 Catalogue. I have made slides from the contents of each of these vials and given each the number of the vial prefixed by a "U", e.g. U231, on a round, 0.8 cm diameter, white label.

Lastly, the general slide collection of the Boston Society of Natural History contained 16 slides specifically labelled indicating that they had been prepared from particular vials of unmounted material in the Bailey Collection. Each of these slides has been given the number of the vial from which it was prepared, again, prefixed with a "U" on the characteristic white label. All 64 slides prepared from unmounted material have been placed in Box #20.

Many slides were made from Bailey's unmounted material while it was possessed by the Society, especially before 1900, and undoubtedly these were dispersed and now are in different slide collections at the Farlow and other herbaria. Identification of these has not been undertaken now, but when it is done, it will be difficult and largely based on such criteria as ones of "geographical coincidence." I have limited the inclusion of materials in this part of the collection, as in the whole collection, to those I am confident were included in the 1857 bequest.

I have prepared several indices to the Bailey Collection. The taxa index includes all generic and species names of diatoms 1) recorded on the slides, in the Catalogue of the Bailey Microscopical Collection and in the paleographs, 2) noted on sheets of exsiccati, not just the original names applied by the collectors, and 3) listed in the Catalogue of the Unmounted Materials [of the] Bailey Collection for which there are extant materials in the collection at the Farlow Herbarium. The geographical and person's indices cover also all appropriate names used in the three major parts of the collection, plus a few I have added to facilitate access to selected materials.

References

This description and history is taken from: Robert K. Edgar. The Jacob Bailey Whitman Bailey Diatom Collection at the Farlow Herbarium. Farlow Herbarium, Cambridge, Mass., 1978.