What would you say if the Smithsonian asked you to help them carry on their natural history exploration and collecting in the East Indies? In 1912, that's exactly what happened to 22 year old Henry Cushier Raven. In late February, Raven sailed for Singapore, Java and Borneo. This journal begins as a travel diary and transitions to narrative field notes as Raven made landfall in Singapore. He collected a variety of small mammals, reptiles and birds but notes a number of monkeys, too.
Help us transcribe this journal and learn what work was like for this young explorer during the first of six years in the East Indies.
What would you say if the Smithsonian asked you to help them carry on their natural history exploration and collecting in the East Indies? In 1912, that's exactly what happened to 22 year old Henry Cushier Raven. In late February, Raven sailed for Singapore, Java and Borneo. This journal begins as a travel diary and transitions to narrative field notes as Raven made landfall in Singapore. He collected a variety of small mammals, reptiles and birds but notes a number of monkeys, too.
Help us transcribe this journal and learn what work was like for this young explorer during the first of six years in the East Indies.
Raven's travels in the Pacific took him to Borneo, the Celebes, and the Moluccas. In 1919, the Smithsonian again employed him as a field collector, this time for the Cape-to-Cairo African Expedition. From 1921 to his death, Raven was employed by the American Museum of Natural History as a collector and Curator of Comparative Anatomy. He also held appointments with New York University, 1924-1926; Columbia University, 1926-1944; Johns Hopkins University, 1936-1938; and the New York Zoological Park, 1921-1944. Raven's major research contributions dealt with the distribution of animals in East Asia, the sperm and beaked whales, and the comparative anatomy of primates, especially gorillas.