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This article uses the records at the Royal Mint to explore how Isaac Newton worked with metal beyond his alchemical and natural philosophical pursuits. It demonstrates how institutional paperwork can be used to think in new ways about the management of working resources as well as the relationship of material and mental practices across the linked urban worlds of state, science and finance. It reveals how Newton negotiated artisanal and administrative skills through a learned ‘practical objectivity’, unable to rely wholly upon his scientific reputation or mathematical ability when working with men and metals within a government department. Finally, it illuminates how Newton's activities at the Mint intersected and influenced a growing interest in the pursuit of scholarly antiquarianism as well as commercial geology, mining, metallurgy and metrology in the early eighteenth century.

This article explores how medical collections, representing repositories of knowledge and prestige, were used in the communication and representation of medical education and provincial identity in Manchester in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. It charts the changing ways in which medical collections and knowledge were represented as both pedagogical and promotional devices, demonstrating the importance of a localized approach to medical culture and, particularly, collecting in the long eighteenth century, and a sensitivity to how different generations inherited their recent past. It argues against any assumption of the easy transmission of scholarly cultural codes from metropolitan ‘centres’ to provincial ‘peripheries’.

Aim: Following the near-complete destruction of China’s forest ecosystems during the 20th century, recent reforestation programmes have created large-scale mosaics of protected secondary and plantation forests. These restored forests are often assumed to have limited biodiversity conservation value, but large-scale evaluations of their diversity are lacking. In our study, we compared α-diversity and species dissimilarity patterns of vascular plants and ground beetles (Coleoptera: Carabidae) in restored secondary and plantation forests to remnant mature forests across North-eastern temperate China. We also assessed functional traits of beetles and cross-taxon diversity links to evaluate differences in ecosystem functioning among forest types. // Location: Forested landscapes between Beijing and China’s North Korean and Russian borders. // Methods: Vascular plant and ground beetle assemblages were recorded in 159 temperate forest plots. The α-diversity and species compositional dissimilarity of these taxa and the functional traits of beetles were compared between plantation, secondary and mature forest ecosystems. // Results: Herbaceous plant species richness peaked in mature forests, while carabid and woody plant diversity did not differ between forest types. Species dissimilarity of carabids was lowest in mature forests and highest in plantation forests. Mature forest contained the highest proportion of carnivorous beetles, and secondary forests of large-bodied carabids. Carabid diversity and woody plant species richness were positively correlated in mature forests, but not in secondary or plantation forests. // Main conclusions: While China’s mature forests show a great conservation value in harbouring highly diverse herbaceous plant assemblages and an abundance of distinct invertebrate trait groups such as small predatory carabids, China’s restored temperate forests also support a high diversity of woody plants and carabids. Overall, our findings offer an encouraging conservation message for biodiversity conservation in China, and demonstrate the importance of policy measures that ensure effective long-term protection of both, China’s remnant mature forests, but also its new forest ecosystems.

This fascinating book explores in fine detail the role of natural historical correspondence in the construction of Britain as a “topographical object” in the seventeenth century. Examining the mate...

“Reconnecting Sloane” is an inter-disciplinary and multi-institutional project exploring the vast collection of the physician and naturalist Sir Hans Sloane (1660–1753). This review surveys recent scholarship within the different but overlapping methodological and conceptual approaches used by the collaborative team to understand early modern cultures of natural history collecting. Starting with the global geography of Sloane's botanical collections and material studies of natural objects, it then considers sociable practices of science and issues of trust and authenticity. Finally, it explores scholarship surrounding the organization of natural objects and its role in knowledge formation, before discussing how we might best approach current museum collections.