These tasks are mainly done by veterans and naturalized technical personnel of the Remote Exploration Department and the Agricultural Port, with students from Fangcaodi doing auxiliary work. According to the usual stingy nature of the Senate, there is no output for the Natural History Museum.
The funding for "public service projects" is naturally "tight". In terms of establishment, it is now affiliated to the Ministry of Science and Technology, but the Ministry of Science and Technology has not increased many places for this purpose. The entire Natural History Museum has less than ten full-time staff.
.The rest are "temporary secondments" - everyone from veterans to naturalized workers are like this.
The current director of the museum is Dr. Zhong. However, Dr. Zhong rarely comes to the museum. The specific person in charge is Cui Yunhong, leader of the remote exploration department of the preparatory team. As for why Cui Yunhong was chosen as the standing director, rumors say it is because of the preparations.
There are several maids of senators in the group, so I chose him.
Cui Yunhong didn't care about this, but he said that his major was actually geological survey, and he didn't have much use at the Natural History Museum.
"We are going to hold a natural history training class at the museum, and your best student Sonia is also there. We are very short of field exploration personnel now. You go there and give them geological lessons - let Sonia give them lessons too." Zhong
said the doctor.
So Sonia is currently a staff member of the museum, a student in the training class, and a teacher in the training class. If she hadn’t had a baby at home, she would have reported to the museum at seven o’clock every day. Even so, she would get off work every day
The time will basically be delayed until after six o'clock.
Sonia looked at her schedule for the past few days: there were no classes. She breathed a sigh of relief. Whether it was giving lectures or attending classes, it took a lot of energy. And not only in the museum, she also had to prepare lessons, review and
Preview.
Although learning knowledge is a happy thing, it is not easy for a mother. If it weren't for the help of Lin Guanyu and the nanny at home, Sonia really doesn't know how she could cope with these things.
New materials have been piled up on her desk. These are all reports that need to be reviewed by her after they are sorted out. Some are cataloged and lost and need to be re-identified; some are damaged, and she needs to identify whether they can still be preserved and repaired. If not,
If you can't save it, you have to register it and make it again later.
Sonia hurriedly flipped through the reports - she can now easily read Chinese and understand the formatted reports. These reports are not difficult for her, and there is another benefit for her: various branches of modern biology
All professional terms are spelled in Latin, and she has been familiar with Latin works since she was a child.
Judging from the report, there were fifteen more taxidermied animals that needed her identification.
Sonia sighed. She has become very familiar with the local climate conditions in the past few years since she came to Hainan Island. During the rainy season that lasts for more than half a year, objects that are not carefully kept will become moldy, and insect pests are even more common. The specimens have limited storage conditions.
, many have problems with mold and insect infestation. And most of them cannot be repaired.
If the damage continues like this, Dr. Zhong’s “Hainan Island Local Exhibition” will almost no longer be able to be held.
According to Dr. Zhong’s opinion, the exhibitions at the Natural History Museum should first highlight “local characteristics”, so the theme of the first permanent exhibition is “Nature of Hainan Island”. It mainly displays the animals, plants, insects and minerals of Hainan Island.
Various specimens. It is relatively less difficult to organize an exhibition this way.
But even in accordance with this "local characteristics" and not adopting a "big and comprehensive" policy, the workload is not trivial. When Sonia was studying in the Remote Exploration Department, she learned that there were 19 orders and 56 families of wild birds in Hainan Island under the Australian rule.
256 species; 68 species of mammals in 8 orders, 24 families. The specimens collected by the Remote Exploration Department in recent years are only 176 species of birds and 40 species of mammals. There is a huge difference. As for insects and plants, the gap is even further.
And these specimens have suffered a lot of damage. To make up for it, they have to be collected again - this cannot be done in a day or two.
The remote exploration team has currently trained four teams, each led by one or two full-time veterans, adopting a rotation system. Each team conducts patch-based carpet inspections of the entire Hainan Island every three months. Sonia has also participated
Twice. Each time she came back from the inspection, she gained a lot, but it also made her have some doubts: all the information about the island has been clearly recorded in the Senate's book, and it is obvious that there have been a group of very knowledgeable naturalists.
We have conducted a detailed inspection of the island, so why do we need to organize a group of people whose abilities are obviously inferior to the former to conduct a new inspection?
Such doubts also arose when she visited Jeju Island and Taiwan Island.
She raised this question to Cui Yunhong and others, but everyone was vague, saying either "that is old information from the past and is different from the present" or "we need more detailed information."
She cast her eyes on the globe on the table. This was a gift given to her by Lin Hanlong when she first arrived at the Lin family: a sphere made of high-grade wood spliced and polished, with a map carefully carved using the Mercator projection method. It was her
One of her favorite objects. She had never seen a map with such fine proportions and accuracy before. What surprised her most was that the latitude and longitude were depicted on this globe.
You must know that navigators all over the world are thinking hard about how to position themselves, and a key difficulty in positioning is longitude. Scientists have long been able to determine latitude through astronomical observations, but because of the lack of reference points, longitude can only be determined by time.
As a method of speculation. How to measure the local precise time was still a problem in the 17th century. The data obtained by simple corona observations are very rough.
In order to solve this problem, some people worked hard to develop accurate timepieces, and some people found another way to use the moon phases to determine the time. However, no matter which method, great progress was made in the 17th century. Geographical positioning was rough and
Imprecise. As a navigator, adventurer, and naturalist, Sonia is no stranger to this.
All longitudes and latitudes are clearly marked on this globe - it is certainly not difficult to mark longitudes and latitudes on a map. The key is how Australians use to determine the accuracy of the longitude and latitude of a certain location? For example, the longitude and latitude of Mexico City on the globe
That is 192438,-990750.
This immediately made her very interested in this globe, and then she immediately discovered a strange phenomenon: on the Australian globe, the 0-degree longitude was actually in England!
Not only is 0 degrees longitude in England, it is also marked with a small city: Greenwich.
Although Sonia is of British descent and has been to the UK, she doesn't know about this place. Judging from its location, it falls within the scope of "Greater London". She hasn't heard of any observatory or the like there.
On the nautical charts that Sonia is familiar with, the 0-degree longitude is marked on the island of Hierro in the Canary Islands.
How deeply do Australians feel about England and Greenwich that they actually put the 0-degree longitude in such a place?
Sonia knew that there were not only European senators who spoke English in the Senate, but also that all the senators knew at least a little bit of English - of course their English was not the same as her English. But whether it was the same language or not, Sonia still
Able to judge.
Next, she discovered more mysteries on the globe. Although geography in the 17th century already knew the general appearance of the earth, many details had not yet been completed. The coastlines and inland mountains of each continent, the flow of rivers and
Most of the sources are roughly marked, and some are even completely unclear. Although large rivers such as the Nile and the Amazon are very famous, their flow areas, tributaries, and sources were not fully understood until the 19th century.
clear.
But on the Australian globe, there were so many similar details that she couldn't imagine that they were drawn randomly - someone must have been there and done some survey before they could draw them on the map.
Sonia didn't know that this globe had been greatly "simplified" by the Office of Truth. Even so, the "sterilized" globe still shocked her greatly.
From this moment on, Sonia had a keen interest in the Australians and the Senate. Compared with all her past experiences, they were really too mysterious.
Sonia's interest in the "mystery" of the senators is growing day by day. What interests her most is where is "Australia"?
According to the elders, including Lin Hanlong, the Australian mainland is located further south of the Spice Islands. However, to reach the Australian mainland, one needs to pass through a sea with unpredictable weather and sea conditions. During this journey, no navigation method can be used, and one can only try one's luck.
Go with the flow.
This explanation was surprisingly consistent among the elders, which caused Sonia to have some doubts. When she began to collect and investigate the situation in Australia, when she felt that she had collected enough information and summarized the
After some doubts, she once again mentioned her doubts to Lin Hanlong. However, her master, who had always been gentle and loving to her, became unusually cold-faced. Although he did not reprimand herself, he said a motto that made her shudder:
"The most merciful thing about this world is that the human mind cannot integrate all its contents. We live on a peaceful island called ignorance, surrounded by endless black oceans, and we should not have set sail.
"
The strange sense of oppression made Sonia feel intense fear, and she immediately understood: Although the senators kept saying that they were from Australia, they did not want anyone to know about this place.
She destroyed her notes and kept her doubts firmly in her heart. No matter what the real situation in Australia was, it was very dangerous to pry into the secrets of the powerful.