These tasks are mainly done by veterans and naturalized technicians from the Remote Exploration Department and the Agricultural Port, with the trainees from Fangcaodi doing auxiliary work. According to the stingy nature of the Senate, funding for unproductive "public service projects" such as the Natural History Museum is naturally "tight." In terms of establishment, it is now affiliated with the Ministry of Science and Technology, but the Ministry of Science and Technology has not increased many quotas for this purpose. The entire Natural History Museum has less than ten full-time staff. The rest are "temporary secondments" - from veterans to naturalized workers.
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 of the Remote Exploration Department, leader of the preparatory team. As for why Cui Yunhong was chosen as the permanent director, rumors say that he was chosen because there were several maids of elders in the preparatory team.
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 geology lessons - let Sonia give them lessons too." Zhong said the doctor.
So Sonia is currently a museum staff member, a student in a training class, and a teacher in the training class. If I hadn't had a baby at home, I would have reported to the museum at about seven o'clock every day. Even so, she basically delays getting off work until after six o'clock every day.
Sonia looked at her schedule for the past few days: there were no classes. She was slightly relieved. Whether it was lecturing or listening to classes, she had to spend a lot of energy. And not only in the museum, she also has to prepare lessons, review and preview for this when she returns home.
Although learning knowledge is a happy thing, it is not easy for those who become mothers. If it weren't for the help of Lin Guanyu and the nanny at home, Sonia really doesn't know how she could have dealt with these things.
New materials have been piled up on her desk. These are 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 could now simply read Chinese and understand the formatted reports. These reports did not stump her, and they also had another advantage for her: modern professional terms in various branches of biology were spelled in Latin, and she had 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. In the past few years since she came to Hainan Island, she has become very familiar with the local climate conditions. During the rainy season that lasts for more than half a year, items that are not carefully taken care of will become moldy, and insect infestations are even more common. Due to limited storage conditions, many specimens suffer from 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 various specimens of animals, plants, insects and minerals from Hainan Island. It is relatively less difficult to hold an exhibition this way.
But even if we follow this "local characteristic" and don't adopt the "big and comprehensive" policy, the workload is still not trivial. When Sonia was studying in the Remote Exploration Department, she learned that there were 256 species of wild birds in 19 orders, 56 families, and 68 species of mammals in 8 orders, 24 families, and so on in Hainan Island under the rule of the Australians. The remote exploration department has collected only 176 species of birds and 40 species of mammals over the years. Far from it. As for insects and plants, it's even further away.
And these specimens suffered a lot of damage. If you want to make up for it, you have to collect it 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. They adopt a rotation system. Each team conducts patch-based inspections of the entire Hainan Island every three months. Sonia also participated twice. Although she gained a lot after each expedition, she also had some doubts: all the information about the island had been clearly recorded in the Senate's book, and it was obvious that a group of very knowledgeable naturalists had already studied the island. After conducting a detailed inspection, why do we need to organize a group of people whose abilities are obviously inferior to the former to conduct a re-inspection?
Such doubts also arose when she visited Jeju Island and Taiwan Island.
She raised this question with Cui Yunhong and others, but everyone was vague. They either said, "Those are old information from the past and are different from the present", or "We need more detailed information."
Her eyes fell 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 is one of her favorite high-end items. 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 estimated based on time. How to measure the local precise time was still a problem in the 17th century. Data from simple coronal observations are very crude.
In order to solve this problem, some people worked hard to develop accurate timers, while others found another way to use the moon phases to determine the time. But neither of them made much progress in the 17th century. Geolocation is 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 - of course it is 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 latitude and longitude of Mexico City on the globe is 19 24 38, -99 07 50.
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, she has also been to the UK. But don't know this place. Judging from its location, it falls within the scope of "Greater London". I haven't heard of any local observatory or anything like that.
On the nautical chart 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 Sonia is still able to judge whether it is the same language.
Next, she discovers 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. Most of the coastlines and inland mountains of each continent, as well as the flow directions and sources of rivers, 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.
But on the Australian globe, there were too many similar details, so many that she couldn't imagine that they were drawn randomly - someone must have been there and done a survey before they could draw them on the map.
Sonia had no idea that the globe had been significantly "simplified" by the Office of Truth. Even so, the "sterilized" globe still shocked her greatly.
From this moment on, Sonia took a keen interest in the Australians and the Senate. Compared to all her past experiences, they were so mysterious.
Sonia's interest in this "mystery" of the senators grew 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, but 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, causing Sonia to have some doubts. When she started collecting and investigating the situation in Australia. When she felt that she had collected enough information and summarized some of the doubts, she once again mentioned her doubts to Lin Hanlong. However, his master, who had always been gentle and loving towards him, became unusually cold-faced. Although he did not reprimand himself, he did say 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 an endless black ocean, and we should never have set sail. "
The strange sense of oppression made Sonia feel strong 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. Whatever the true situation in Australia, prying into the secrets of the powerful is very dangerous.
