weird old label

[Christy Bills]

Hi - I have a vial with 4 isopods in it.  Collected in 1890.  

I can't make heads or tails of this label.  There are no other specimens in this lot with this handwriting or around this time period. 

Anybody have any ideas? 

Thanks! 

-Christy Bills

Inverts Clxns Manager

Natural History Museum of Utah

cbi...@nhmu.utah.edu

[Eric Chapman]

My guess would be Post Mountain (Trinity County, CA), but it really looks like "Pist" and not "Post". My only other guess would be Pistol Mountain - there is a Pistol Hill in Arizona.

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Eric G. Chapman, PhD
Research Analyst, Collections Manager
Department of Entomology
University of Kentucky
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Lexington KY 40546-0091 USA
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[Ivie, Michael]

“Pist” means road, track or trail, and is used in the US in the ski community.  Try ski trails on local hills.

Mike

__________________________________________________
Michael A. Ivie, Ph.D., F.R.E.S.

NOTE: two addresses with different Zip Codes depending on carriers

US Post Office Address:
Montana Entomology Collection
Marsh Labs, Room 50      
PO Box 173145
Montana State University                
Bozeman, MT 59717
USA  

UPS, FedEx, DHL Address:
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Marsh Labs, Room 50      
1911 West Lincoln Street
Montana State University                
Bozeman, MT 59718
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(406) 994-4610 (voice)
(406) 994-6029 (FAX)
mi...@montana.edu 

---

From: Eric Chapman <ericgc...@gmail.com>
Sent: Saturday, September 27, 2025 11:46 AM
To: EC...@ecnweb.org <EC...@ecnweb.org>
Subject: Re: [ECN-L] weird old label

 

**External Sender**

[Michael Sabourin]

well a wild guess would be Port Morant, Jamaica - and are you sure the label is that old ? 

and what kind of isopod - maybe someone would know collectors of such in that era

[Michael A. Ivie]

As clearly as that label is written in a beautiful hand, I think the only safe thing it to think it is properly spelled.  The first question is "what language is that?" Given the "June" and date format, it would look to be North American English.  Other massive misspellingsnare really big stretches without any evidence.  It is very clearly Pist Moant, why would that not be correct?  Just because you can't find that on-line does not mean you should look for something else.  

Not all labels can be interpreted, not all specimens will be worthy.  At some point, you have to consider them lost.

Mike

On 9/28/2025 2:17 PM, Michael Sabourin wrote:

**External Sender**

[Michael A. Ivie]

Ha! Basque sheepherders in Utah in the 1890s!  It means "Moan Trial" in Basque, i.e. a hard track.

On 9/28/2025 3:06 PM, Michael A. Ivie wrote:

**External Sender**

[Michael Caterino]

I think Mike's on the right 'track'. To me the month looked like 'Jane.', or Janeiro (January), Portuguese. And 'pista' can be a track or trail in that language as well. Could the sample be from Portugal or Brazil?

Mike C.

[Douglas Yanega]

On 9/27/25 10:35 AM, Christy Bills wrote:
> Hi - I have a vial with 4 isopods in it.  Collected in 1890.
> I can't make heads or tails of this label.  There are no other
> specimens in this lot with this handwriting or around this time period.
>
> Anybody have any ideas?

I tend to rely upon the handwriting itself for clues, and in this case I
would conclude that this person closed the top of their "u"s, as odd as
that seems. "Jane" makes no sense as a month (I lived in Brazil long
enough, that's not how they abbreviate it), so I conclude it's June. If
it's June, then the other word is "Mount", since the strokes forming the
letter are identical in both words.

There is some evidence for a Pistol Mountain in Buchanan County,
Virginia, since there is a Pistol Mountain Road.

Google Earth recognizes "Pistol Mountain Rd, Swords Creek, VA" - a road
that crests and dead-ends at a small strip-mined peak next to Pistol Gap.

It's identifiable on topo maps:

https://caltopo.com/map.html#ll=37.13048,-81.9324&z=16&b=t

It's obscure, for certain, but there are apparently no locations called
Pist Mount/ain or Pistol Mount/ain anywhere else in the US. If they're
isopods that occur in western Virginia, it's not a bad theory.

Peace,

--
Doug Yanega Dept. of Entomology Entomology Research Museum
Univ. of California, Riverside, CA 92521-0314 voicemail:951-827-8704
FaceBook: Doug Yanega (disclaimer: opinions are mine, not UCR's)
https://faculty.ucr.edu/~heraty/yanega.html
"There are some enterprises in which a careful disorderliness
is the true method" - Herman Melville, Moby Dick, Chap. 82

[Robin Delapena]

I concur with Doug, it’s June; if you take a close look at the J’s finishing upstroke, you’ll see it is then written over with a u. Can’t imagine why the collector would close their u’s as in Moant instead of a clearly writing Mount (I’ve seen collectors do crazier things in my experience), but it sure appears that way. Any identification on the isopods? That might significantly help narrow down the possible occurrence locality.

Cheers,

Robin DeLaPeña (she/her)

Digitization Project Coordinator (ESB)

S&E, Negaunee Integrative Research Center (Invertebrates)

O: 312.665.7165
email: rdel...@fieldmuseum.org

Field Museum
1400 S. DuSable Lake Shore Dr.
Chicago, IL 60605-2496
fieldmuseum.org

[Christy Bills]

Thanks for all the great input on this.  The person who looks at our isopods (Christian Furness) can get it to genus, but the species indicates it may be from Jamaica?  (Port Morant?)  

I think I've turned over every rock that I can on this cool specimen - geographically, historically, taxonomically, biographically - and I agree with Mike Ivie (but don't tell him I said that) and say this one might be lost to history.  

-Christy 

[Christy Bills]

Oh, I should have added this resource that might be helpful to other people.  BYU has a script tutorial for "making sense of old handwriting".  

https://script.byu.edu/

[Exped Marrocos]

Looks like Jane (someone) and a 12(Dec.)-19(day)-90 (year) it could never be Brasilian/Portuguese. We don't spell dates like that we always put day-month-year or year-mongh-day (very rare). 

That is a pretty much U.S. way of writing a date, so I guess it must be somewhere from there. My tip is to look into articles relating to the group/context to find the possible answer. 

[Joel Gardner]

I agree with Exped Marrocos, I think "Jane" might not be part of the date at all.  Making the date of collection December 19, [18]90.

I think Jamaica (and Mike Ivie) might both be right—interestingly, if you put "Pist Moant" into Google Translate and translate from Jamaican Patois, it gives "mountain track", which makes sense as a locality.  If you trust Google, then the locality being written in Jamaican Patois backs up the potential species ID and suggests a location somewhere in the mountains of Jamaica.  Alas, back-translating "mountain track" into Jamaican Patois does not give Pist Moant, so should get someone with some fluency to confirm.

"Jane" might then either specify a particular mountain or other location within the mountains, or possibly be a strange/archaic abbreviation for Jamaica itself.  I've tried doing some searching in this direction, but it's difficult to find anything on account of all the people in Jamaica who were/are named Jane.

Alternatively, Jane might be the collector's name, but it's a strange collector who just puts her first name and no surname.  Though perhaps not so strange if the locality is just "mountain track".

-Joel Gardner