Cape Verde
Cape Verde or Cabo Verde the Republic of Cabo Verde, is an island country spanning an archipelago of 10 volcanic islands in the central Atlantic Ocean. It forms part of the Macaronesia ecoregion, along with the Azores, Canary Islands and the Savage Isles. In ancient times these islands were referred to as "the Islands of the Blessed" or the "Fortunate Isles". Located 570 kilometres west of the Cape Verde Peninsula off the coast of Northwest Africa, the islands cover a combined area of over 4,000 square kilometres; the Cape Verde archipelago was uninhabited until the 15th century, when Portuguese explorers discovered and colonized the islands, establishing the first European settlement in the tropics. Ideally located for the Atlantic slave trade, the islands grew prosperous throughout the 16th and 17th centuries, attracting merchants and pirates; the end of slavery in the 19th century led to economic emigration. Cape Verde recovered as an important commercial center and stopover for shipping routes.
Incorporated as an overseas department of Portugal in 1951, the islands continued to campaign for independence, peacefully achieved in 1975. Since the early 1990s, Cape Verde has been a stable representative democracy, remains one of the most developed and democratic countries in Africa. Lacking natural resources, its developing economy is service-oriented, with a growing focus on tourism and foreign investment, its population of around 540,000 is of mixed European, Moorish and African heritage, predominantly Roman Catholic, reflecting the legacy of Portuguese rule. A sizeable diaspora community exists across the world outnumbering inhabitants on the islands; the name "Cape Verde" has been used in English for the archipelago and, since independence in 1975, for the country. In 2013, the Cape Verdean government determined that the Portuguese designation Cabo Verde would henceforth be used for official purposes, such as at the United Nations in English contexts. Cape Verde is a member of the African Union.
The name of the country stems on the Senegalese coast. In 1444, Portuguese explorers had named that landmark as Cabo Verde, a few years before they discovered the islands. On 24 October 2013, the country's delegation announced at the United Nations that the official name should no longer be translated into other languages. Instead of "Cape Verde", the designation "Republic of Cabo Verde" is to be used. Before the arrival of Europeans, the Cape Verde Islands were uninhabited; the islands of the Cape Verde archipelago were discovered by Genoese and Portuguese navigators around 1456. According to Portuguese official records, the first discoveries were made by Genoa-born António de Noli, afterwards appointed governor of Cape Verde by Portuguese King Afonso V. Other navigators mentioned as contributing to discoveries in the Cape Verde archipelago are Diogo Gomes, Diogo Dias, Diogo Afonso and the Italian Alvise Cadamosto. In 1462, Portuguese settlers arrived at Santiago and founded a settlement they called Ribeira Grande.
Ribeira Grande was the first permanent European settlement in the tropics. In the 16th century, the archipelago prospered from the Atlantic slave trade. Pirates attacked the Portuguese settlements. Francis Drake, an English privateer, twice sacked the capital Ribeira Grande in 1585 when it was a part of the Iberian Union. After a French attack in 1712, the town declined in importance relative to nearby Praia, which became the capital in 1770. Decline in the slave trade in the 19th century resulted in an economic crisis. Cape Verde's early prosperity vanished. However, the islands' position astride mid-Atlantic shipping lanes made Cape Verde an ideal location for re-supplying ships; because of its excellent harbour, the city of Mindelo, located on the island of São Vicente, became an important commercial centre during the 19th century. Diplomat Edmund Roberts visited Cape Verde in 1832. With few natural resources and inadequate sustainable investment from the Portuguese, the citizens grew discontented with the colonial masters, who refused to provide the local authorities with more autonomy.
In 1951, Portugal changed Cape Verde's status from a colony to an overseas province in an attempt to blunt growing nationalism. In 1956, Amílcar Cabral and a group of fellow Cape Verdeans and Guineans organised the clandestine African Party for the Independence of Guinea and Cape Verde, it demanded improvement in economic and political conditions in Cape Verde and Portuguese Guinea and formed the basis of the two nations' independence movement. Moving its headquarters to Conakry, Guinea in 1960, the PAIGC began an armed rebellion against Portugal in 1961. Acts of sabotage grew into a war in Portuguese Guinea that pitted 10,000 Soviet Bloc-supported PAIGC soldiers against 35,000 Portuguese and African troops. By 1972, the PAIGC controlled much of Portuguese Guinea despite the presence of the Portuguese troops, but the organization did not attempt to disrupt Portuguese control in Cape Verde. Portuguese Guinea declared independence in 1973 and was granted de jure independence in 1974. A budding independence movement — led by Amílcar Cabral, assassinated in 1973 — passed on to his half-brother Luís Cabral and culminated in independence for the archipelago in
Caribbean
The Caribbean is a region of The Americas that consists of the Caribbean Sea, its islands and the surrounding coasts. The region is southeast of the Gulf of Mexico and the North American mainland, east of Central America, north of South America. Situated on the Caribbean Plate, the region comprises more than 700 islands, islets and cays; these islands form island arcs that delineate the eastern and northern edges of the Caribbean Sea. The Caribbean islands, consisting of the Greater Antilles on the north and the Lesser Antilles on the south and east, are part of the somewhat larger West Indies grouping, which includes the Lucayan Archipelago; the Lucayans and, less Bermuda, are sometimes considered Caribbean despite the fact that none of these islands border the Caribbean Sea. In a wider sense, the mainland countries and territories of Belize, the Caribbean region of Colombia, the Yucatán Peninsula, Margarita Island, the Guyanas, are included due to their political and cultural ties with the region.
Geopolitically, the Caribbean islands are regarded as a subregion of North America and are organized into 30 territories including sovereign states, overseas departments, dependencies. From December 15, 1954, to October 10, 2010, there was a country known as the Netherlands Antilles composed of five states, all of which were Dutch dependencies. From January 3, 1958, to May 31, 1962, there was a short-lived political union called the West Indies Federation composed of ten English-speaking Caribbean territories, all of which were British dependencies; the West Indies cricket team continues to represent many of those nations. The region takes its name from that of the Caribs, an ethnic group present in the Lesser Antilles and parts of adjacent South America at the time of the Spanish conquest of the Americas; the two most prevalent pronunciations of "Caribbean" outside the Caribbean are, with the primary stress on the third syllable, with the stress on the second. Most authorities of the last century preferred the stress on the third syllable.
This is the older of the two pronunciations, but the stressed-second-syllable variant has been established for over 75 years. It has been suggested that speakers of British English prefer while North American speakers more use, but major American dictionaries and other sources list the stress on the third syllable as more common in American English too. According to the American version of Oxford Online Dictionaries, the stress on the second syllable is becoming more common in UK English and is considered "by some" to be more up to date and more "correct"; the Oxford Online Dictionaries claim that the stress on the second syllable is the most common pronunciation in the Caribbean itself, but according to the Dictionary of Caribbean English Usage, the most common pronunciation in Caribbean English stresses the first syllable instead. The word "Caribbean" has multiple uses, its principal ones are political. The Caribbean can be expanded to include territories with strong cultural and historical connections to slavery, European colonisation and the plantation system.
The United Nations geoscheme for the Americas presents the Caribbean as a distinct region within the Americas. Physiographically, the Caribbean region is a chain of islands surrounding the Caribbean Sea. To the north, the region is bordered by the Gulf of Mexico, the Straits of Florida and the Northern Atlantic Ocean, which lies to the east and northeast. To the south lies the coastline of the continent of South America. Politically, the "Caribbean" may be centred on socio-economic groupings found in the region. For example, the bloc known as the Caribbean Community contains the Co-operative Republic of Guyana, the Republic of Suriname in South America and Belize in Central America as full members. Bermuda and the Turks and Caicos Islands, which are in the Atlantic Ocean, are associate members of the Caribbean Community; the Commonwealth of the Bahamas is in the Atlantic and is a full member of the Caribbean Community. Alternatively, the organisation called the Association of Caribbean States consists of every nation in the surrounding regions that lie on the Caribbean, plus El Salvador, which lies on the Pacific Ocean.
According to the ACS, the total population of its member states is 227 million people. The geography and climate in the Caribbean region varies: Some islands in the region have flat terrain of non-volcanic origin; these islands include Aruba, Curaçao, Bonaire, the Cayman Islands, Saint Croix, the Bahamas, Antigua. Others possess rugged towering mountain-ranges like the islands of Saint Martin, Hispaniola, Puerto Rico, Dominica, Saba, Sint Eustatius, Saint Kitts, Saint Lucia, Saint Thomas, Saint John, Grenada, Saint Vincent, Guadeloupe and Trinidad and Tobago. Definitions of the terms Greater Antilles and Lesser Antilles vary; the Virgin Islands as part of the Puerto Rican bank are sometimes included with the Greater Antilles. The term Lesser Antilles is used to define an island arc that includes Grenada but excludes Trinidad and Tobago and the Leeward Antilles; the waters of the Caribbean Sea host large, migratory schools of fish and coral reef
Anthracotheriidae
Anthracotheriidae is a family of extinct, hippopotamus-like artiodactyl ungulates related to hippopotamuses and whales. The oldest genus, first appeared during the middle Eocene in Asia, they thrived in Africa and Eurasia, with a few species entering North America during the Oligocene. They died out in Europe and Africa during the Miocene due to a combination of climatic changes and competition with other artiodactyls, including pigs and true hippopotamuses; the youngest genus, died out in Asia during the late Pliocene. The family is named after the first genus discovered, which means "coal beast", as the first fossils of it were found in Paleogene-aged coal beds in France. Fossil remains of the anthracothere genus were discovered by the Harvard University and Geological Survey of Pakistan joint research project in the well-dated middle and late Miocene deposits of the Pothohar Plateau in northern Pakistan. In life, the average anthracothere would have resembled a skinny hippopotamus with a comparatively small, narrow head and most pig-like in general appearance.
They had four or five toes on each foot, broad feet suited to walking on soft mud. They had full sets of about 44 teeth with five semicrescentric cusps on the upper molars, which, in some species, were adapted for digging up the roots of aquatic plants; some skeletal characters of anthracotheres suggest. The nature of the sediments in which they are fossilized implies they were amphibious, which supports the view, based on anatomical evidence, that they were ancestors of the hippopotamuses. In many respects the anatomy of the lower jaw, Anthracotherium, as with other members of the family, is allied to the hippopotamus, of which it is an ancestral form. However, one study suggests, instead of anthracotheres, another pig-like group of artiodactyls, called palaeochoerids, are the true stem group of Hippopotamidae. Recent evidence, gained from comparative gene sequencing, further suggests that hippos are the closest living relatives of whales, so, if anthracotheres are stem hippos, they would be related to whales in a clade provisionally called Whippomorpha.
However, the earliest known anthracotheres appear in the fossil record in the middle Eocene, well after the archaeocetes had taken up aquatic lifestyles. Although phylogenetic analyses of molecular data on extant animals support the notion that hippopotamids are the closest relatives of cetaceans, the two groups are unlikely to be related when extant and extinct artiodactyls are analyzed. Cetaceans originated about 50 million years ago in south Asia, whereas the family Hippopotamidae is only 15 million years old, the first hippopotamids are only 6 million years old. Yet, analyses of fossil clades have not resolved the issue of cetacean relations. Another study has offered a suggestion that anthracotheres are part of a clade that consists of entelodonts and, a sister clade to other cetancodonts, with Siamotherium as the most basal member of the clade Cetacodontamorpha
Lemur
Lemurs are mammalian animals of the order primates, divided into 8 families and consisting of 15 genera and around 100 existing species. They are native only to the island of Madagascar. Most existing lemurs are small, have a pointed snout, large eyes, a long tail, they chiefly live in trees, are active at night. Lemurs evolved independently from monkeys and apes. Due to Madagascar's seasonal climate, lemur evolution has produced a level of species diversity rivaling that of any other primate group; until shortly after humans arrived on the island around 2,000 years ago, there were lemurs as large as a male gorilla. Most species have been promoted to full species status since the 1990s. Lemurs range in weight from the 30-gram mouse lemur to the 9-kilogram indri. Lemurs share many common basal primate traits, such as divergent digits on their hands and feet, nails instead of claws. However, their brain-to-body size ratio is smaller than that of anthropoid primates; as with all strepsirrhine primates, they have a "wet nose".
Lemurs are the most social of the strepsirrhine primates, communicate more with scents and vocalizations than with visual signals. Lemurs have a low basal metabolic rate, as a result may exhibit dormancy such as hibernation or torpor, they have seasonal breeding and female social dominance. Most eat a wide variety of leaves, while some are specialists. Two species of lemurs may coexist the same forest due to different diets. Lemur research during the 18th and 19th centuries focused on specimen collection. Modern studies of lemur ecology and behavior did not begin in earnest until the 1960s. Hindered by political issues on Madagascar during the mid-1970s, field studies resumed in the 1980s. Lemurs are important for research because their mix of ancestral characteristics and traits shared with anthropoid primates can yield insights on primate and human evolution. Many lemur species are threatened with extinction due to habitat hunting. Although local traditions help protect lemurs and their forests, illegal logging, widespread poverty, political instability hinder and undermine conservation efforts.
Because of these threats and their declining numbers, the International Union for Conservation of Nature considers lemurs to be the world's most endangered mammals, noting that as of 2013 up to 90% of all lemur species face extinction within the next 20 to 25 years. The name lemur is derived from the Latin lemures, which refers to specters or ghosts that were exorcised during the Lemuria festival of ancient Rome. Carl Linnaeus, the founder of modern binomial nomenclature, gave lemurs their name as early as 1758, when he used it in the 10th edition of Systema Naturae, he included three species under the genus Lemur: Lemur tardigradus, Lemur catta, Lemur volans. Although the term "lemur" was first intended for slender lorises, it was soon limited to the endemic Malagasy primates, which have been known as "lemurs" since. According to Linnaeus' own explanation, the name was selected because of the nocturnal activity and slow movements of the slender loris. Being familiar with the works of Virgil and Ovid and seeing an analogy that fit with his naming scheme, Linnaeus adapted the term "lemur" for these nocturnal primates.
It was noted in 2012 that it has been and falsely assumed that Linnaeus was referring to the ghost-like appearance, reflective eyes, ghostly cries of lemurs. It has been speculated that Linnaeus may have known that some Malagasy people have held legends that lemurs are the souls of their ancestors, but this is unlikely given that the name was selected for slender lorises from India. Lemurs are primates belonging to the suborder Strepsirrhini. Like other strepsirrhine primates, such as lorises and galagos, they share ancestral traits with early primates. In this regard, lemurs are popularly confused with ancestral primates. Instead, they evolved independently in isolation on Madagascar. All modern strepsirrhines including lemurs are traditionally thought to have evolved from early primates known as adapiforms during the Eocene or Paleocene. Adapiforms, lack a specialized arrangement of teeth, known as a toothcomb, which nearly all living strepsirrhines possess. A more recent hypothesis is; this is supported by comparative studies of the cytochrome b gene and the presence of the strepsirrhine toothcomb in both groups.
Instead of being the direct ancestors of lemurs, the adapiforms may have given rise to both the lemurs and lorisoids, a split that would be supported by molecular phylogenetic studies. The split between lemurs and lorises is thought to have occurred 62 to 65 mya according to molecular studies, although other genetic tests and the fossil record in Africa suggest more conservative estimates of 50 to 55 mya for this divergence. However, the oldest lemur fossils on Madagascar are subfossils dating to the Late Pleistocene. Once part of the supercontinent Gondwana, the island of Madagascar has been isolated since it broke away from eastern Africa and India. Since ancestral lemurs are thought to have originated
Madagascar
Madagascar the Republic of Madagascar, known as the Malagasy Republic, is an island country in the Indian Ocean 400 kilometres off the coast of East Africa. The nation comprises the island of Madagascar and numerous smaller peripheral islands. Following the prehistoric breakup of the supercontinent Gondwana, Madagascar split from the Indian subcontinent around 88 million years ago, allowing native plants and animals to evolve in relative isolation. Madagascar is a biodiversity hotspot; the island's diverse ecosystems and unique wildlife are threatened by the encroachment of the growing human population and other environmental threats. The first archaeological evidence for human foraging on Madagascar may have occurred as much as 10,000 years ago. Human settlement of Madagascar occurred between 350 BC and 550 AD by Austronesian peoples, arriving on outrigger canoes from Borneo; these were joined around the 9th century AD by Bantu migrants crossing the Mozambique Channel from East Africa. Other groups continued to settle on Madagascar over time, each one making lasting contributions to Malagasy cultural life.
The Malagasy ethnic group is divided into 18 or more subgroups, of which the largest are the Merina of the central highlands. Until the late 18th century, the island of Madagascar was ruled by a fragmented assortment of shifting sociopolitical alliances. Beginning in the early 19th century, most of the island was united and ruled as the Kingdom of Madagascar by a series of Merina nobles; the monarchy ended in 1897 when the island was absorbed into the French colonial empire, from which the island gained independence in 1960. The autonomous state of Madagascar has since undergone four major constitutional periods, termed republics. Since 1992, the nation has been governed as a constitutional democracy from its capital at Antananarivo. However, in a popular uprising in 2009, president Marc Ravalomanana was made to resign and presidential power was transferred in March 2009 to Andry Rajoelina. Constitutional governance was restored in January 2014, when Hery Rajaonarimampianina was named president following a 2013 election deemed fair and transparent by the international community.
Madagascar is a member of the United Nations, the African Union, the Southern African Development Community, the Organisation Internationale de la Francophonie. Madagascar belongs according to the United Nations. Malagasy and French are both official languages of the state; the majority of the population adheres to traditional beliefs, Christianity, or an amalgamation of both. Ecotourism and agriculture, paired with greater investments in education and private enterprise, are key elements of Madagascar's development strategy. Under Ravalomanana, these investments produced substantial economic growth, but the benefits were not evenly spread throughout the population, producing tensions over the increasing cost of living and declining living standards among the poor and some segments of the middle class; as of 2017, the economy has been weakened by the 2009–2013 political crisis, quality of life remains low for the majority of the Malagasy population. In the Malagasy language, the island of Madagascar is called Madagasikara and its people are referred to as Malagasy.
The island's appellation "Madagascar" is not of local origin but rather was popularized in the Middle Ages by Europeans. The name Madageiscar was first recorded in the memoirs of 13th-century Venetian explorer Marco Polo as a corrupted transliteration of the name Mogadishu, the Somali port with which Polo had confused the island. On St. Laurence's Day in 1500, Portuguese explorer Diogo Dias landed on the island and named it São Lourenço. Polo's name popularized on Renaissance maps. No single Malagasy-language name predating Madagasikara appears to have been used by the local population to refer to the island, although some communities had their own name for part or all of the land they inhabited. At 592,800 square kilometres, Madagascar is the world's 47th largest country and the fourth-largest island; the country lies between latitudes 12°S and 26°S, longitudes 43°E and 51°E. Neighboring islands include the French territory of Réunion and the country of Mauritius to the east, as well as the state of Comoros and the French territory of Mayotte to the north west.
The nearest mainland state is Mozambique, located to the west. The prehistoric breakup of the supercontinent Gondwana separated the Madagascar–Antarctica–India landmass from the Africa–South America landmass around 135 million years ago. Madagascar split from India about 88 million years ago during the late Cretaceous period allowing plants and animals on the island to evolve in relative isolation. Along the length of the eastern coast runs a narrow and steep escarpment containing much of the island's remaining tropical lowland forest. To the west of this ridge lies a plateau in the center of the island ranging in altitude from 750 to 1,500 m above sea level; these central highlands, traditionally the homeland of the Merina people and the location of their historic capital at Antananarivo, are the most densely populated part of the island and are characterized by terraced, rice-growing valleys lying between grassy hills and patches of the subhumid forests that covered the highland region. To the west of the highlands, the arid terrain slope
Anguilla
Anguilla is a British overseas territory in the Caribbean. It is one of the most northerly of the Leeward Islands in the Lesser Antilles, lying east of Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands and directly north of Saint Martin; the territory consists of the main island of Anguilla 16 miles long by 3 miles wide at its widest point, together with a number of much smaller islands and cays with no permanent population. The island's capital is The Valley; the total land area of the territory is 35 square miles, with a population of 14,764. Anguilla has become a popular tax haven, having no capital gains, profit, sales, or corporate taxes. In April 2011, faced with a mounting deficit, it introduced a 3% "Interim Stabilisation Levy", Anguilla's first form of income tax. Anguilla has a 0.75% property tax. The name Anguilla is from the Italian anguilla meaning "eel" in reference to the island's shape, it is believed by most sources to have been named by Christopher Columbus. For similar reasons, it was known as Snake or Snake Island.
Anguilla was first settled by Indigenous Amerindian peoples. The earliest Native American artefacts found on Anguilla have been dated to around 1300 BC; the Arawak name for the island seems to have been Malliouhana. The date of European colonisation is uncertain: some sources claim that Columbus sighted the island during his second voyage in 1493, while others state that the island's first European explorer was the French Huguenot nobleman and merchant mariner René Goulaine de Laudonnière in 1564; the Dutch West India Company established a fort on the island in 1631. The Dutch withdrew after the destruction of the fort by Spanish forces in 1633. Traditional accounts state that Anguilla was first colonized by English settlers from Saint Kitts beginning in 1650. In this early colonial period, Anguilla sometimes served as a place of refuge and recent scholarship focused on Anguilla has placed greater significance on other Europeans and creoles migrating from St. Christopher, Barbados and Antigua.
The French temporarily took over the island in 1666 but returned it to English control under the terms of the Treaty of Breda the next year. A Major John Scott who visited in September 1667, wrote of leaving the island "in good condition" and noted that in July 1668, "200 or 300 people fled thither in time of war", it is that some of these early Europeans brought enslaved Africans with them. Historians confirm. For example, Africans from Senegal lived in St. Christopher in 1626. By 1672 a slave depot existed on the island of Nevis. While the time of African arrival in Anguilla is difficult to place archival evidence indicates a substantial African presence of at least 100 enslaved people by 1683; these seem to have come from Central Africa as well as West Africa. Attempts by the French to capture the island during the War of Austrian Succession and the Napoleonic Wars ended in failure. During the early colonial period, Anguilla was administered by the British through Antigua. In 1967, Britain granted Saint Nevis full internal autonomy.
Anguilla was incorporated into the new unified dependency, named Saint Christopher-Nevis-Anguilla, against the wishes of many Anguillians. This led to two Anguillian Revolutions in 1969 headed by Atlin Harrigan and Ronald Webster; the island operated as the independent "Republic of Anguilla". The goal of the revolution was not independence per se, but rather independence from Saint Kitts and Nevis and a return to being a British colony. British authority was restored in July 1971. Anguilla is an internally self-governing overseas territory of the United Kingdom, its politics take place in a framework of a parliamentary representative democratic dependency, whereby the Chief Minister is the head of government, of a pluriform multi-party system. The United Nations Committee on Decolonization includes Anguilla on the United Nations list of Non-Self-Governing Territories; the territory's constitution is Anguilla Constitutional Order 1 April 1982. Executive power is exercised by the government. Legislative power is vested in the House of Assembly.
The judiciary is independent of the legislature. As a dependency of the UK, the UK is responsible for Anguilla's military defence, although there are no active garrisons or armed forces present. Anguilla has a small marine police force, comprising around 32 personnel, which operates one VT Halmatic M160-class 52-foot fast patrol boat; the majority of residents are black, the descendants of slaves transported from Africa. Minorities include whites at 3.74% and people of mixed race at 4.65%. 72 % of the population is Anguillian. Of the non-Anguillian population, many are citizens of the United States, United Kingdom, St Kitts & Nevis, the Dominican Republic and Nigeria. 2006 and 2007 saw an influx of large numbers of Chinese and Mexican workers, brought in as labour for major tourist developments due to the local population not being large enough to support the labour requirements. Christian churches did not have a consistent or strong presence during the initial period of English colonisation. Spiritual and religious practic
Nature (journal)
Nature is a British multidisciplinary scientific journal, first published on 4 November 1869. It is one of the most recognizable scientific journals in the world, was ranked the world's most cited scientific journal by the Science Edition of the 2010 Journal Citation Reports and is ascribed an impact factor of 40.137, making it one of the world's top academic journals. It is one of the few remaining academic journals that publishes original research across a wide range of scientific fields. Research scientists are the primary audience for the journal, but summaries and accompanying articles are intended to make many of the most important papers understandable to scientists in other fields and the educated public. Towards the front of each issue are editorials and feature articles on issues of general interest to scientists, including current affairs, science funding, scientific ethics and research breakthroughs. There are sections on books and short science fiction stories; the remainder of the journal consists of research papers, which are dense and technical.
Because of strict limits on the length of papers the printed text is a summary of the work in question with many details relegated to accompanying supplementary material on the journal's website. There are many fields of research in which important new advances and original research are published as either articles or letters in Nature; the papers that have been published in this journal are internationally acclaimed for maintaining high research standards. Fewer than 8% of submitted papers are accepted for publication. In 2007 Nature received the Prince of Asturias Award for Humanity; the enormous progress in science and mathematics during the 19th century was recorded in journals written in German or French, as well as in English. Britain underwent enormous technological and industrial changes and advances in the latter half of the 19th century. In English the most respected scientific journals of this time were the refereed journals of the Royal Society, which had published many of the great works from Isaac Newton, Michael Faraday through to early works from Charles Darwin.
In addition, during this period, the number of popular science periodicals doubled from the 1850s to the 1860s. According to the editors of these popular science magazines, the publications were designed to serve as "organs of science", in essence, a means of connecting the public to the scientific world. Nature, first created in 1869, was not the first magazine of its kind in Britain. One journal to precede Nature was Recreative Science: A Record and Remembrancer of Intellectual Observation, created in 1859, began as a natural history magazine and progressed to include more physical observational science and technical subjects and less natural history; the journal's name changed from its original title to Intellectual Observer: A Review of Natural History, Microscopic Research, Recreative Science and later to the Student and Intellectual Observer of Science and Art. While Recreative Science had attempted to include more physical sciences such as astronomy and archaeology, the Intellectual Observer broadened itself further to include literature and art as well.
Similar to Recreative Science was the scientific journal Popular Science Review, created in 1862, which covered different fields of science by creating subsections titled "Scientific Summary" or "Quarterly Retrospect", with book reviews and commentary on the latest scientific works and publications. Two other journals produced in England prior to the development of Nature were the Quarterly Journal of Science and Scientific Opinion, established in 1864 and 1868, respectively; the journal most related to Nature in its editorship and format was The Reader, created in 1864. These similar journals all failed; the Popular Science Review survived longest, lasting 20 years and ending its publication in 1881. The Quarterly Journal, after undergoing a number of editorial changes, ceased publication in 1885; the Reader terminated in 1867, Scientific Opinion lasted a mere 2 years, until June 1870. Not long after the conclusion of The Reader, a former editor, Norman Lockyer, decided to create a new scientific journal titled Nature, taking its name from a line by William Wordsworth: "To the solid ground of nature trusts the Mind that builds for aye".
First owned and published by Alexander Macmillan, Nature was similar to its predecessors in its attempt to "provide cultivated readers with an accessible forum for reading about advances in scientific knowledge." Janet Browne has proposed that "far more than any other science journal of the period, Nature was conceived and raised to serve polemic purpose." Many of the early editions of Nature consisted of articles written by members of a group that called itself the X Club, a group of scientists known for having liberal and somewhat controversial scientific beliefs relative to the time period. Initiated by Thomas Henry Huxley, the group consisted of such important scientists as Joseph Dalton Hooker, Herbert Spencer, John Tyndall, along with another five scientists and mathematicians, it was in part its scientific liberality that made Nature a longer-lasti
