Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Humanities/2019 June 28

= June 28 =

Jesus and Sir Watkin Williams-Wynn's Pudding
What is Sir Watkin Williams-Wynn's pudding, as served at Jesus on St David's Day? Thank you, DuncanHill (talk) 00:12, 28 June 2019 (UTC)
 * A suet pudding with either marmalade or apricot jam. See, , and page 247 of . Nanonic (talk) 00:37, 28 June 2019 (UTC)
 * Many thanks, DuncanHill (talk) 00:54, 28 June 2019 (UTC)

Fourth Ballot Box
In today's "On This Day" section there is an article relating to the Honduran Coup d'etat. I understand that this was the result of the proposed referendum for have a 4th ballot box at upcoming elections. Please can some one explain to me what the purpose of a 4th box is and how and why this has any form of significance. I am baffled. Thanks Anton 81.131.40.58 (talk) 09:12, 28 June 2019 (UTC)


 * It's all in Honduran fourth ballot box referendum, which is admittedly not in the best shape. To summarize, the first three ballot boxes were to vote for president, congress, and mayor. The proposed 4th box was to vote on a non-binding resolution to gauge public support for a constitutional assembly. The coup wasn't really over the existence of a fourth box, it was over the idea of the president holding a constitutional assembly. There were widespread rumors that the president planned to use the constitutional assembly to stay in office beyond his term limit that may have fueled the flames. Regardless, the fourth box ultimately led to a constitutional crisis. The constitution at the time did not place any authority to change the consitution with the president, and the Supreme Court issued a ruling consistent with that. Congress also passed laws prohibiting the scheduled referendum from happening. The president was seen as greatly overstepping his powers when, ignoring these rulings, he fired the head of the military for refusing to assist with the referendum, triggering mass resignations. When congress began discussing impeachment, the president implied he did not recognize congress's authority to remove a president. And then you get the 2009 Honduran coup d'état. Fin. So that box was very very significant. Someguy1221 (talk) 09:33, 28 June 2019 (UTC)
 * Thank you for this very informative and helpful response. It is deeply appreciated.  May I suggest that the featured article is amended to make this more clear?  Also, as an aside, surely democracy states that a referendum can be called on almost any point and that it is the people who should decide. Anyway, Thanks again.  Anton 81.131.40.58 (talk) 09:43, 28 June 2019 (UTC)
 * As an aside, I suspect a lot of the concern was that the constitution of Honduras contained provisions for changing of the constitution (which had indeed been amended many times), and many people were frightened by the president's intention to hold a constitutional convention under his direct control outside of that process. Now, there were a lot of people who supported him through the whole thing, and I'm no expert on the topic, so I think I'll just stop there. Someguy1221 (talk) 09:55, 28 June 2019 (UTC)
 * Notably a clause had been introduced in the constitution a few years prior, which essentially states that anyone who suggests that the constitutionally mandated term limit for the presidency (only 1 term per prez) would be abolish is automatically disqualified from public office. Whilst Zelaya never spoke about abolishing the term limits on the presidency, his opponents frequently attacked him on the topic and this was the rationale for the coup (as stated above). The really, really weird thing is that Juan Orlando Hernandez ran for a second term in 2017 without modifying the constitution first. So whilst the constitution prohibits a second term, he was elected. --Soman (talk) 16:18, 29 June 2019 (UTC)

The New Naturalist - A Journal of British Natural History
I have in my library a bound volume of The New Naturalist - A Journal of British Natural History. It is dated 1948, and contains four issues, Spring, Summer, Autumn, and Winter. From the editorial material these are the first four issues of what was intended to be an ongoing publication. The editor is James Fisher, the publisher Collins. It is very obviously related to the New Naturalist series of books, though not of that series. I would be interested to know if any further issues were published, and any other information about the journal, its demise, etc. Thank you, DuncanHill (talk) 16:34, 28 June 2019 (UTC)
 * I find this copy at a British bookseller. DroneB (talk) 21:43, 28 June 2019 (UTC)
 * Thanks, mine doesn't have the dustjacket and I'd not seen it before. I found this page which says there were only 6 issues, the last two being Birth, Death and the Seasons, and East Anglia. DuncanHill (talk) 21:55, 28 June 2019 (UTC)
 * Duncan, a perfect place to go for this kind of thing is WorldCat; your title information alone was enough to find it really quickly. There are five separate WorldCat entries (four libraries did original cataloguing for their copies without noticing that another entry already existed): undated, 1948, 1948, 1948-, and [1949-1950?].  Interestingly, three of the five treated it as a monograph, not a serial — this is more evidence that it was really short-lived, because the whole history could be bound in a single volume.  However, the item dated [1949-1950?] is No.6: East Anglia, the same as you found; I wonder if it were an unsuccessful revival?  Finally, your best source about the journal might be an article in another journal:"Tutin, T.G., et al. 'The New Naturalist, a Journal of British Natural History'.  J of Ecology 37.1 (1949), 181."That link goes to the WorldCat entry for the article, not the article itself.  I suspect it's just a review, but since it was published in July 1949, it would probably give the whole history of the journal.  Unless "my library" is your personal library at home, go back to the library and ask the librarian about an interlibrary loan for the Journal of Ecology article.  Nyttend (talk) 22:32, 28 June 2019 (UTC)
 * Thanks, I was able to find the Journal of Ecology review on JSTOR. It is of the volume I have - it says the first volume consists of four parts bound together, but that as soon as conditions permit it would be quarterly. That would fit with the link I gave above, one hardbound volume containing issues 1-4, and separate issues 5 & 6. The "conditions permitting" would be a reference to the shortage of paper at the time. I find the WorldCat results very hard to interpret - a few are obviously for the annual volume I have, I'm not seeing any described as a monograph, and there's at least one edition listed with a date of 1952, which must be one of the books (or could be one of the monographs), but is marked as a Journal, magazine : Series. DuncanHill (talk) 22:58, 28 June 2019 (UTC)
 * Sorry, I only just noticed what you said about "my library" - it is indeed my personal library, over 3,000 books to date :) DuncanHill (talk) 23:06, 28 June 2019 (UTC)
 * I found two other reviews on JSTOR from 1949, again for the volume I have. DuncanHill (talk) 23:13, 28 June 2019 (UTC)
 * See, you should do like I do: create a catalogue of your personal library with OCLC numbers noted, and organize the bookshelves by Library of Congress call number. I'm a librarian professionally, and even my colleagues thought I was weird to be that librarianish :-)  Here are the results I get from WorldCat, five relevant and four not:


 * OCLC 483656286, undated, treats it as a serial. Held by two Danish libraries.
 * OCLC 780527195, dated 1948, treats it as a monograph. Held by the Universities of Edinburgh and Southampton.
 * OCLC 271599997, dated 1948, treats it as a monograph. Held by two Australian libraries.
 * OCLC 181154516, dated 1948-, treats it as a serial. Held by the Universities of Cambridge and Manchester, the Natural History Museum, and two Canadian and one American universities.
 * OCLC 1101206757, dated [1949-1950?], treats it as a monograph. Held by the University of East Anglia.
 * OCLC 1101206757, the book review in the Journal of Ecology
 * OCLC 5550280294, not sure why this even comes up
 * OCLC 5154365967, not sure why this even comes up
 * OCLC 4960297720, the book review in the Journal of Ecology (again)
 * My search string was <"new naturalist" "journal of British natural history"> with no limiters. WorldCat's "print book" classification equals a physical monograph, so we're looking at basically the same thing.  By definition, a monograph is an isolated publication that isn't likely to be re-issued with different contents (if it were, it would be a serial), so it might not be unreasonable to catalogue a bound journal as a monograph if you knew (or had solid reason to believe) that no more volumes were forthcoming.  Nyttend (talk) 23:18, 28 June 2019 (UTC)
 * this "not sure why this even comes up" is "A Central Journal of Natural History" a review of my volume (it's on JSTOR). It's really weird - the link you say "held by two Danish libraries" comes up for me with 6 libraries, none of them Danish. I can't see any Danish holdings on any of those links :/ I do need to sort my shelves better, but, for example, I have all my Lloyd George books together, sorted into biographies, studies, his own works, his family's works, etc. The problem comes when a book should be in two (or more) places at once. I have three studies of LlG and Churchill - they belong together, but one is by an LlG family member, so it belongs there too, and all three belong in my Churchill section. Or take Anthony Burgess - mainly fiction, so straightforward enough, but a work on philology, another on Joyce, a couple of volumes of autobiography, some poetry, and collected journalism. Do I keep him all together (yes, obviously), or does his poetry go with all my other poetry (obviously it should). I think the ideal solution is to construct an extension into l-space and find an orangutan. For now, I use LibraryThing. It does help me avoid duplicates! DuncanHill (talk) 23:37, 28 June 2019 (UTC)
 * Ah, I see monograph means a different thing to a librarian than it might to others. I was thinking of the sort of thing Sherlock Holmes used to write about tobacco ash. DuncanHill (talk) 23:40, 28 June 2019 (UTC)
 * Duncan, did you click the button saying "Show libraries holding just this edition "? It's on the right side at the top of the table of holding institutions.  I reported the results that I get when I narrow it to the specific edition, since otherwise it will combine results from different editions.  Most non-librarians don't care too much about the format, since they want the contents (and it doesn't normally matter much for librarians either), especially since separate records are supposed to be created for small differences (e.g. paper and cloth bindings need separate records), so it makes sense for the site to default toward showing holdings for multiple editions concurrently.  I sympathized with you 100% until you got off onto 1-space; you've discovered the difference between classification (an object has to be put somewhere, and it can only go in one place, e.g. a computer file in a file structure, or a book on a shelf) and categorization (an object is assigned attributes, and you're free to assign more than one), which is always a problem with print books.  If you've been around here long enough, you may remember it being an issue here; a major reason for the category system is that the previous subpage-based system had hierarchy problems, e.g. History of Algeria could reasonably be located at History/Algeria (the Algeria piece of general history) or Algeria/History (the history piece of all things Algeria), not to mention perhaps at History/Africa/Algeria and the like.  That's why we employ LCSH in libraries as well as LCC.  Have a good night :-)  Nyttend (talk) 01:29, 29 June 2019 (UTC)
 * No, I didn't click on "just this edition" as nobody told me to. I do appreciate your help here, please don't think I don't. The l-space diversion was me attempting to inject a little light relief into things, sorry if it lost you. But I do find Worldcat confusing and inaccurate. I also collect Laurie Lee, and I found this entry for a lecture about him. If I follow the link from that page to Brighton & Hove Libraries (my local library) I get this result which is a completely different work. Now, if I do the "only this edition" trick I do get libraries that hold that work, some of them treating it as a version of the biography, some as a different work. Anyway, to return to our sheep. There were 6 issues of "The New Naturalist", the first four issued in one volume (which I have), and the last two as individual issues. DuncanHill (talk) 09:19, 29 June 2019 (UTC)
 * I know I didn't tell you to; I just thought maybe you would have tried it, to see what happened. No problem :-)  Nyttend (talk) 11:34, 30 June 2019 (UTC)