A Skink from 1758
We found a Skink in my back yard. I dug a large hole in my back yard. It's quite the conversation starter. The cover story is that I am intending to put a pond there with pond pump.
In that large hole was a Skink hanging out in a little puddle from the last rain.
This website shows no skink as having been documented in Winchester VA.
Click on picture to go to Link. I got this courtesy of Eric Robinson .
Why is this skink here on this website on Fort Loudoun Winchester VA?
It is here for the most tenuous of reasons.
We are studying 1758 in this year of 2022. This skink was documented in 1758. Right now we are following the Forbes Expedition of the French and Indian War. Colonel George Washington is still in Fort Cumberland in Sept 1758. Colonel Bouquest has left Reastown (Raystown later known as Fort Bedford). Colonel Bouquet is now at Loyalhanna (later known as Fort Ligonier which was built later). Last weekend I was one of the reenactors with Captain Mercer's Co of the Viriginia Regiment at Fort Frederick and while there I met a fellow reenactor who came over to our camp to give us some of their extra scrambled eggs and discovered he wants to research science during this French and Indian War period. And what was some of the science of this period?
In 1756 the Law of Conservation of Mass was advanced by Lomonosov during the SAME year our Colonel George Washington began building Fort Loudoun in Winchester VA.
This was a time of a lot of discovery. Ben Franklin is over in England having visited Stonehenge and enjoy his fame from his experiments and his membership in London's Royal Society. This is the time when Emmanuel Kant is developing his philosophy and is known to Frederick the Great while he is fighting all enemies surrounding him. Watteau was the big artist a little prior to this time. I am not so big a fan of the art of this period. Another artist was Benjamin West, famous for his painting of Wolfe dying at the Battle of Quebec.
During this year of 1758 that Skink was documented.
The Virginia Herpetological Society states:
"Originally described by Carolus Linnaeus as Lacerta fasciata in 1758, based on an illustration in Catesby (1731-1743). Type locality was said to be "Carolina." Schmidt (1953) restricted the type locality to Charleston, South Carolina."
Between 1729 and 1747 Mark Catesby published his Natural History of Carolina, Florida and the Bahama Islands, the first published account of the flora and fauna of North America. It included 220 plates of birds, reptiles, amphibians, fish, insects, mammals and plants.
Carolus Linnaeus took Mark Catesby's picture of that Skink and called it Lacerta fasciate in 1758.
I wonder if somehow our Mercer Company brought that Skink back here on a ship from Charleston SC.
The group we portrary was one of two companies Colonel George Washington sent to Charleston SC (then style Charles Town). Here's a story of Mercer in Charleston. The other company was under Lt Col Adam Stephen. Both were sent to guard Charleston's Indigo plantations from any slave uprisings, from any Indian attacks and from any pretensions of the Spanish Empire. They were acting under orders of Lt Gov Dinwiddie who was acting under orders from Lord Loudoun, supreme commander of all North American Forces made at the conference in Philly in 1757.
That's it.
That's our story.
Compiled and authored by Jim Moyer 9/4/2022
