George Shaw (1751–1813) went through a series of jobs—church deacon, physician, lecturer in botany—before winding up as Keeper of Natural History in the British Museum. Along the way, he was a founding member of the Linnean Society, and produced a number of massive works on natural history and related subjects. In the Sources section (below) you’ll find General Zoology in 14 volumes (six of them finished after Shaw’s death), the lavishly illustrated Cimelia Physica, and Museum Leverianum in two illustrated volumes.

When George Shaw was good, he was very, very good. Several dozen animals—up to and including the platypus—had their first description in the Naturalist’s Miscellany, meaning that Shaw’s name is the one in use today. Shaw’s scientific binomial, that is, give or take a genus. When it came to English names he seems to have belonged to the Leonard of Quirm school of nomenclature. One representative volume offers in rapid succession “Nepa Linearis, the Linear Nepa”; “Buccinum Harpa, the Harp Buccinum”; “Bodianus Pentacanthus, the Five-Spined Bodian”.

When Shaw was not so good, on the other hand, he was . . . not so good. Several birds have detailed descriptions quoted at second hand, based solely on a single drawing. A few seem never to have existed at all. He is also not very good at identifying an animal’s habitat—even to the nearest continent—and rarely has anything to say about its behavior. For this we should probably blame his time and place rather than Shaw himself; ecology and animal behavior simply weren’t subjects of interest yet. For an early exception, see—brazen plug!—William Bingley’s 1802–03 Animal Biography.

The Miscellany

George Shaw’s longest-running production was the Naturalist’s Miscel­lany, published in monthly installments from August 1789 through July 1813. Each installment featured three—later four—engraved and beautifully hand-tinted plates, along with descriptions in Latin and English.

Although it is called the Naturalist’s Miscellany, “Zoologist’s Miscel­lany” might be more accurate. Along with the vertebrates and arthro­pods, there is an array of mollusks, cnidarians, echinoderms, bryozoans and the assorted other animals subsumed under Linnaeus’s class Vermes. Meanwhile, on the other side of the great Linnaean divide, we find a total of four land plants, all in the first two volumes. Five, if you count the fossil fern in Volume 15. After that, there are no more plants—at least if you interpret “plant” in the narrower sense of Tracheophyta or vascular plants. Scattered through the rest of the work are one or two mush­rooms (then classified as plants, now a kingdom of their own); some algae; and several corallines (then considered animals, now plants in the same phylum as red algae). When we get to “Animalcules” there will be a protozoan or two, and a handful of chromists (both now kingdoms of their own).

In fact, “Ornitho­logist’s Miscellany” would not have been too far off the mark, since almost every installment starts with a bird. Shaw and his publishers clearly saw birds as loss leaders: come for the colorful birds, stay for the fish—or, more likely, for the insects and marine invertebrates. Installments that didn’t start with a bird generally featured some interesting mammal instead.

The Illustrators

We don’t know nearly as much about the Nodders—Frederick Polydore Nodder, his wife Elizabeth and son Richard—as we would like.

Frederick, the father, specialized in plants; the engraved dedication to Volume 1 identifies him as “Botanic Painter to Her Majesty”. (Botanical illustration was a big deal. One of the two female founding members of the Royal Academy, Mary Moser, was best known as a flower painter.)

For about the first half of the Miscellany’s long run, plates were signed by Frederick Nodder, giving the firm’s full address and the month and year of publication in beautiful copperplate script:

Going by the changing signatures and dedications in the Miscellany, Frederick Nodder must have died in 1801. For a short while after his death, the engraved signature showed Elizabeth’s name instead:

We don’t know whether she did any of the engraving herself; more likely she just signed the checks.

Richard, the son, specialized in animals. Or at least that is the conclu­sion to draw from his list of Royal Academy exhibits, spanning the years 1793–1820; every last one is a picture of some type of animal. His handwriting was not nearly as nice as his father’s:

Richard Nodder, unlike Frederick, was often credited as both artist (“Drawn by” or “Del.”, depending on language) and engraver (“Engraved by” or “Sculp.”).

Printer and Publisher

In various permutations, the Nodders—father, son and widow—are listed as publishers of every volume of the Miscellany. Thanks to the Plates’ signature lines, we can trace their place of business over the years:

• No. 13 Panton Street: Volume 1
• No. 15 Brewer Street, Golden Sq.: Volumes 2–8.2, including the title page of Volume 1 (bound)
• No. 92 Newman Street near Oxford Street: from Volume 8.3
• Newman Street (without further detail): from Volume 11.2
• same, with name changed to Elizabeth Nodder, Sons & Co.: from Volume 12.12
• 34 Tavistock St., Covent Garden under name R. P. Nodder: from Volume 21.8

Beginning in Volume 16, we are also told the printer’s name. I don’t know whether this represents a new printer, or only a change in typo­graphic style. But I’m inclined to think they brought a new printer on board; there are more changes than would be accounted for strictly by evolving fashion.

They selected a good one: B. M’Millan of Bow Street, Covent Garden. His surname is sometimes written McMillan, or even “Millan” alone; the “B” is for Buchanan, suggesting that he was Scottish on all sides. (Unfortunately, by the time I found this out I’d got in the habit of thinking of him as Brian.)

B. M’Millan’s professional distinctions included “Printer to the Royal Academy”—beginning no later than 1800—and “Printer to his Royal High­ness the Prince of Wales” from no later than 1805. The latter was eventually upgraded to “Printer in Ordinary to His Majesty”—no later than 1830, but probably in 1820, unless there was a gap.

For details about the publication history of the Naturalist’s Miscellany, see the 2006 article by Dickinson, Bruce and Dowsett in Archives of Natural History, and references therein. The close analysis of the volumes becomes more impressive when you realize that the authors don’t actually seem to have read the text; consider in particular the long discussion about Plates 26–27 in the Actinia anemone article. They also don’t seem to have known the abbreviations S. (sculpsit, the engraver) and D. (delineavit, the artist). In fairness, the authors were ornitho­logists; maybe they only read the bird parts. Be that as it may, I ended up ignoring their conclu­sions and sticking with my own interpretations, based purely on the visible text.

Navigating the Miscellany

The Naturalist’s Miscellany was unpaginated except for the General Index, bound with Volume 24. Index entries refer to Plate numbers, which are conti­nuous from beginning to end (1 through 1064). As usual in books of this vintage, signature marks—marking quires of 4, 8, 12 or 16 pages—are prominent. I’ve shown these in the margin, along with lower-case “r” and “v” for the recto and verso sides of an otherwise unlabeled leaf.

Some plates, with their accompanying descriptions, were slightly out of sequence, so an installment might run 101, 103, 102 or 101, 103, 104, 102. I’ve only marked unexpected numberings where there is a genuine error or duplication.

Each description has one or more pages of Latin text, followed by English text beginning on a separate page—often on a separate leaf, because saving paper doesn’t seem to have been a concern. Often, though not always, the illustration came between the Latin and English sections. I have moved it to the beginning of each description. Where an article has two pictures—such as a moth and its caterpillar, both shown life-size—I have put the second picture between the Latin and English text.

Multi-page descriptions become rarer in later volumes, so even though there are more animals (four per installment instead of three) the overall text is shorter. You can decide for yourself whether this is because Shaw was getting tired—he died before completing Volume 24—or because he realized that readers didn’t especially care about the descrip­tions, they just wanted to look at the pretty pictures.

Pictures

Some descriptions mention that the animal is pictured life-size, or a similar value such as “half the natural size” or “reduced by one-third”. (Warning for the faint of heart: This detail applies especially to assorted arthropods, such as spiders and beetles.) This infor­mation will obvi­ously be less accurate or more accurate depending on what device you’re using to read the book. I’ve tried to keep close to this scale:

A few plates contain more than one picture, generally an inset detail; the description will refer to “fig. 1”, “fig. 2” and so on. As often as not, the referenced numbers aren’t visible in the plate itself. I didn’t delete them, they simply weren’t there in the first place. But there should be no trouble figuring out what he means.

I have generally trimmed away the engraved plate number as well as the date-and-signature line, if any, unless it fits within the rectangular picture area. When a plate in this ebook has no caption, it means that either it was engraved with only the bare initials, typically “RN” or “RPN”, or that I couldn’t find a signature line at all. It might have been too faint to scan, or lost in the gutter of the bound volume, or it may never have been there at all.

Taxonomy

In spite of the pictures and descriptions, a depressing number of Shaw’s animals are now listed as “doubtful”, nomen dubium or taxon inquirendum. But the pictures and descriptions do save them from the worse fate of nomen nudum, “we have no idea what, if anything, this name belongs to”.

Two genera, Spongia and Corallina, are consistently referenced as “Animal?” with a question mark. Sponges are still classified as animals, phylum Porifera; corallines are now considered plants. And then there’s genus Madrepora (corals), for which the Latin consistently asserts “Animal Medusa” while the English just as consistently hedges its bets with “Animal resembling a Medusa”, changing in later volumes to “Animal allied to a Medusa”. (Is it a Medusa or isn’t it? Corals and jellyfish—Linnaeus’s Medusa—are both cnidarians, but there the similarity ends.)

In the separate volumes’ Notes and Corrections sections I’ve tried to give each organism’s current name. Typically it will be in one of these forms:

“Old Binomial is also known as English Name”

Rarely, an animal still has the binomial Shaw used, sometimes even dating back to Linnaeus. Its common name is generally different from what Shaw used in his English text.

“Old Binomial is now New binomial”

GBIF and/or WoRMS list the old name as a synonym. Often the binomial was changed when the animal was assigned to a new genus, since Linnaean genera tended to be very large. Other times, communication being what it was, two or more people named the same animal, and Shaw didn’t happen to know the earliest name. Or he knew it but didn’t like it, and felt free to use his own. There was nobody to stop him; the International Commission on Zoological Nomen­clature would not be established until 1895.

“Old Binomial is probably New binomial”

There exists an organism with the same species name—allowing for grammatical agreement—which looks like Shaw’s picture and is in the appropriate family. More important, the current name is credited to some authority early enough for the relevant volume of the Miscellany, preferably one which is actually listed among the article’s sources.

“Old Binomial may be New binomial”

Someone online—or perhaps a nineteenth-century zoologist—says that A is now called B, and Shaw’s picture of A does look like photo­graphs of B, but I can’t find an unimpeachable source.

“Old Binomial is listed as ‘doubtful’”

That’s all GBIF will say, and I couldn’t dredge up any further information.

In the case of birds, a final reference was Julian Hume’s Extinct Birds, especially the “doubtful or invalid taxa” section. If he says that a given bird never existed, I will take his word for it.

Along with the current binomial, I have also given the geographic range as shown on GBIF maps. This should give some idea about how much Shaw’s account of any given organism can be relied upon.

Each Miscellany article begins with a “Generic Character” that applies to the whole genus, before going on to a “Specific Character” that narrows it down to species. In some cases—most often fish, rarely birds—the text will also name an animal’s Linnaean order, without explaining what defines that order.

Butterflies are often given a supplementary classification such as “Eq. Ach.” or “Dan. Fest.” In the Linnaean system, lepidopterans were divided into just three genera: Papilio (butterflies), Phalaena (moths) and Sphinx (hawkmoths). Linnaeus himself realized the grouping was unwieldy; since taxonomic families hadn’t been invented yet, he instead subdivided his genus.

The Entomology article in the Encyclopædia Britannica 7th edition (1842) helpfully explains that “Butterflies, or diurnal Lepidoptera, were divided into six phalanges”, and goes on to list them: Equites (further divided into Troes and Achivi); Heliconii; Parnassii; Danai (divided into Candidi and Festivi); Nymphales (Gemmati and Phalerati); Plebeii (Rurales and Urbicolae). Of these, Shaw’s favorite by far was Equites, which the Britannica tells us “now correspond to the true genus Papilio, as restricted by Latreille”. Some “phalanges”, notably Heliconii and Plebeii, don’t seem to have caught his fancy at all.

Sources

Don’t look for a list of sources, or an explanation of abbreviated titles. You won’t find one. Every now and then Shaw takes pity on the reader and gives the full title of a referenced work—or at least enough of the title to look it up. Aside from the obvious, such as Linnaeus’s Systema Naturae and the Proceedings of various scientific societies, sources include:

Abbot. Ins. Amer.

John Abbot (1751–c.1840), The Natural History of the Rarer Lepido­pterous Insects of Georgia in two volumes. Abbot was born in England but moved to Virginia in 1773. He spent most of his life in Georgia; anomalously, we know exactly when he was born, but can only estimate his date of death.

Argenv.

Antoine-Joseph Dézallier d’Argenville (1680–1765), La conchy­liologie, ou, Histoire naturelle des coquilles de mer, d’eau douce, terrestres et fossiles: avec un traité de la zoomorphose, ou, repré­sentation des animaux qui les habitent, ouvrage dans lequel on trouve une nouvelle méthode de les diviser.

Bloch. ichth.

Marcus Elieser Bloch (1723–1799), Allgemeine Naturgeschichte der Fische in 12 generously illustrated volumes. Shaw may have read the 1785 French translation, Ichthyologie; ou, Histoire Naturelle des Poissons.

Chemn. Conch.

Johann Hieronymus Chemnitz (1730–1800), Systematisches Conchylien-Cabinet. The 12-volume work was begun by Friedrich Martini (Martini Conch., below) and completed after his death by Chemnitz; Shaw cites it variously as Chemnitz, Martini or—rarely—both.

Cram.

Pieter Cramer (1721–1776), De uitlandsche Kapellen (Foreign Butterflies), 1775–1782, finished after his death by Stoll and van Rensselaer.

Forsk.

Pehr (Peter, Petrus) Forskål (Forsskål) 1732–1763, described as Finnish though his name indicates he was ethnically Swedish.

Gen. Zool.

George Shaw’s own General Zoology in 14 volumes, begun in 1797 and finished after his death by James Francis Stephens. Volumes 1 and 2 are mammals; 3 is Amphibians (including what we now call reptiles); 4 and 5 are fish; 6 is insects. All the remaining volumes—including the ones Shaw himself didn’t live to see—are birds. Its first mention in the Miscellany is in Volume 13 (late 1801); from Volume 16 on, it becomes increas­ingly common. Understandably, most references are to Fish descriptions.

Knorr vergn.

Georg Wolfgang Knorr (1705–1761), Vergnügen der Augen und des Gemüths: in Vorstellung einer allgemeinen Sammlung von Muscheln und andern Geschöpfen, welche im Meer gefunden werden. It could have been translated as Eye Candy from the Sea, but so far it hasn’t been. As with Bloch, Shaw seems to have read at least parts of the book in the French translation.

At time of preparation (late 2019), Abebooks is advertising THE ONLY KNOWN COPY (capitalized) of the 1776 Nürnberg edition for a modest $52,297.23 US. Plus shipping from Germany, in case that’s a deal-breaker for anyone.

Lath. ind. orn.

John Latham (1740–1837), Index Ornithologicus, sive Systema ornithologiæ; complectens avium divisionem in classes, ordines, genera, species, ipsarumque varietates: adjectis synonymis, locis, descriptionibus, &c., 1790 and later. Latham wrote any number of bird books; another is the multi-volume General Synopsis of Birds, 1781 and later. Each volume is separately paginated, making Shaw’s page-number-only references less helpful than they might be.

Martini Conch.

In spite of his surname, Friedrich Heinrich Wilhelm Martini (1729–1788) was German. He died after completing just three volumes of his Systematisches Conchylien-Cabinet, leaving the rest of the work to Chemnitz (Chemn. Conch., above).

Mer. ins. Sur.; Mer. ins. Eur.

Maria Sibylla Merian (1747–1717)—celeberrima Domina Merian, “the celebrated Madam Merian”—is best known for Insects of Surinam, featuring her own drawings of living insects she had personally seen. Shaw also has a few references to her book on European Insects.

The second edition of Insects of Surinam will set you back some­thing in the middle six digits (US), so do not look for it any time soon on this site.

Miller, Cimelia Physica

John Frederick Miller (1715–1790) also illustrated Pennant’s Arctic Zoology. Shaw politely refrains from mentioning that he himself was a coauthor of—in full—Cimelia Physica: Figures of rare and curious quadrupeds, birds &c. Together with several of the most elegant plants, engraved and coloured from the subjects themselves by John Frederick Miller, with descriptions by George Shaw, 1796 and later.

A complete copy of this folio runs $10,000–$20,000: not as alarming as some of Shaw’s sources, but still somewhat out of my budget.

Müller Zool. Dan.

Otto Frederik Müller (1730–1784), Zoologia Danica. His middle name is often Germanized to Friderich or Friedrich, but he was really Danish. The work was originally Zoologiae Danicae Prodromus, seu Animalium Daniae et Norvegiae Indigenarum characteres, nomina, et synonyma imprimis popularium, completed after his death as Zoologia Danica, seu Animalium Daniae et Norvegiae rariorum ac minus notorum descriptiones et historia.

Museum Leverianum.

Like General Zoology and Cimelia Physica, this is one of George Shaw’s own works. Title in full: Museum Leverianum, containing Select Specimens from the Museum of the Late Sir Ashton Lever, Kt. with Descriptions in Latin and English. It was published in two volumes, 1792–96, with engravings by William Skelton, James Fittler and others.

Pallas El.; Pall. Spic. Zool.

Peter Simon Pallas (German, 1741–1811), Elenchus Zoophytorum and Spicilegia Zoologica. He wrote other works as well, but these are the only ones Shaw cites regularly.

Pl. enl.

Planches Enluminées d’Histoire Naturelle, by Buffon and Daubenton, published in at least ten volumes, 1765–1783.

Regenf. Conch.

Franz Michael Regenfus or Regenfuss (1713–1780), not a naturalist but a painter and engraver. His 1758 conchological work was published with parallel texts in German and French: Auserlesne Schnecken Muscheln und andre Schaalthiere or Choix de Coquillages et de Crustacés. The abbreviated title “Regenf. Conch.” was used in the later (Gmelin) editions of the Systema Naturae.

A notable feature of Regenfus’s work is that all shells were pictured with the correct orientation (right- or left-handed). In engraved illustrations—quite possibly including the ones in the Miscellany—it was common to get it backward.

Roesel, Insecten Belustigung

August Johann Rösel von Rosenhof (1705–1759) began life as a miniature painter. Later in life, after coming across one of Maria Merian’s books, he turned his attention to insects and frogs. Insecten-Belustigung should have been translated as Fun With Insects, though so far it hasn’t been. Like Shaw’s Miscel­lany, it came out in installments from 1746 to 1761; the book version is four fat volumes.

If you want a copy of your very own, expect to pay at least $6,000 US, unless you are prepared to settle for the seven-volume 1975 reprint.

Rumpf. or Rumph.

Georg Eberhard Rumpf (1627 or 8–1702), Latinized Rumphius, one of Shaw’s earliest sources.

Soland. et Ellis Zooph.

Daniel Carl Solander (1733–1782, Swedish) and John Ellis (c. 1710–1776, English), A Natural History of Many Uncommon and Curious Zoophytes 1776.

It probably goes without saying that Shaw’s spelling of names is not always the same as today’s standardized orthography.

Language and Geography

English

The word “a” was omitted just often enough in forms like “inch and quarter” or “foot and half” that I left each one as printed. The same applies to “changes into chrysalis” in later volumes.

The old-fashioned spelling “shew” is used consistently, from begin­ning to end. A quick detour to the ngram viewer tells me that in British English, “shew” and “show” met in pretty exactly 1820. (In American English it happened earlier.)

• nayant, more often spelled “naiant”, means swimming. In fact the first time I encountered the word I thought it was an error for “natant”.
• nondescript doesn’t mean boring; it means “previously unde­scribed” in the scientific literature.
• trivial name doesn’t mean the ordinary or English name; it means the species name, the second half of a binomial.
• transversly: You can tell the spelling is intentional, because in the early volumes the printer had to pull up the sl ligature.

Latin

Pro tip for all Latin descriptions: skip to the end of the first sentence and work backward. Shaw likes to begin each essay with a grammatical flourish, after which he settles down. More quirks:

Our author doesn’t like spellings in exs-, preferring exculpi, exectus, exertus, extare, exugere, exurgere and so on. Another spelling anomaly is -opthalm-, used consistently in place of -ophthalm-, even when citing other people’s (correctly spelled) scientific names.

“Inches” are most often rendered as “uncias” (twelfths—of anything, hence the word “ounce”), but sometimes as “pollices” (thumbs) or “digitos” (fingers). Some of the fingers and thumbs may be carried over from his quoted sources.

Shaw is fond of the verb mutuari, as in iconem mutuati sumus ab . . . Dictionaries translate the word as “borrow”. But in those days of limited copyright protection it is more accurately rendered as “swipe”, as in “we told our illustrator to copy this previously published picture”.

He loves the non-classical phrase “vix ac ne vix” or “vix et ne vix” (only-just-ever-so-barely). I don’t know who used it first, but it seems to have been especially popular with 18th-century botanical writers. After Volume 11 or so, he tires of the phrase.

Another favorite idiom is “non ita pridem”. This one is attested in classical authors; it means “just recently” or—if you need to account for the non—“not long ago”.

Place Names

In general, specific place names mean “We got our information from someone writing about this exact place”, and the name can be taken as a stand-in for a much wider region:

• “Amboyna” or “Amboina” is Ambon, Indonesia, a smallish island between Borneo and New Guinea. It can mean anywhere in Indonesia.
• “Surinam” means the northern part of South America.
• “Sierra Leona” means west Africa.
• “Malimba” in Africa is in the area of modern Cameroon. Again, it means west Africa.
• “Indian Seas” can mean either the East Indies or West Indies, so don’t assume he is talking through his hat when he says that some Caribbean species lives in the Indian Seas.
• “Antarctic Seas” (more often in Latin than in English) doesn’t mean Antarctic in the modern sense; it can be anywhere in the southern hemisphere.

Finally, Shaw seems to think that north is up; “the lower parts of Africa” means southern Africa.

Technicalia

Its 24-year publication makes the Miscellany into a stop-motion view of typographic changes in the years around 1800. Most dramatic was the loss of long s (ſ) and the “ct” ligature. Compare installment 1 of Volume 12, September 1800:

with installment 3 of the same volume, November 1800:

After the first installment of Volume 12, you will never again see the long ſ used consistently. The “ct” ligature is more complicated; read on.

If you find yourself holding a random text page of the Miscellany, and have no idea what year it belongs to, here are some things to look for. (This list could have been three times as long.) Not all of these will be visible in the ebook.

Spelling

color and colour

Through much of the Miscellany, spelling varies randomly between the two—sometimes in the same paragraph. He doesn’t settle on the modern “colour” until Volume 13.

œ (oe) ligature

Used consistently in Volume 1, but only in selected words later on.

words in ’d for -ed (in ordinary prose)

Seen occasionally through Volume 6.

tho’ and thro’ for “though” and “through”

Sporadic in Volumes 4-16.

strait and straight

Both spellings are used until Volume 17; after that, it is consistently “strait”. Shaw never uses “strait” in the sense of “narrow”, so I don’t know how he would have distinguished between the two.

Typography and Design

personal names in Small Capitals:

Sporadic from the middle of Volume 1 to the end of Volume 2, rare in Volume 3.

catchwords in multi-page articles:

Consistently present in Vols. 1-5;
consistently absent from Vol. 18;
in between, they come and go.

The Miscellany never uses catchwords across article boundaries, or even between Latin and English of the same article.

quotation marks at the beginning of every line in multi-line quotes:

Occasional through Volume 5.

extra space between each paragraph in longer descriptions:

Consistent in Volumes 6–7, sporadic elsewhere.

volume index:

Two pages in Volumes 8 through 15 only.

Earlier volumes had fewer articles; later volumes went to a smaller typesize.

printer’s name at bottom of Index:

From Volume 16 (coinciding with return to one-page Index).

ct ligature after long ſ is discontinued:

Sporadic in Volume 15,
consistent in Volumes 16.9 through 19.7.

“Generic Character” and similar headings:

Small Capitals through Volume 16.8
ALL CAPITALS from Volume 16.9.

casing of main word in Specific Character descriptions:

ALL CAPITALS through the middle of Volume 18;
Title Case from then on.

Exception: The English words “Moth” and “Butterfly” are consistently in Title Case beginning in Volume 11.10.

Formalities

More than any other book I’ve worked on, Shaw’s Miscellany must be considered a victim of its own beauty. When antiquarian booksellers get hold of a copy, the first thing they do is tear out all the colored plates and sell them for $25–$100 a pop. What they do with the text pages is anyone’s guess. Is paper still used for wrapping fish?

This etext is based primarily on scans at The Internet Archive, with originals generally at the National Museum of Victoria (Australia) but sometimes at the British Museum of Natural History. Missing pages were filled in from scans at Hathi Trust, with originals at the University of Michigan. Pages that were absent from both sites were photographed for me from copies at the Museum of Natural History in New York. Thanks, Neil!

Typographical errors are marked with mouse-hover popups and are listed again at the end of each volume. The word “invisible” means that the letter or punctuation mark is missing, but there is an appropriately sized blank space.

Missing or invisible punctuation in citations and all Indexes has been silently supplied.