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‘Naturalists, their Books and their Libraries’
Dublin, Eire
Friday 24–Sunday 26 March, 2006
D.E. Allen
William Andrews (1802-1880) is one of the mystery figures of Irish natural history. Next to nothing is known about his life before he emerged in 1840 as one of the most active and prolifically informative members of the recently-founded Dublin. N.H.S. Though in later years he did extensive and well-regarded work on the Irish marine fishes, building on lengthy experience as a freshwater angler, he was primarily a botanist initially. As local secretary for both the London and Edinburgh Botanical Societies he contributed many specimens to their respective annual exchanges, but became best known for his audacity in seeking to sort out the Irish saxifrages, a group notorious for its baffling taxonomy, cultivating many examples of those in his garden for the purpose. Confusion of his garden labels, it has been suggested- perhaps over-charitably- lay behind his claims to have collected in the wild in Ireland several plant species never found by anyone else before or since. One was a saxifrage known only as a horticultural hybrid. All his botanical records fell into lasting disrepute as a result.
Rory A. W. Browne,
D.Phil. Associate Dean of Freshmen and Lecturer on History and Literature
Harvard College
Freshman Dean's Office
6 Prescott Street
Cambridge, MA 02138
Why did the American medical missionary, the aptly named Thomas Savage, and Jeffries Wyman, Harvard College's first Hersey Professor of Anatomy, chose the specific name 'gorilla' for what Richard Owen initially thought was a giant chimpanzee? Despite Savage's proficiency in African languages and his contact with other missionaries and local peoples along the West African coast, he dropped his own suggestion of using the native name and readily accepted Wyman's recommendation of a name derived from ancient Greek sources and of problematic applicability to the new ape. Both men had their own concerns in publicizing the discovery -- the race for priority, the emancipation of American science from European tutelage, competition with other American cities, and establishing the independence of natural history from medicine -- but in deferring to classical sources, they gave preference to book learning over local knowledge. The closet naturalist triumphed over his colleague in the field because he had access to books and libraries.
Clara Cullen
School of History and Archives, University College Dublin
Unlike the usual museum, the Museum of Irish Industry (or to give it its full title, The Museum of Irish Industry and Government School of Science applied to Mining and the Arts) was not there to commemorate the past. It had been established in 1845 to provide a showcase for the geological findings of the Irish branch of the Ordnance Survey but its director, Robert Kane, was determined that the role of the museum would be educational. Under his direction, series of popular lectures on scientific subjects were organised and from 1854 to 1867 the museum offered courses of lectures, both popular and advanced, on physics, chemistry, botany, zoology, geology and in applied science. In its short existence (1846-1867) it facilitated the access of ordinary people to popular scientific education.
When appointed as director of the museum, Kane was only 36, a Dubliner and a catholic. He was a distinguished scientist and, both as a lecturer and research chemist, was highly regarded by the international scientific community. A believer in practical application as part of the process of scientific education, he was also committed to access to education for all without distinction of class, creed or gender and he endeavoured to put these beliefs into practice at the Museum of Irish Industry. Courses of lectures on scientific topics were given both during the day and in the evening, and men and women in their hundreds attended these courses.
Supporting their studies were the scientific and industrial displays in the exhibition galleries of the museum and the library, which was open both during the day and in the evenings to facilitate those students who could not attend during the day. Aware of the lack of library facilities for most in the Dublin of the period, Kane developed and expanded the collections (despite the parsimonious attitude of the government) in support of the work of the professors and the constantly expanding range of scientific topics offered in the courses at the Museum. By the time the Museum of Irish Industry became the Royal College of Science for Ireland in 1867 the library collections covered a wide range of subjects, from the expected scientific topics to water colouring, archaeology, submarine warfare, railways, architecture and land and land tenure.
Using the surviving records, in this presentation I will speak about the Museum of Irish Industry, focussing on the museum’s library, which supported the teaching and learning role of an institution devoted to the teaching and study of science in mid-Victorian Dublin.
Katharine E.S. Donahue (kdonahue@library.ucla.edu)
Head, History & Special Collections,
Louise M. Darling Biomedical Library
12-077 CHS, Box 951798,
UCLA, Los Angeles, CA 90095-1798
Casey A. Wood ended his obituary of Donald Ryder Dickey in the The Auk, writing: “His untimely death is a distinct blow to the cause of zoological science along the Pacific Coast.” Dickey’s relatively short life sentenced him and his work to the back pages of history, despite significant accomplishments and achievements. In only 22 years from 1911 until his death in 1932, he amassed a bird and mammal collection of over 50,000 specimens, created a large photographic record of North American wildlife and habitats, and built a library of “approximately 10,000 items.” His ambitious plan to create a research center for vertebrate zoology in Southern California was never realized but this goal guided his collecting, his documentation of the animals and their habitat, and the building of his library.
During his youth, Dickey interacted with such California luminaries as John Muir and C. Hart Merriam. While building both his specimen collection and photographic collection, he was the official photographer on a Smithsonian Institution expedition to Laysan Island, Hawaii with Alexander Wetmore in 1923.
In 1940 his entire collection was donated to the University of California at Los Angeles.
These unique collections provide a valuable insight into the now greatly altered ecological landscape of the American Southwest and California in the early 20th century. As part of my archival researches into Dickey and his extensive collections, I have made this knowledge available to historians of natural history and to natural historians via the internet and other media.
The Dickey library was a mystery – there was no inventory of items now scattered throughout the University Library system. In recent years I have turned my attention to recreating his library through his bookplate and have identified a fair number of titles of books and journals – mundane and rare – ranging from a very rare edition of John Latham’s General Synopsis of Birds (1781) to ephemeral journals such as the Sunny South Oologist (1886).
In this paper I report on the continuing effort to reconstruct the Dickey Library and in the contents discovered so far. I also discuss why he built his library, its purpose, and how specific books and journals influenced his work. I also discuss its importance over the years to UCLA.
Kay Etheridge, Ph.D.
Department of Biology
Gettysburg College
Gettysburg, PA 17320
When Metamorphosis was published in 1705 Maria Sibylla Merian’s masterpiece set a new standard for natural history books. Aside from the magnificent quality of the artwork in this folio, it was the first book published by a European artist-naturalist who voyaged to the New World specifically to study a specific aspect of nature. All or most of the organisms portrayed within were painted “from life”, and many were kept by Merian for study. As she wrote to James Petiver, she was not interested in merely cataloging exotic specimens, but in the “formation, propagation, and metamorphosis of creatures, how one emerges from the other, the nature of their diet.” The emphasis on the life cycles and interactions of the species depicted make Metamorphosis one of the first ecological studies (long before the word was coined). The importance of this book was recognized soon after its publication; for example, copies of the book as well as many of the original watercolors for the illustration were in the collections of rivals Sir Hans Sloan and Richard Mead. The dissemination of the images was furthered by many who copied them, such as James Petiver in his 1767 natural history volume. The influence of Merian may be seen in several important natural history studies that followed. Examples that I will discuss include the work of Mark Catesby, and that of August Johan Roesel von Rosenhof. The latter was in 1728 introduced to Merian’s work, and this event is credited with inspiring his volumes on the natural history of German insects (Der monatlich-herausgegebenen Insecten-Belustigung, 1740 and frogs (Historia Naturalis Ranarum, 1753). I will argue that Merian’s seminal work influenced both pictorial conventions and the ways in which the organisms were viewed on a larger scale.
Mrs Maureen Lazarus (Maureen.lazarus@nmgw.ac.uk)
Dept. of Biodiversity
National Museum of Wales
Cathays Park
Cardiff CF10 3NP
In the final years of his life, after a long and troubled political career, John Stuart, 3rd Earl of Bute, was at last free to indulge in one of his ongoing passions: botany. The production of the Botanical Tables was an ambitious project to explain his individual view of Linnaeus’s system of taxonomy and was particularly composed for the Fair Sex! Twelve volumes were published privately and presented to family, Royalty and botanical colleagues across Europe. In this paper we consider the circumstances of the production of the Tables and explore how the original sets of tables and original material have been dispersed.
Paul Leonard (paulleonard75@hotmail.com)
The Rev. J.G. Wood has been called the first person to popularise natural history. Within Victorian society his books were extremely popular, for example his ‘Common objects of the Country’ sold 100,000 copies in a week. A capable reader when four years old, with a precocious memory. He studied all kinds of animals with care and in minute detail, recording their life-histories. His interest in observing animals as a child lead to a two-year study in the Anatomical Museum at Christchurch, Oxford where he formulated his ideas about structure being dependant on habitat. Prior to 1840 there was widespread ignorance about natural history, the study of which was deemed to have no practical benefit. His ‘Popular Natural History’ published in 1851 was the first of many books and lectures that helped address this need. Such writers were admired by their utilisation of anecdotes and the way that they could relate to human characteristics. While this endeared such people to the cultural expectations of most sectors of Victorian society by making the subject matter light and amusing, it also alienated those who claimed such authors rejected accuracy. The paper explores how the Rev. J.G. Wood saw a commercial opportunity as an educator and responded to this demand by providing instructive and intelligible information to help satisfy the public’s tastes for natural history.
Prof A M Lucas AO CBE (amlucas2003@yahoo.co.uk)
16 Downham Crescent
Wymondham NR18 0SF
01953 602214
Shortly before he died, John Lindley decided to dispose of his herbarium and botanical library, and directly offered both to Ferdinand Mueller in Melbourne, less his orchid herbarium which had already been sold to the UK Government and deposited at Kew. Joseph Hooker had earlier unsuccessfully offered the library and remnant herbarium to the University of Sydney, using the good offices of Sir Charles Nicholson. Although Mueller was unable to raise the necessary funds to purchase either, the correspondence allows a reconstruction of a catalogue of Lindley's library, and poses some questions about the motives of disposing of Lindley's material to outside the United Kingdom. A note is provided on the final disposal of the herbarium to Cambridge, and existing analyses of the purchase of his Library for the Royal Horticultural Society are commented upon in the light of the evidence from an analysis of the library contained in the offers to Australia.
Bertrum H. MacDonald (bertrum.macdonald@dal.ca)
School of Information Management
Faculty of Management
Dalhousie University
Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada B3H 3J5
On the 14th April 1864 William Saunders wrote in distress from his home in London, Ontario to Joseph Henry, first Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, DC:
I regret to inform you that I have suffered much from a disastrous fire, which occurring in the middle of the night left myself and my family but barely time to escape with our lives. All of my collections and books were consumed so that I have to begin afresh again. It is very disheartening to have the labour of many years consumed in a single night, still I feel determined to commence again and labor [sic] hard to regain as speedily as possible my recent position.
By the time he wrote to Henry in April 1864, Saunders, one of Canada’s leading entomologists and horticulturalists in the latter half of the nineteenth century (he would later be appointed the first Director of the Dominion Experimental Farm system), had already been corresponding with Henry for some time. Saunders had acquired publications for his private use through Henry’s assistance, and after the disastrous fire in 1864, he turned once again to Henry’s aid. Saunders, like numerous other Canadian naturalists of the Victorian period, built a private library to support his scientific endeavours. Without that library he could not have published more than 200 scientific papers and a major monograph, Insects Injurious to Fruits (Philadelphia & London: J.B. Lippincott, 1883).
Drawing on an analysis of Saunders’s private library and several additional personal collections this paper will characterize the libraries from the perspectives of their contents, how they were assembled, and how the libraries aided the work of naturalists located in a new country where scientific roots were being laid down. The private libraries of Sir John William Dawson (geologist and palaeobotanist), George Lawson (botanist and chemist), Elkanah Billings (naturalist and palaeontologist), James Fletcher (entomologist and botanist), Sir William Logan (geologist), Robert Bell (explorer and geologist), as well as Saunders will figure in this analysis. Each of these scientists were well-known in Canada as well as in international circles. While the reconstruction of the private libraries does not show the full extent of the collections, an analysis of the libraries collectively highlights the importance of the scientific publications in locations far from publishing and scientific centres such as London, Edinburgh, Paris, and Philadelphia. The development of scientific capacities in the new nation of Canada depended on a flow of scientific publications from many quarters into the hands of scientists. Canadians in turn contributed to international scientific knowledge through their studies of the fauna, flora, and minerals of British North America. This analysis of private libraries highlights the importance of access to scientific papers, reports, and books for the advancement of scientific knowledge, a significance that extends to the present day.
(Ms.) Leslie K. Overstreet (overstreetl@si.edu)
Curator of Natural History Rare Books
Joseph F. Cullman 3rd Library of Natural History
Special Collections Dept.
Smithsonian Institution Libraries
The bequest of James Smithson (1765-1829), an English gentleman-scientist specializing in mineralogy, provided the funds for the founding of the Smithsonian Institution in the 1848. In addition the U.S. received all of Smithson’s personal effects, including his library: 115 titles ranging from scientific monographs to political pamphlets, travel guidebooks, and household cookery books. The collection is now held in the Smithsonian Institution Libraries’ Joseph F. Cullman 3rd Library of Natural History.
My talk presents the results of a detailed study of the collection, revealing patterns in the books’ acquisition, subject matter, and provenance. Authors’ inscriptions and Smithson’s annotations in the books and reprints are analyzed, providing a means of discerning and interpreting the network of scientific communication and intellectual exchange in the tumultuous period from 1790 to 1825.
Further, since a significant number of the books and pamphlets are in their original paper wrappers, the collection provides an unusual opportunity for research into the production of the printed book. Physical characteristics such as cover material, sewing structure, and text-block features (opened vs. un-opened folds, trimmed vs. un-trimmed edges), are noted and analyzed.
Finally, the analysis provides a basis from which to investigate the long-standing question of whether the collection as it has existed for 150 years is complete.
Florence F. J. M. Pieters,
University of Amsterdam
Johannes le Francq van Berkheij, most renowned as associate professor of natural history at Leiden University in Holland, was a many-sided man. He was a medical doctor and naturalist, as well as a painter and prolific poet, and author of many publications, his magnum opus being De natuurlijke historie van Holland (‘The natural history of Holland’). He was also a fervent Orangist and defender of Stadholder William V of Orange. In 1783 he was persuaded to write a pamphlet against the Leiden Free Corps, which brought him into conflict with the so-called patriots. This resulted in a long and costly lawsuit, filed against him by four anti-Orangist citizens who claimed to be deeply offended by the pamphlet. In the years that followed, the defendant had to sell his books, drawings and zoological cabinet.
To this end, Berkheij published six auction catalogues that were richly annotated by him, viz.: (1) of his books, manuscripts and periodicals in 1783, (2) of his ‘hobbies’, e.g. maps, sculptures, works of art, medals and instruments, likewise in 1783, (3) of his iconography of more than 4000 drawings and prints, kept in portfolios and arranged according to the Linnaean system, in 1784, (4-6) of his cabinet of anatomical preparations, his minerals and precious stones, and his shells and zoophytes, respectively, in 1785. After all, Berkheij was financially ruined and as a consequence his collections got widely dispersed, except for his famed iconography.
Berkheij’s iconography was sold in its entirety in 1785 to King Carlos III of Spain, for his Royal Cabinet of Natural History in Madrid. In his auction catalogue, Berkheij emphasized the importance of his extensive collection of original drawings of insects, being the models for the engravings in the Thesaurus of Albertus Seba (published in 1765). Nevertheless, the dispersal of Berkheij’s iconography did not stop there. The collection ended up in the Museo Nacional de Ciencias Naturales and (for the botanical part) in the Real Jardin Botánico in Madrid. In 1985, however, it emerged that about 200 drawings of exotic insects from the Seba collection had been stolen from the MNCN and sold, through an antiquarian bookshop in Madrid, mainly to a British collector. This collector offered these drawings for sale to the Artis Library, University of Amsterdam. The Artis Library was highly interested in such an acquisition, not only because it has of old a large ‘paper museum’ of its own, called Iconographia Zoologica, but particularly because the Artis Library owns a manuscript attributed to Seba, with accompanying drawings of Dutch insects attributed to Otmar Elliger junior (1666-1735), that are similarly reproduced as engravings in Seba’s book. Thus, the sets of drawings from Amsterdam and Madrid complement each other.
After it became known that the Seba drawings offered for sale had been stolen, the University of Amsterdam no longer thought it appropriate to buy the collection. Eleven of these drawings had been presented on approval to the Artis Library and were never re-claimed by the purveyor. These eleven drawings will be returned to the MNCN soon and will be shown and discussed here, together with some examples of the remaining set of drawings in Madrid. It is to be hoped that more Seba drawings will turn up in due time, so that they can be re-united with the well-conserved ‘Iconografía van Berkheij’ in the archive of the Museo Nacional de Ciencias Naturales in Madrid.
Dr. Nicolas Robin (Nicolas.Robin@uni-jena.de)
Friedrich-Schiller Universität Jena
SFB 482
Humboldtstrasse 34
D-07743 Jena
A.J.G.K. Batsch, Professor of medicine and natural history and founder of the botanical garden at Jena in 1794, based his scientific poractise on his own library, but also several other libraries like the collection of books brought to Weimar and Jena by Ch. W. Büttner or the priceless library of J.W. von Goethe and of course the “Grosshertzogliche Bibliothek” ( today the library of “Herzogin Anna-Amalia”) in Weimar. Furthermore, A.J.G.K. Batsch supported the development of a new scientific library in Jena with the foundation and the work of the “Naturforschende gesellschaft zu Jena” ( see P.Ziche , 2000). The aim of this paper is to underline the decisive role of these libraries in the progression of A.J.G.K. Batsch’s scientific thought. In the first years of his career he became famous for the publication of his Elenchus Fungorum (1783-1789), a work on fungi which would not have been realizable without the opportunity to acquire rare and specific literature on cryptogam plants. We demonstrate how the transfer of knowledge through the acquisition and exchange of textbooks within the scientific networks of the late 18th century contributed to the formulation of new scientific concepts and to the emergence of the study of cryptogams as a new discipline.
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