Abstract
The growing number of known plants, and the need repeatedly to correct their names and their taxonomic attributions, demanded strategies for combining the static nature of a printed book with the fluctuating nature of the information it contained. From the second half of the seventeenth century botanists increasingly relied on publishing multiple updated editions of a book instead of attempting to correct, polish, and thus delay the appearance of a manuscript until, in the author’s opinion, it was finished. Provisional by nature, iterative books offered a solution. They were transient, open-ended and open to intervention, whether by one or multiple authors. Taking as an example the posthumous publication of orphaned material and manuscripts, a widespread phenomenon in eighteenth-century botany, this essay will focus on the sequence of iterative books that were published during the first half of the eighteenth century, based on the herbaria and papers left behind by the German botanist Paul Hermann (1646–95).
Keywords
Iterative books – orphaned manuscripts
Vita brevis, ars longa. 1 This aphorism from the Corpus Hippocraticum expresses the woes of scholars of all disciplines and periods. But it applies especially to botanists in early modern Europe, who were painfully aware of what they could accomplish in a lifetime. As a result of regional excursions, international expeditions, and the commercial-colonial networks of various trading companies, the number of plants previously unknown in Europe had risen to such an extent since the second half of the seventeenth century that botany launched a global registration project.2,3 Ultimately, the aim was to collect all plants worldwide, to name them, describe them, and classify them. A number of competing taxonomies were initially used for this, 4 before Linnaeus’s sexual system and his binomial nomenclature increasingly provided a unified infrastructure. 5
The accumulative approach of their discipline forced seventeenth- and eighteenth-century botanists to invest a considerable proportion of their work in acquiring material, whether fresh or dried plants, seeds, the observations of other botanists, publications, or illustrations. Botany was an information science that obliged practitioners to participate in its exchange-based information economy. 6 Yet what scholars acquired in terms of material often lagged far behind what they needed, despite their occasional feelings of being overwhelmed.
This collective experience of a chronic lack of information gave rise to a consensus that it was in the interests of the entire botanical community to publish new information quickly. On the whole, it was more productive to publish a botanical work for the first time even in an incomplete and preliminary state, so that the plants it described could be made known as quickly as possible. Later, as further editions were prepared, this information could be supplemented and corrected. From the second half of the seventeenth century, botanists increasingly employed iterative publishing instead of attempting to correct, polish, and thus delay the appearance of a manuscript until, in the author’s opinion, it was finished.
Building on my own work on collaborative working and publishing processes in botany as well as recent research on paper and scribal technologies, this contribution will show that it was not only Linnaeus and other individual scholars who published in this way, but that publishing what I would like to call iterative books was a practice used by the botanical community as a collective.7,8 The increasing number of new plants, and the need repeatedly to correct their names and their taxonomic attributions, demanded strategies for combining the static nature of a printed book with the fluctuating nature of the information it communicated. Provisional by nature, iterative books offered a solution. They were open-ended and open to intervention and supplementation, whether by one or multiple authors. A new edition or version came onto the market when, after the incorporation of additional material, a new level of information had been achieved that could, in turn, claim to be temporarily relevant for the botanical practice of a community. This essay will discuss to what extent iterative books were community-driven, taking as an example the phenomenon, widespread in eighteenth-century botany, of the posthumous publication of material and manuscripts left behind by scholars when they died. 9
When a scholar whose material or work had been anticipated with impatience died before he could put his observations down on paper or complete his work, what happened to his orphaned manuscripts, especially if they contained illustrations? 10 As a rule, there were very few living specimens in Europe of plants newly discovered overseas. Sometimes there were none at all if, for example, seeds did not germinate after a long journey, or plants did not survive the change in climate. If a botanist needed one of these rare plants for purposes of comparison, for example, he often had no choice other than to consult an illustration. In order to prevent unpublished descriptions and illustrations from being irretrievably lost, botanists took it upon themselves posthumously to edit and publish the manuscripts, drawings, and herbaria left by their colleagues on their death. 11
The following will look at a number of iterative books that were published sequentially during the first half of the eighteenth century, based on the herbaria and manuscripts of the German botanist Paul Hermann (1646–95). The focus will be on three characteristic features of this type of book. First, iterative books required supplementing, and were able to be supplemented, whether by those who had taken on the role of editor or by readers who made contributions. They were thus open to external interventions. Second, they were networked books that emerged out of the networked environment of botany. And third, iterative books functioned as an evolvable format that could keep up with the accumulative character of the process by which botanical knowledge was created. They were therefore open-ended and in a state of permanent transition.
The situation to be discussed here involves four main protagonists, Paul Hermann and his three consecutive editors: William Sherard (1659–1728), an English scholar; Johannes Burman (1707–79), a Dutchman; and the Swede Carl Linnaeus (1707–78). Paul Hermann had studied at the universities of Leiden and Padua, and gained a medical degree from Padua in 1670. 12 Via Arnold Syen, professor of botany at Leiden University and director of the city’s botanical garden, Hermann had met Hans Willem Bentinck, a passionate collector of rare plants, and through his good offices was appointed as medical officer of the Vereenigde Oostindische Compagnie (VOC) in Ceylon. In 1672 Hermann left for India, stopped at the Cape of Good Hope on the way, and used his short stay to collect plants there as well. After Syen’s death in 1678, Hermann was appointed his successor. In 1680 he returned to Leiden from Ceylon, bringing an extensive collection of botanical material with him, and devoted himself to his academic duties. As Linnaeus reported in his eulogy on Hermann’s death, the latter had enriched the collections of the Leiden botanical gardens with more new plants than all of his predecessors taken together. 13 He died of pneumonia in 1695, at the age of 49.
Hermann’s botanical career was facilitated by the VOC’s global infrastructure. 14 Like other scholars in the company’s service, he traveled between Europe and Asia on its trading ships and used its transport system to send plants, information, and descriptions back to Europe. Some of the earliest publications on Asian flora had resulted from this constellation: the twelve illustrated volumes of the Hortus Malabaricus (Amsterdam, 1678–93), initiated by the governor of Dutch Malabar, Hendrik Adriaan van Reede tot Drakestein; the flora of Ambon, one of the Maluku Islands, which Georg Eberhard Rumpf (or Rumphius) wrote after he had switched from the military to the administrative service of the VOC, and which was published decades later, after his death (Herbarium amboinense, Amsterdam, 1741–50); and the flora of Japan by Engelbert Kaempfer, a medical doctor in the service of the VOC (in Amoenitatum exoticarum . . . fasciculi V, Lemgo, 1712). Long before these works were actually published, word got around in the botanical community that they were being written, and the expectations of plants so far unknown in Europe being published ran high. This also applied in the case of Hermann, who, as will be shown in the following, had sent dried plants from Ceylon to Leiden in advance of his return, thus signaling the novelty of his material.
But at the time of Hermann’s death, only a single work of his had appeared in print, a catalog of the plants that he had introduced to the Leiden botanical gardens since 1680. 15 Most of his botanical material, both from Ceylon and the Cape of Good Hope, had not yet been published. The description of one of the plants given in the Leiden catalog contains a brief reference indicating that a full description would be found in a book to be titled Musaeum Zeylanicum which, as he wrote, “will be published at some time.” 16 Thus, in 1680 Hermann had first announced to the botanical world a work that was, in fact, not published until 1717, more than twenty years after his death, when William Sherard brought it out. Sherard’s Musaeum Zeylanicum, in turn, was only the first in a series of corrected and expanded editions based on Hermann’s posthumous manuscripts.
He left behind several voluminous herbaria, two of which will be discussed here. One he had sent from Ceylon to the Amsterdam botanist Jan Commelin (1629–92), and on the basis of this Johannes Burman published a posthumous edition titled Thesaurus Zeylanicus (1737). 17 The whereabouts of the other one was unknown for decades, until in 1744 an anonymous, five-volume herbarium containing plants from southern India fell into the hands of August Günther, an apothecary in Copenhagen. In 1745 he sent it on to Linnaeus, asking him to name the plants it contained. Linnaeus identified the material as Hermann’s herbarium, and on the basis of this published a further posthumous edition with the title Flora Zeylanica. 18 Hermann had also left behind numerous drawings and botanical manuscripts at various stages of completion – lists of plants, botanical notes, the diary of a botanical excursion at the Cape of Good Hope, and relatively carefully worked out descriptions of plants – many of which can still today be found in the William Sherard papers. 19
Publishing in expanding cycles of iteration
William Sherard (1659–1728)
The first person to take on Hermann’s manuscripts was the English botanist William Sherard, starting while Hermann was still alive. After his studies, Sherard had spent three years on the Continent in order to deepen his botanical knowledge at the most prestigious institutions. 20 From 1686 to 1688 he attended lectures in Paris by Joseph de Tournefort, who also conducted guided tours of the Jardin du Roi in the summer months. In 1688 Sherard traveled on to Leiden, where he met Hermann. Sherard’s first botanical publication, in which he listed the plants that he had seen in Paris and Leiden, appeared in 1689 under the title Schola Botanica. 21 In addition to a detailed list of the plants Tournefort had discussed in his lectures, the book remarkably also contained a shorter list of the plants that Hermann had intended to publish in a more comprehensive catalog of the Leiden botanical gardens (Paradisus Batavus, 1698). 22 As Sherard explained in the Foreword to Schola Botanica, during his stay in Leiden he had enjoyed the privilege of using Hermann’s herbarium and his notes for the Paradisus Batavus, which the latter was working on. Hermann had even allowed him to publish a first list of the plants that featured in these notes as an appendix to his Schola Botanica. 23
For this appendix, Sherard chose the format of the Prodromus (Lat., forerunner); that is, a pre-publication, whose purpose was to make relevant information available in a brief form to the botanical community as quickly as possible, in order to reduce the waiting time until the fully worked out publications by Hermann and Tournefort appeared in print. The fact that Sherard’s Schola Botanica went through two new editions (1691, 1699) demonstrates the interest that the botanical public had in this format. As a rule, a Prodromus to a planned, larger publication would be written by the author himself. Thus the Dutchman Nicolaas Laurens Burman, son of the botanist Johannes Burman, appended a Prodromus Florae Capensis to his Flora Indica, published in 1768, in order to announce a later publication on plants from the Cape of Good Hope. 24 Without using the term “Prodromus,” the Swiss botanist Albrecht von Haller also used this strategy of pre-publishing less polished and thus deliberately provisional versions of a Swiss flora, before his magnum opus, the Historia stirpium indigenarum Helvetiae inchoata, was finally published after decades of work, in 1768. 25
The fact that Hermann left the writing of a Prodromus to his own work to Sherard points to the practice of communal authorship in eighteenth-century botany. Communal authoring of botanical works was a long-term process that emerged out of the multiple cycles of supplementing and correcting iterative books. This intertwining of communal authorship and iterative publishing will be examined in greater detail in the following.
In 1698, three years after Hermann’s death, the first posthumous publication based on his material appeared under Sherard’s editorship – Paradisus Batavus, a catalog of the Leiden botanical gardens. Sherard’s Foreword conveys an idea of the quantity of papers left by Hermann, and of the state they were in. Sherard writes that he had found loose pages, largely in a neglected state, not in any order, and “mutilated.” 26 The bound manuscripts, too, containing detailed descriptions of plants, proved on closer investigation to be unpublishable in this form. Additional descriptions on loose pages, which Hermann had inserted in his bound notes, were of “obscure and irritating brevity.” 27 Sherard also emphasized that, during Hermann’s lifetime, he had worked with him to prepare his plants for the publication of a Musaeum Zeylanicum. It was greatly to be regretted, said Sherard, that Hermann had not had time to assign his descriptions of plants from Ceylon clearly to the relevant illustrations that he had commissioned on the spot. The illustrations were in an unholy mess. In sum, he said, Hermann had left behind at best a rough outline, and to put it into some sort of useful order was a monumental task.
Sherard gave up Hermann’s original plan, which had been to publish the material in a number of “centuries,” that is, in successive volumes each presenting a hundred plants. As the editor of the Paradisus Batavus, he concentrated on the plants for which Hermann had already had print-ready copper plates prepared, identifying descriptions in Hermann’s unorganized manuscripts that referred to a particular illustration. Sherard pointed out that readers would have no difficulty in recognizing which plant descriptions had been written entirely by Hermann, and which he, Sherard, had supplemented. Inevitably, he said, they did not match the quality of those written by Hermann, because Sherard lacked the necessary botanical literature and the opportunity of examining the relevant living plants. It is clear already that the posthumous editing of botanical manuscripts involved not only putting the material into some sort of order but also supplementing and updating it, which required an expert botanist.
It is equally clear, however, that Sherard was fully aware from the start of the limits of his knowledge of Hermann’s plants, and thus of the inevitability of errors in his additions to the text. Errors in the identification of plants were an unavoidable part of botanical publishing, especially before the introduction of Linnaeus’s binomial nomenclature. Without a generally accepted method of naming plants and a nomenclature recognized by the majority of botanists as binding, the same plant was inevitably given different names by different authors over time. As a result, most plants appeared in the botanical literature under several different names – so-called ‘synonyms’ – which a botanical author was expected to identify. 28
That Sherard took up this challenge is demonstrated by his extended synonymies based on Hermann’s preparatory work, which also make use of existing illustrations of individual plants. The following entry on a species of the genus Apocynum highlights the practice of identifying and comparatively discussing synonyms.
In the Hortus Lugduno-Batavus it is named Apocynum latifolium Aegyptiacum incanum erectum floribus spicatis maximis pallide violaceis siliquis folliculatis rugosis. There are certainly three synonyms that are ascribed to this Apocynum in the place referred to, namely 1. Apocynum Aegyptiacum lactescens siliqua Asclepiadis C. B. P. [Caspar Bauhin, Pinax theatri botanici, 1623] 2. Beidelsar Alpini sive Apocynum Syriacum J. B. [Jean Bauhin, Historia plantarum universalis, 1650–51] & 3. Bedeloscar Alpini in Lib. De Pl. Aegypt. [Johann Vesling, De Plantis Aegyptiis Observationes, 1638] . . . In his commentaries on Hort. Mal. part. 2 [Hortus Malabaricus, 1678–1703] Commelin erroneously claimed that Ericu, Beidelossar Alpini & Beidelsar Veslingi . . . are one and the same plant. But they are three different plants, which will become clear from what is said below.
29
Sometimes Hermann and his editors were sure of their judgment, as in the case of this passage. But this does not mean that the editors of later editions did not, for their part, undertake to correct what Hermann and Sherard had considered to be right. Sometimes Hermann was not at all certain, and Sherard’s posthumous edition does not withhold this from the reader. In the context of an approach that aimed, in the long term, to produce botanical works that were as complete and correct as possible by the method of jointly updating iteratively published editions, it made sense for an author to present the botanical community not only with statements that he believed were correct, but also with conjectures, clearly identified as such. For over time, conjectures and guesses could turn out to be useful information for another editor, or for readers, as they laid a trail, so to speak, that others could follow. Hermann, for example, added a tentative fourth to the three synonyms for another species of the genus Apocynum that he regarded as reliable: “I suspect that this is the same Apocynum that Jonquet named Apocynum erectum folio Esulae rarae Venetorum in his Hortus [Hortus sive Index Onomasticus Plantarum, 1659]?” 30
The question was addressed directly to the reader, encouraged him to pick up Jonquet’s Hortus, if it was to hand, and compare the relevant entry with that in the Paradisus Batavus.
Almost twenty years later, in 1717, the second posthumous publication based on the material left by Hermann was published as Musaeum Zeylanicum, again edited by William Sherard. 31
But unlike the Prodromus and the Paradisus Batavus, the Musaeum dealt exclusively with the plants of Ceylon, for which the botanical public had been waiting for more than twenty years. 32 According to the Foreword, Hermann had collected plants that grew in the wild as well as those that were cultivated in gardens. He had dried them, and then pasted them into a bound herbarium in no recognizable order. In most cases, their indigenous name was noted, followed by a descriptive name in Latin. Sometimes there was a brief description and, in a few cases, information about their mostly medicinal uses. Given the much anticipated nature of the published material, Sherard kept his editorial interventions to a minimum, but a comparison of the manuscript with the printed version shows that he nevertheless grasped the opportunity to make additions.33,34
Once again, Sherard mainly updated Hermann’s synonyms. In a number of cases, where the plants had already been featured in the Paradisus Batavus, he added references to it. In others he identified first synonyms, which meant that the relevant plant was not new, but was known, had already been named, described, and possibly even illustrated. Thus, in the case of a plant called Monarakudhimbiya, about which Hermann’s manuscript notes only the descriptive name “Conyza indica inodora minor, flore purpureo papposo,” 35 Sherard added: “Crista Pavonis Breyn.” This referred the reader to the publications of the Danzig botanist Jakob Breyne, where this plant appeared under the name Crista Pavonis. 36
Johannes Burman (1707–79)
Sherard, who in the last years of his life had initiated a further project – a posthumous edition of Sébastien Vaillant’s Paris Flora by Hermann Boerhaave – died in 1728. 37 In 1737, exactly twenty years after the publication of Hermann’s Musaeum Zeylanicum, the Dutch botanist Johannes Burman brought the next, substantially revised, edition out under the title Thesaurus Zeylanicus. 38 As director of the Amsterdam botanical gardens, Burman had access to the plants that had been sent in from South-East Asia by the staff of the Dutch East India Company and the scholars traveling on its merchant ships. As the botanical gardens did not maintain an institutional herbarium, dried plants became the property of the various directors and gardeners, who were able to put together extensive private herbariums in this way. Burman additionally acquired herbariums from various collectors; one had belonged to Hermann, who had sent it to Jan Commelin, head of Hortus Medicus in Amsterdam. 39 Jan Commelin then bequeathed it to his nephew, Caspar Commelin, from whom it went to his successor in office, Johannes Burman. 40 Burman also owned a second herbarium of plants from Ceylon, which had been assembled by Johannes Hartog. 41 Hartog had sent this herbarium to Cornelius Voss, a gardener at the Amsterdam botanical gardens, who, before his death, left it to Burman.
On the basis of this wealth of material, Burman pursued a highly ambitious editorial project with the Thesaurus Zeylanicus. In the Foreword, he explained that he wanted to publish Hermann’s material in a clear form at last, and at the same time to supplement it with plants from Hartog’s herbarium. 42 In the Musaeum Zeylanicum, he pointed out, Sherard had listed the plants in no particular order, and had included some plants three or even four times under different names. Burman wrote that he had tried to correct this by identifying as many synonyms as possible in the botanical literature, and by adding illustrations. As a result, he went on, the Thesaurus referenced and illustrated most of what was known about the flora of Ceylon at that time. Burman was working on supplementing the posthumously edited material with a layer of information that had been scattered up to then, or, in the case of Hartog’s plants, had not been available at all. He thus made it the shared property of the botanical community, which could then, collaboratively, further advance the creation of a flora of Ceylon.
Burman took over from Sherard as initiator and coordinator of a long-term, collaborative publication project. The Foreword to the Thesaurus gives the first indication of the extent to which he depended on the contributions of others in fulfilling this task. As already mentioned, Hartog’s herbarium had been left to him by Cornelius Voss. Two further Dutchmen, the botanist Jan Frederik Gronovius (1686–1762) and George Clifford (1685–1760) – a banker and member of the VOC’s board of directors, whose fortune allowed him to create a garden of exotic plants – gave him access to their plants for the illustrations in the Thesaurus. Gronovius also gave him a catalog of Hermann’s South African plants. And the young Linnaeus, who was his house guest for a number of weeks in 1735, proved to be an enthusiastic partner for Burman. Together, they identified the plants selected for inclusion in the publication. 43
For the Thesaurus to be of practical use to Burman’s contemporaries, it had to reflect the current state of knowledge about the plants it contained. In 1737 Hermann had been dead for more than forty years, and in that time further plants from Ceylon had reached Europe and been described in the botanical literature. Burman had to take this into account if his editorial efforts were to result in a book that would benefit the botanical community, that is, one that botanists could profitably use for their own work. And given the constantly growing amount of botanical knowledge, this book had, above all, to be up to date. Only if this were the case would a work of this sort sell, or rather, could subscribers be found to support its production, because books were expensive, especially an illustrated botanical publication in quarto format like the Thesaurus.
This means that it had to be established whether the plants from both Hermann’s and Hartog’s herbariums, now in the possession of Burman, had already been named, described, and perhaps even illustrated anywhere in the botanical literature. In order to do this, they had to be compared with all relevant descriptions, and, if available, also with any illustrations. Whereas in the Musaeum Zeylanicum Sherard had occasionally referred to the Paradisus Batavus and to the publications of Jakob and Johann Philipp Breyne, Burman systematically compared the plants selected for inclusion in the Thesaurus with descriptions in all the relevant publications, as far as possible. The lengthy and complex processes of comparison were documented in such a way that readers could trace step by step how Burman had worked. This is demonstrated in the following synonymy for a species of the genus Melastoma, which goes far beyond an overview of what authors had given this plant which name:
Melastoma quinquenervia, hirta, major, capitulis sericeis, villosis. Nobis. Tab. 73 [reference to illustration 73 in the Thesaurus]. Cistus Indicus, quinquenervius, capitulis sericeis, pulpa nigra refertis, major. Mus. Zeyl. pag. 10 [Sherard, Museum Zeylanicum]. Cistus Indicus, quinquenervius, folio hirto, ac scabro, floribus roseis amplis, capitulis sericeis, villosis, pulpa nigra refertis, major. Herb. Herm. & Commel. Fl. Malab. pag. 20 [Hermann’s herbarium and Commelin’s commentary on the Hortus Malabaricu] as in the footnotes to H. Malab. [Hortus Malabaricus] part. 4. pag. 91, where it is illustrated as Katou-Kadali, Illustration 43; but although our plant may be the same as that . . . it is closer to the [plant named] Kadali H. Malab. part. 4 tab. 42 [Hortus Malabaricus, part 4, ill. 42], as comparing the plants with the illustrations makes abundantly clear; Petiv. [James Petiver], too, considers it to be [the plant called Kadali on ill. 42 of the Hortus Malabaricus; B.D.] and he names it Kadali Madraspatana, pentaneuros, foliis eleganter hirtis.
44
Given such a detailed account of the comparisons that had been undertaken, readers could look at the plants and publications if they had them to hand and make up their own minds on the questions that arose. They could then discuss these in their correspondences with other botanists or address them in their own publications. To work with the Thesaurus thus involved consulting the publications referenced in the individual entries, reading the relevant passages, studying the illustrations named, and comparing them with each other. Those who proceeded in this way could not but be aware of the heterogeneous provenance of the information processed here and perceive the Thesaurus as a network of references to a botanical community. The Thesaurus – as was clear to everyone who worked with it – was far more than “just” Burman’s edition of Hermann’s manuscript.
Carl Linnaeus (1707–78)
In 1747, ten years later, the publication of Linnaeus’s Flora Zeylanica marked the provisional end point of the process of publishing posthumous editions of Hermann’s manuscripts. Since he had worked on the Thesaurus Zeylanicus with Burman, Linnaeus was to some extent familiar with the material, but, as he writes in the Foreword to the Flora Zeylanica, he had never thought of taking a closer interest in the flora of Ceylon. He became an editor of Hermann’s work through an extraordinary coincidence when in 1745 the apothecary August Günther from Copenhagen sent him a five-volume herbarium on Indian flora and asked him to name the plants contained in it. 45 Günther seems to have known neither what region of India the plants came from, nor who had collected them. When Linnaeus looked at the volumes more closely, he was struck by the fact that the plants in it were listed in precisely the same order as in William Sherard’s Musaeum Zeylanicum (1717), and that the number and kind of plants presented per page were the same in both works. Linnaeus had no doubt that he was holding Hermann’s personal herbarium, which was thought to have been lost, in his hands. 46 On this basis he published a further revised edition of Hermann’s material. His main contribution was to incorporate the plants discovered by Hermann, as well as the plants added by others over time, into his own taxonomy. 47 Thus the Flora Zeylanica integrated pre-Linnaean botanical publications, both the series of posthumous editions of Hermann and other publications on south Indian flora referenced in them, into the paradigm of Linnaean botany at a time when Linnaeus’s systematic works were establishing themselves as the central catalog of a global registration of plants. In 1747, the year in which the Flora Zeylanica was published, the fifth, expanded edition of Linnaeus’s Systema naturae had already appeared, as had the third edition of the Genera plantarum. 48
Linnaeus identified the plants in Günther’s herbarium. He writes that he had even soaked some of the dried plants in water in order to reveal the details of their flowers that he needed to see more clearly to be able to identify the genus. He composed detailed descriptions of individual plants, continued to work on synonyms, and supplemented bibliographical references, thereby also seeking to answer some of the questions that Burman had posed for the readers of his Thesaurus Zeylanicus. For example, Linnaeus provides four synonyms for the plant Lagurus paniculae ramis supra decomposito-proliferis, whereas Burman had given only two. 49 Linnaeus confirms Burman’s synonyms by also referring to the plant named Pengrinam in the Musaeum Zeylanicum and Arundo indica odorata in Grimm’s Laboratorium Ceylonicum (Amsterdam, 1679). But he answers Burman’s question of “whether this plant is identical to the Arundo farcta, Tubu Sala from the Herbarium Amboinense (book 6, chapter 10) by Rumphius” in the negative, and adds two new references, to the Phytopinax (1596) and the Pinax theatri botanici (1623) by the Swiss botanist Caspar Bauhin. 50
Linnaeus added references to other authors, and occasional annotations on the quality of their descriptions and illustrations, which made it easier for readers of the Flora Zeylanica to orientate themselves in the relevant literature. In his entry on a species of pepper, Piper foliis ovatis oblongiunculis acuminatis septinervis, petioli bidentatis, for example, Linnaeus comments on the quality of existing illustrations: that in Burman’s Thesaurus Zeylanicus is described as “optima” (the best), while that in Carolus Clusius’ Exoticorum libri decem (1605) is rated only as “bona” (good). 51 The illustration of a different species of pepper, Piper foliis cordatis subseptinerviis venosis in the observations on the flora and fauna of Java by Jacobus Bontius (published posthumously in W. Piso: De Indiae . . . res naturales et medicae, 1658), is assessed by Linnaeus as “pessima” (very bad). 52 Those who had never seen these plants at all, or only in a dried state, were thus informed about which illustrations were reliable and which were not.
At the same time, Linnaeus continued the conversation with readers that Burman had initiated, and for his part raised questions that he could not answer with any degree of certainty. For this purpose, he often used a short passage at the end of an entry, under the heading observatio (observation), as, for example, in the case of Chionanthus pedunculis multifloris paniculatis: “I remain in doubt whether this [plant] is the same variety of Chionanthus pedunculis trifidis trifloris as that described by Pluk. [Plukenet] in phyt. [Phytographia, 1690–94], p. 241, f. 4 & Catesb. [Catesby] in carol. [Natural History of Carolina, Florida and the Bahama Islands, 1729–47], vol. 1, p. 68 or a separate species.” 53
The constantly expanding text of a flora in the making documents the collaboration which produced it.
Linnaeus’s way of dealing with the plants in Hermann’s herbarium that were too poorly preserved to be clearly assigned to a genus is revealing. For the botanical public they were nevertheless of interest because, until better preserved specimens were available, they were the only clue. This is why Linnaeus divided them into three groups at the end of the Flora Zeylanica. The first consisted of plantae obscurae (obscure plants), whose flowers were preserved in part, but not well enough to decide which genus they belonged to; 54 the second group consisted of plantae dubiae (doubtful plants), which Linnaeus described, but whose flowers were almost unrecognizable; 55 and finally, the third group listed plantae barbarae (foreign plants), whose existence and names were known from the Musaeum Zeylanicum (1717) edited by Sherard, but of which there were no dried specimens in the Günther herbarium used by Linnaeus. 56 Linnaeus listed these plants to encourage other botanists to work with them – the Flora Zeylanica was open-ended. 57 Linnaeus saw his edition of Hermann as a further contribution to a flora of Ceylon that would, in the long term, be created by the work of many. In the Foreword he referred to Burman as his predecessor, to whom the botanical public owed “knowledge of Ceylon’s plants.” 58 He considered his own contribution to be imposing the structure of his taxonomic system on this long-term collaborative project, so that any number of new plants could be added easily.
Conclusion
As the series of posthumous publications based on Hermann’s papers demonstrate, none of the consecutive editors made any claim to completeness. Sherard could not list all the plants from Hermann’s papers, and neither Burman nor Linnaeus were able to compile a complete flora of Ceylon. If material published posthumously was to be relevant for the current work of the botanical community, it had to be as contemporary as possible, and to achieve this it had to be updated regularly by many others. Thus, the aim of a posthumous edition was not to publish the manuscripts of a dead scholar in their original state. What Sherard, Burman, and Linnaeus achieved as editors was to ensure that the work Hermann initiated on a flora of Ceylon remained an open text, in which they incorporated not only their own plants and observations, one after the other, but also those of others. What they published in this way was a series of iterative books – that is, of open-ended, transient, and networked books – that were, from the start, designed for this dynamic of continuation to be maintained by others, as long as there was new material to be incorporated.
This state of affairs is reflected not only in the consecutive publication first of a Prodromus, an advance notice of the planned publication that appeared at the end of another book, but also in the Musaeum Zeylanicum, which followed the structure of Hermann’s herbarium, then of the Thesaurus Zeylanicus, which first expressed the aim of producing a flora of Ceylon, and, finally, of Linnaeus’s Flora Zeylanica. The process of writing and rewriting did not come to a halt between these stages, as handwritten annotations in printed copies of the books under discussion here document. Linnaeus’s personal copy of the Flora Zeylanica, for example, was for this purpose bound with interleaved blank pages, which contain additions and corrections in his handwriting. In the case of Poa spiculis octifloris linearibus, for example, the first synonym, a reference to Leonard Plukenet’s Almagestum botanicum (London, 1696), is crossed out by hand. 59 After the publication of the Flora Zeylanica, Linnaeus had again compared this plant with relevant descriptions in the botanical literature and had come to the conclusion that it was not identical to the plant described by Plukenet after all.
After a book was published, it once again became a manuscript for the next, updated version. In the context of iterative publication, the distinction between print and manuscript was fluid.
Footnotes
Declaration of Conflicting Interests
The author declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
Funding
The author(s) disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article: Research for this paper was supported by a General Research Fund grant (GRF) from the Research Grants Council of Hong Kong (“Networked names. Synonyms in eighteenth-century botany; project number 172988).
1.
Life is short, (but) art is long.
2.
On natural history expeditions and excursions see (a selection): Stéphane van Damme, Hanna Hodacs, and Kenneth Nyberg (eds.), Linnaeus, Natural History, and the Circulation of Knowledge (Oxford: Voltaire Foundation, 2018); Katharine Anderson, “Natural History and the Scientific Voyage,” in Helen Anne Curry, Nick Jardine, James Secord, and Emma Spary (eds.), Worlds of Natural History (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2018), pp.304–18; Arthur MacGregor (ed.), Naturalists in the Fields. Collecting, Recording and Preserving the Natural World from the Fifteenth to the Twenty-First Century (Leiden and Boston: Brill Publishing, 2018); James Delbourgo, Collecting the World. Hans Sloane and the Origins of the British Museum (Cambridge, Mass.: The Belknap Press, 2017); Brita Brenna, “Clergymen Abiding in the Fields. The Making of the Naturalist Observer in Eighteenth-Century Norwegian Natural History,” Science in Context 24 (2011): 143–66; Hanna Hodacs, “Linnaeans Outdoors. The Transformative Role of Studying Nature ‘on the Move’ and Outside,” The British Journal for the History of Science 44 (2011): 183–209; Harold J. Cook, Matters of Exchange. Commerce, Medicine, and Science in the Dutch Golden Age (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2007); Alix Cooper, Inventing the Indigenous. Local Knowledge and Natural History in Early Modern Europe (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007); Luc Lienhard, “‘La machine botanique.’ Zur Entstehung von Hallers Flora der Schweiz,” in Martin Stuber and Stefan Hächler (eds.), Hallers Netz. Ein europäischer Gelehrtenbriefwechsel zur Zeit der Aufklärung (Basel: Schwabe, 2005), pp.370–410; Marie-Noelle Bourguet, “La collecte du monde. Voyage et histoire naturelle, fin XVIIe siècle–début XIXe siècle,” in Claude Blanckaert and Claudine Cohen (eds.), Le Muséum au premier siècle de son histoire (Paris: Publications scientifiques du Muséum national d’histoire naturelle, 1997), pp.163–96.
3.
A selection: Anna Winterbottom, Hybrid Knowledge in the Early East India Company World (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2015); Vinita Damodaran, Anna Winterbottom, and Alan Lester (eds.), The East India Company and the Natural World (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2015); Cook, Matters of Exchange (note 2); Londa Schiebinger and Claudia Swan (eds.), Colonial Botany. Science, Commerce, and Politics in the Early Modern World (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2005); Roy MacLeod (ed.), Nature and Empire: Science and the Colonial Enterprise, Osiris 15 (2000).
4.
For an overview of pre-Linnaean taxonomies see Charlie Jarvis, Order out of Chaos. Linnaean Plant Names and their Types (London: The Linnean Society, 2007); see also Thierry Hoquet, Article “Tournefort,” in Luc Foisneau (ed.), Dictionary of Seventeenth-Century French Philosophers, 2 vols. (New York/London, 2008), vol. 2, 1226–9; Thierry Hoquet, “La classification des vivants (XVIIe–XVIIIe siècle),” in Paul-Antoine Miquel (ed.), Biologie du XXIe siècle. Evolution des concepts fondateurs (Brussels, 2008), pp.31–67; Hans Peter Fuchs-Eckert, “Die Familie Bauhin in Basel,” Bauhinia 6/1 (1977): 13–48 (part 1), Bauhinia 6/3 (1979): 311–29 (part 2), Bauhinia 7/2 (1981): 45–62 (part 3), Bauhinia 7/3 (1982): 135–53 (part 4); Phllip R. Sloan, “John Locke, John Ray, and the Problems of the Natural System,” Journal of the History of Biology 5 (1972): 1–55; Charles E. Raven, John Ray Naturalist. His Life and Works (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986 [1942]).
5.
From the voluminous literature on Linnaeus’s method, special reference is made here to the following: Sarah T. Scharf, “Identification Keys, the ‘Natural Method,’ and the Development of Plant Identification Manuals,” Journal for the History of Biology 42 (2009): 73–117, 92; Charles E. Jarvis, Order out of Chaos. Linnaean Plant Names and their Types (London: The Linnean Society, 2007); Staffan Müller-Wille, “Collection and Collation. Theory and Practice of Linnaean Botany,” Studies in History and Philosophy of the Biological and Biomedical Sciences 38 (2007): 541–62; Staffan Müller-Wille, Botanik und weltweiter Handel. Zur Begründung eines natürlichen Systems der Pflanzen durch Carl von Linné (1707–78) (Berlin: Verlag für Wissenschaft und Bildung, 1999); William T. Stearn, “An Introduction to the Species Plantarum and Cognate Botanical Works of Carl Linnaeus,” in Species Plantarum. A Facsimile of the First Edition (1753) (London: Ray Society, 1957), pp.1–176, 1–6, 24–35; on Linnaeus’s working method see Bettina Dietz, Das System der Natur. Die kollaborative Wissenskultur der Botanik im 18. Jahrhundert (Cologne/Weimar/Vienna: Böhlau, 2017); Bettina Dietz, “Contribution and Co-production. The Collaborative Culture of Linnaean Botany,” Annals of Science 69 (2012): 551–69; Staffan Müller-Wille and Isabelle Charmantier, “Carl Linnaeus’s Botanical Paper Slips (1767–1773),” Intellectual History Review 24 (2014): 215–38; Staffan Müller-Wille and Isabelle Charmantier, “Natural History and Information Overload: The Case of Linnaeus,” Studies in History and Philosophy of the Biological and Biomedical Sciences 43 (2012): 4–15.
6.
On this see Dietz, ‘Contribution and Co-production’ (note 5); Katie Kendig and Joeri Witteveen (eds.), History and Philosophy of Taxonomy as an Information Science (special issue), History and Philosophy of the Life Sciences 41 (2019).
On techniques of information management in early modern scholarship, see (a selection): Carla Bittel, Elaine Leong, and Christine von Oerzen (eds.), Working with Paper. Gendered Practices in the History of Knowledge (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2019); Ann Blair and Richard Yeo (eds.), Note-Taking in Early Modern Europe, Intellectual History Review 20 (2010); Ann Blair, “Reading Strategies for Coping with Information Overload, c.1550–1700,” Journal of the History of Ideas 64 (2003): 11–28; Volker Hess and J. Andrew Mendelsohn, “Case and Series. Medical Knowledge and Paper Technology, 1600–1900,” History of Science 48 (2010): 287–314; Martin Krajewski, Zettelwirtschaft. Die Geburt der Kartei aus dem Geist der Bibliothek (Berlin: Kadmos, 2002); Helmut Zedelmaier and Martin Mulsow (eds.), Die Praktiken der Gelehrsamkeit in der Frühen Neuzeit (Tübingen: Niemeyer, 2001).
On information management in early modern botany see, among others, Genie Yoo, “Wars and Wonders. The Inter-Island Information Networks of Georg Everhard Rumphius,” British Journal for the History of Science 51 (2018): 559–84; Staffan Müller-Wille, “Names and Numbers. ‘Data’ in Classical Natural History, 1758–1859,” Osiris 32 (2017): 109–28; Müller-Wille and Charmantier, “Carl Linnaeus’s Botanical Paper Slips” (note 5); Lienhard, “‘La machine botanique’” (note 2); Brian Ogilvie, “The Many Books of Nature. Renaissance Naturalists and Information Overload,” Journal of the History of Ideas 64 (2003): 29–40.
7.
See Bettina Dietz, “What is a Botanical Author? Pehr Osbeck’s Travelogue and the Culture of Collaborative Publishing in Linnaean Botany,” in Stéphane van Damme, Hanna Hodacs, and Kenneth Nyberg (eds.), Linnaeus, Natural History, and the Circulation of Knowledge (Oxford: Voltaire Foundation, 2018), pp.57–79; Dietz, System der Natur (note 5); Bettina Dietz, “Linnaeus’ Restless System. Translation as Textual Engineering in Eighteenth-Century Natural History,” Annals of Science, 73/2 (2016): 143–56; Bettina Dietz, “Contribution and Co-production” (note 5).
8.
See Anke te Heesen, “The Notebook. A Paper-Technology,” in Bruno Latour and Peter Weibel (eds.), Making Things Public. Atmospheres of Democracy (Karlsruhe: Zentrum für Kunst und Medien, 2005), pp.582–589; Volker Hess and J. Andrew Mendelsohn (eds.), Paper Technology in der Frühen Neuzeit (special issue), NTM. Zeitschrift für Geschichte der Wissenschaften, Technik und Medizin 21 (2013); Hess and Mendelsohn, “Case and Series” (note 6); see also: Bittel, Leong, von Oerzen, Working with Paper (note 6); Elizabeth Yale, Sociable Knowledge. Natural History and the Nation in Early Modern Britain (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2016); Richard Yeo, Notebooks, English Virtuosi, and Early Modern Science (Chicago, 2014); Staffan Müller-Wille and Isabelle Charmantier (eds.), Worlds of Paper (special issue), Early Science and Medicine 19 (2014); Ann Blair and Richard Yeo (eds.), Note-Taking in Early Modern Europe (special issue), Intellectual History Review 20 (2010).
9.
On the creation of the scientific archive as an institution, and on practices and functions of archiving scientific papers around the Royal Society, see Vera Keller, Anna Marie Roos, and Elizabeth Yale (eds.), Life, Death, and Knowledge-Making in Early Modern British Scientific and Medical Archives (Leiden: Brill, 2018); see also Elizabeth Yale, “The Book and the Archive in the History of Science,” Isis 107 (2016): 106–15; Elizabeth Yale, “With Slips and Scraps. How Early Modern Naturalists Invented the Archive,” Book History 12 (2009): 1–36; Lorraine Daston (ed.), Science in the Archives. Pasts, Presents, and Futures (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2017); with reference to early modern natural history, see Anna Maria Roos and Edwin Rose, “Lives and Afterlives of the Lithophylacii Britannici ichnographia (1699), the First Illustrated Field Guide to English Fossils,” Nuncius. Journal of the Material and Visual History of Science 33 (2018): 505–36; on the continuation of Linnaeus’s systematic writings in posthumous editions see Dietz, System der Natur, pp.90f (note 5).
10.
On natural history illustrations see Florike Egmond, Eye for Detail. Images of Plants and Animals in Art and Science, 1500–1630 (London: Reaktion Books, 2016); Sachiko Kusukawa, Picturing the Book of Nature. Image, Text and Argument in Sixteenth-Century Human Anatomy and Medical Botany (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2012); Sachiko Kusukawa, “Patron’s Review. The Role of Images in the Development of Renaissance Natural History,” Archives of Natural History 38 (2011): 189–213; Kärin Nickelsen, Draughtsmen, Botanists, and Nature. The Construction of Eighteenth-Century Botanical Illustrations (Dordrecht: Springer, 2006).
11.
The editor of scientific publications has, so far, been a little-discussed figure. This will change with the publication of a special issue of Centaurus on scientific editorship, edited by Aileen Fyfe and Anna Gielas (forthcoming).
12.
Little is known about Paul Hermann’s biography. See Carl Linnaeus, Flora Zeylanica (Stockholm, 1747), pp.11–16 (biography of and eulogy on Hermann); Hesso Veendorp and Lourens G. Baas Becking, Hortus academicus Lugduno-Batavus (1587–1937). The Development of the Gardens of Leyden University, (Harlem: Ex Typographia Enschedaiana, 1938) pp.82–95.
13.
Cf. Linnaeus, Flora Zeylanica, Praefatio, p.13 (note 12).
14.
A selection of titles on this subject: Sven Dupré and Christoph Lüthy (eds.), Silent Messengers. The Circulation of Objects of Knowledge in the Early Modern Low Countries (Münster: LIT Verlag, 2014); Daniel Margócsy, Commercial Visions. Science, Trade and Visual Culture in the Dutch Golden Age (Chicago: Chicago University Press, 2014); Peter Boomgaard (ed.), Empire and Science in the Making. Dutch Colonial Scholarship in Comparative Perspective, 1760–1830 (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013); Siegfried Huigen, Jan L. de Jong, and Elmar Kolfin (eds.), The Dutch Trading Companies as Knowledge Networks (Leiden: Brill, 2011); Harold Cook, Matters of Exchange. Commerce, Medicine, and Science in the Dutch Golden Age (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2007).
15.
Paul Hermann, Horti Academici Lugduno-Batavi catalogus exhibens plantarum omnium nomina, quibus ab anno 1681 ad annum 1686 hortus fuit instructus ut et plurimarum in eodem cultarum et a nemine hucusque editarum descriptiones & icones (Leiden, 1687).
16.
Ibid., pp.25f.
17.
On Hermann’s herbariums see esp. Henry Trimen, “Hermann’s Ceylon Herbarium and Linnaeus’ Flora Zeylanica,” Journal of the Linnaean Society (Botany) 24 (1887): 129–55; Tinde van Andel and Nadine Barth, “Paul Hermann’s Ceylon Herbarium (1672–1679) at Leiden, the Netherlands,” Taxon 67 (2018): 977–88; Tinde van Andel, Jaideep Mazumdar, and Jan-Frits Veldkamp, “Rumphius Specimens Detected in Paul Hermann’s Ceylon Herbarium (1672–1679) in Leiden, the Netherlands,” Blumea 63 (2018): 11–19; in addition, S. J. van Ooststroom, “Hermann’s Collection of Ceylon Plants in the Rijksherbarium (National Herbarium) at Leyden,” Blumea 29 (1937): 193–209; J. Ardagh, “Paul Hermann’s Ceylon Herbarium and Icones,” Journal of Botany 69 (1931): 137f.
18.
Another herbarium is held today by the Forschungsbibliothek Gotha (Thuringia), which obtained it from the papers left by the Breyne family of botanists. On this see Stephan Rauschert, “Das Herbarium von Paul Hermann (1646–1695) in der Forschungsbibliothek Gotha,” Hercynia 7 (1970): 301–28.
19.
A precise identification of the individual documents can be found in the catalogue of William Sherard’s papers: Catalogue of Manuscripts Belonging to Oxford University, Department of Botany, Oxford 1953 (Mss. Sherard, 174–88; Sherardian Library of Plant Taxonomy, One of the Bodleian Libraries of the University of Oxford).
20.
For Sherard’s biography see George Pasti Jr., “Consul Sherard. Amateur Botanist and Patron of Learning (1659–1728)” (unpublished Ph.D. thesis, University of Illinois, 1950).
21.
S[herard] W[illiam] A[nglus], Schola Botanica, sive catalogus plantarum quas ab aliquot annis in Horto Regio Parisiensi studiosis indigavit vir clarissimus Joseph Pitton Tournefort [. . .] ut et Pauli Hermanni P. P. Paradisi Batavi Prodromus, in quo plantae rariores omnes, in Batavorum hortis hactenus cultae & plurimam partem a nemine antea descriptae recensentur (Amsterdam, 1689; further editions 1691 and 1699). The authorship of the Schola Botanica was repeatedly attributed to a non-existent botanist S[imon] W[arton] A[nglus] as the result of an error in Albrecht von Haller’s Bibliotheca Botanica (1771–2).
22.
Paul Hermann, Paradisus Batavus, continens plus centum plantas affabre aere incisas & descriptionibus illustratas; cui accessit catalogus plantarum, quas pro tomis nondum editis, delineandus curaverat Paulus Hermannus, M. D., in Academia Lugduno-Batava nuper medicine ac botanices professor; opus posthumum, edited by William Sherard (Leiden, 1698; 2nd expanded edn, Leiden, 1705).
23.
Cf. Sherard, Schola Botanica, Foreword (unpaginated) (note 21).
24.
Cf. Nicolaas Laurens Burman, Flora Indica, cui accedit series zoophytorum Indicorum, nec non Prodromus Florae Capensis (Leiden and Amsterdam, 1768).
25.
The titles of Haller’s interim publications were: Enumeratio methodica stirpium Helvetiae (Methodical Enumeration of Swiss Plants) (1742) and Ad enumerationem . . . emendationes et auctaria (Rectifications and Additions . . . to the Enumeration) (1759).
26.
Hermann, Paradisus Batavus, Foreword (Lectori Botanophilo), unpaginated (note 22).
27.
Ibid.
28.
On the identification of synonyms as a collaborative practice, see Bettina Dietz, “Networked Names. Synonyms in Eighteenth-Century Botany,” History and Philosophy of the Life Sciences 41 (2019): 1–20.
29.
Hermann, Paradisus Batavus, pp.28f (Latin original) (note 22). Here and in what follows, I have expanded abbreviated book titles in square brackets.
30.
Ibid. p.39.
31.
Linnaeus names Sherard as the editor of the Musaeum Zeylanicum in the Foreword to his Flora Zeylanica, p.16 (note 12), which will be discussed in detail later.
32.
Paul Hermann, Musaeum Zeylanicum sive catalogus plantarum in Zeylana sponte nascentium, observatarum & descriptarum a viro celeberrimo Paulo Hermanno [. . .], edited by William Sherard (Leiden, 1717). The Foreword states that Hermann’s death prevented him from fulfilling his own wish and that of others (see Hermann, Musaeum Zeylanicum, Ad lectorem, unpaginated).
33.
Unlike in the Paradisus Batavus, Sherard did not sign the Foreword.
34.
A manuscript copy of Hermann’s Musaeum Zeylanicum can be found in the Sherard papers, MS 175, Sherardian Library of Plant Taxonomy, One of the Bodleian Libraries of the University of Oxford.
35.
Hermann, Musaeum Zeylanicum, 3r, Sherard papers, MS 175.
36.
Hermann, Musaeum Zeylanicum, 2. This refers to Jakob Breyne, Exoticarum aliarumque minus cognitarum plantarum centuria prima, cum figuris aeneis summo studio elaboratis (Danzig, 1678).
37.
Sherard managed to convince the famous professor of medicine at Leiden, Herman Boerhaave, to edit a flora of Paris, based on the manuscripts left by the Parisian botanist Sébastien Vaillant.
38.
Johannes Burman, Thesaurus Zeylanicus exhibens plantas in insula Zeylanica nascentes, inter quas plurimae novae species & genera inveniuntur; omnia iconibus illustrata ac descripta, cura et studio Joannis Burmanni (Amsterdam, 1737).
39.
On the Hortus Medicus in Amsterdam see D. O. Wijnands, The Botany of the Commelins. A Taxonomical, Nomenclatural and Historical Account of the Plants Depicted in the Moninckx Atlas and in the Four Books by Jan and Caspar Commelin on the Plants in the Hortus Medicus Amstelodamensis, 1682–1710 (Rotterdam: Balkema, 1983).
40.
On this see the Foreword to Burman, Thesaurus Zeylanicus, Praefatio, unpaginated (note 38); Linnaeus, Flora Zeylanica, Praefatio, p.16 (note 12).
41.
Hartog (1663 or 1664–1722) was director of the East India Company’s garden in Cape Town, and was then transferred to Ceylon.
42.
Here and for the following see Burman, Thesaurus Zeylanicus, Praefatio (unpaginated) (note 38).
43.
In a letter in 1756, Burman reminded Linnaeus of this joint activity. He wishes, he wrote, that Linnaeus could visit him again – as when they worked together on the plants from Ceylon – in order to help him identify the plants from the Cape of Good Hope, which he was just working on (see Burman to Linnaeus, April 6, 1756; transcription and facsimile of the Latin original, <
> (1 August 2020), L2042).
44.
Burman, Thesaurus Zeylanicus, 155 (Latin original) (note 38). The long descriptive plant names are characteristic of the period before Linnaeus’s binominal nomenclature became more widely accepted in the second half of the eighteenth century.
45.
On this and for the following see Carl Linnaeus, Flora Zeylanica, sistens plantas indicas Zeylonae insulae, quae olim 1670–1677 lectae fuere Paulo Hermanno . . . demum post 70 annos ab Augusto Günthero . . . orbi redditae; hoc vero opere revisae, examinatae, determinatae & illustratae, generibus certis, differentiis specificis, synonymis propriis, descriptionibus compendiosis, iconibus paucis (Stockholm, 1747), Praefatio, p.17.
46.
Ibid.
47.
For a selection of literature on Linnaeus’s method of classification, see note 1.
48.
Carl Linnaeus, Systema naturae, sive regna tria naturae systematice proposita per classes, ordines, genera & species (Leiden, 1735; 2nd edn., Stockholm, 1740; 3d edn., Halle 1740; 4th edn., Paris, 1744; 5th edn., Halle, 1747); Carl Linnaeus, Genera plantarum eorumque characteres naturales secundum numerum, figuram, situm & proportionem omnium fructificationis partium (Leiden, 1737; 2nd edn., Leiden, 1742; 3rd edn., Paris, 1743).
49.
See Linnaeus, Flora Zeylanica, p.18 (note 12); Burman, Thesaurus Zeylanicus, p.35 (note 38).
50.
Burman, Thesaurus Zeylanicus, p.35 (note 38).
51.
See Linnaeus, Flora Zeylanica, p.11 (note 12).
52.
Ibid., p.12.
53.
Ibid., p.6.
54.
Ibid., pp.188–201.
55.
Ibid., pp.202–6.
56.
Ibid., pp.206–37.
57.
Ibid., p.206.
58.
Ibid., Praefatio.