scholarly journals From the South Seas to Soho Square: Joseph Banks's Library, collection and Kingdom of natural history

2019 ◽  
Vol 73 (4) ◽  
pp. 499-526 ◽  
Author(s):  
Edwin D. Rose
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Natural History ◽  
Royal Society ◽  
Research Projects ◽  
Library Collection ◽  
Botanical Species ◽  
Late Eighteenth Century ◽  
Late Eighteenth ◽  
Working Practices ◽  
Species Being

The library and herbarium of Joseph Banks was one of the most prominent natural history collections of late eighteenth-century Britain. The examination of the working practices used in Banks's library, which was based at 32 Soho Square from 1777, reveals the activities of the numerous individuals who worked for Banks and on his collections from the early 1770s until 1820. Banks's librarians and their assistants used a range of paper technologies to classify and catalogue the vast numbers of new botanical species being discovered at this time. These practices of managing information changed as the decades progressed, reflecting the changes to systems of classification and the different research projects of Banks and his natural history staff. Banks's great wealth and powerful position as President of the Royal Society gave him the means to build and use this rigorously organized collection and library to influence a range of other private and institutional collections for almost 50 years.

scholarly journals On the Bibliography of a Late Eighteenth-Century German Work on Natural History and an Early Record of Leuciscus Meidingeri Heckel, 1852 (Pisces, Cyprinidae) in the River System of the Upper Danube on 6th April 1786

1972 ◽  
Vol 42 (2) ◽  
pp. 156-163
Author(s):  
S.J. de Groot
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
New Species ◽  
Natural History ◽  
River System ◽  
Late Eighteenth Century ◽  
Late Eighteenth ◽  
A New Species

The bibliography of a hitherto inaccurately described anonymous eighteenth-century popular German work on natural history is given, dealing with mammals, birds, fishes, amphibians and reptiles. As an addendum to this work the publisher has given an engraving of an unknown fish from the river Lech, river system of the Upper Danube. The fish could be identified as the cyprinid Leuciscus meidingeri Heckel, 1852. The observation of the species was made 66 years before its recognition as a new species by Heckel.

scholarly journals From plant extract to molecular panacea: a commentary on Stone (1763) ‘An account of the success of the bark of the willow in the cure of the agues’

2015 ◽  
Vol 370 (1666) ◽  
pp. 20140317 ◽  
Author(s):  
John N. Wood
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Royal Society ◽  
Modern Medicine ◽  
Bark Extract ◽  
Late Eighteenth Century ◽  
Late Eighteenth ◽  
Willow Bark ◽  
Inflammatory Drugs ◽  
Anti Inflammatory ◽  
350Th Anniversary

The application of aspirin-like drugs in modern medicine is very broad, encompassing the treatment of inflammation, pain and a variety of cardiovascular conditions. Although anecdotal accounts of willow bark extract as an anti-inflammatory drug have occurred since written records began (for example by Hippocrates), the first convincing demonstration of a potent anti-pyretic effect of willow bark containing salicylates was made by the English cleric Edward Stone in the late eighteenth century. Here, we discuss the route to optimizing and understanding the mechanism of action of anti-inflammatory drugs that have their origins in Stone's seminal study, ‘An account of the success of the bark of the willow in the cure of agues’. This commentary was written to celebrate the 350th anniversary of the journal Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society .

REPRESENTING ANIMAL MINDS IN EARLY ANIMAL AUTOBIOGRAPHY: CHARLOTTE TUCKER'S THE RAMBLES OF A RAT AND NINETEENTH-CENTURY NATURAL HISTORY

2015 ◽  
Vol 43 (4) ◽  
pp. 725-744 ◽  
Author(s):  
Julie A. Smith
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Natural History ◽  
Scientific Discourse ◽  
Narrative Form ◽  
Human Language ◽  
Animal Minds ◽  
Fictional Narrative ◽  
Late Eighteenth Century ◽  
Critical Commentary ◽  
Late Eighteenth

Animal autobiography – a first-person fictional narrative in which an animal tells its own story – emerged in the late eighteenth century as the first attempt to represent animal minds in extended narrative form. Authors of this genre were anxious to create accurate, believable animal characters, even as they afforded them human language and a habit of critical commentary. To do this, they wrote in sync with scientific understandings of animals as set out in books of natural history. A few authors are explicit about their debt to natural history, and their comments point to a broad but intended compatibility between the ideas of animal minds in animal autobiography and those in the popularized scientific discourse of the day.

The perfect pest: natural history and the red squirrel in nineteenth-century Scotland (William T. Stearn Prize 2014)

2015 ◽  
Vol 42 (1) ◽  
pp. 113-125 ◽  
Author(s):  
Matthew Holmes
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Natural History ◽  
Red Squirrel ◽  
Place Names ◽  
Late Eighteenth Century ◽  
Late Eighteenth ◽  
Changing Attitudes

Following the extirpation of the red squirrel from much of Scotland by the end of the eighteenth century, nineteenth-century naturalists strived to find evidence of its native Scottish status. As medieval accounts and Gaelic place names proved ambiguous, the true extent of the squirrel's former habitat was a matter of some debate. While numerous reintroductions of the species were made from the late eighteenth century, general enthusiasm for the return of the squirrel quickly turned to dismay, ultimately followed by persecution. If the squirrel originally represented a symbolic mission to rediscover a lost species, the physical animal itself fell below expectations. It became publically perceived as both economically and ecologically destructive. The squirrel was despised by foresters and landowners for damaging trees, while naturalists condemned the species for the destruction of bird's eggs and nests. This article will investigate naturalists' quests to rediscover the red squirrel, before examining changing attitudes to the species upon its reintroduction and gradual proliferation. The narrative will emerge through the works and correspondence of Scottish naturalist John Alexander Harvie-Brown (1844–1916) and The new statistical account of Scotland (1834–1845). The argument will be made that the red squirrel as an object of antiquarian curiosity initially made the species endearing to natural historians, as part of a wider fascination with extinct British fauna. However, the clash between naturalists’ established ornithological interests did little to endear the species to that community, leaving the red squirrel open to a policy of general persecution on economic grounds.

scholarly journals Joseph Banks and Charles Blagden: cultures of advancement in the scientific worlds of late eighteenth-century London and Paris

2019 ◽  
Vol 73 (4) ◽  
pp. 477-497 ◽  
Author(s):  
Hannah Wills
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Royal Society ◽  
Scientific Community ◽  
Late Eighteenth Century ◽  
Late Eighteenth ◽  
Scientific Exchange ◽  
Scientific Outputs ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Source Of Information

This paper explores the relationship between Joseph Banks, president of the Royal Society, and Charles Blagden, secretary to Banks and the Society between 1784 and 1797. Blagden is often referred to as one of Banks's key assistants, as a trusted adviser, collaborator and source of information. Yet, despite his significance, the nature of Blagden's association with Banks has not been explored in detail. This paper traces the development of their sometimes tumultuous relationship, exposing it as one in which Blagden, an aspiring gentleman, sought Banks's patronage to further his career and social ambitions. Key to Blagden's strategy was his role as a source of information for Banks from Paris. Yet, while Blagden pursued patronage with Banks in London, on visits to Paris he encountered a situation where merit, in terms of published scientific outputs, determined one's membership of the scientific community. Exploration of these conflicting cultures of advancement—patronage versus advancement through merit—here informs a re-assessment of scientific exchange at a key moment in Blagden's career, the 1783 ‘water controversy’. The limitations of Banks's patronage for ambitious clients are also explored, in the context of a rupture in the relationship between Blagden and Banks at the end of the 1780s.

scholarly journals Opponentindlæg: Lise Camilla Ruud. Doing Museum Objects in Late Eighteenth-Century Madrid.

1970 ◽  
pp. 105
Author(s):  
Samuel J. M. M. Alberti
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Natural History ◽  
Port City ◽  
Late Eighteenth Century ◽  
Museum Objects ◽  
Late Eighteenth ◽  
The Masses ◽  
Carlos Iii

Carlos III of Spain was especially fond of pachyderms. In 1773 an elephant arrived in the port city of Cadiz, a gift from the ruler of the Carnatic region of India via the Governor-General of the Phillipines. After trekking 600 km it fascinated nobility and the masses alike in Madrid, then lived out its days in the royal menagerie at Aranjuez. But elephants often have afterlives as interesting and varied as their lives, and this one was no exception. Upon its demise in 1777, Juan Bru, the dissector at the Royal Cabinet of Natural History, hurried the 50 km to Aranjuez to preserve and prepare the specimen, and to secure it for his master, Pedro Franco Dávila. The King wanted an elephant to display, and Dávila wanted a specimen for the cabinet. Accordingly, Bru spent over a week defleshing his mammoth charge, cooking the bones, drawing everything as he went along. 

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