The Language of Flowers genre is at the intersection of botany, horticulture, natural history, art, poetry, and women’s studies. This popular literary trend in the 19th century presented the world of botany through dictionaries of flowers and associated meanings, floral poetry, and prose, offering a sentimental view of natural history. A properly arranged bouquet was said to convey a “secret message” for the recipient. The “social media” of its day, this Victorian fad led to many editions of works published, with multiple titles by successful authors.

Frances Sargent Osgood edited two works in this genre: Poetry of Flowers and Flowers of Poetry and The Floral Offering.

Her description of floriography from her introductory poem in the Floral Offering follows:

INTRODUCTORY.

THY EMBLEM FLOWER.

Round every flower there gleams a glory

Bequeathed by antique song or story;

To each, old legends give a name

And its peculiar charm proclaims;

O’er smiling lawn – through shaded grove,

Our dreaming poets pensive rove,

And strive to read their language rare,

And learn the lesson latent there-

Then ‘mid them all, so fair to see,

What flower shall thy fit emblem be?

The Floral Offering, a Token of Friendship was edited by Frances S. Osgood and illustrated by J. Ackerman “with ten beautiful bouquets of flowers, elegantly colored after nature.” The work was published in Philadelphia, PA by Carey and Hart publishers in 1847. It contains poems by Osgood and others, plates with flowers assembled in bouquets, and a floral dictionary at the back containing her definitions of flowers. For example, basil means “I hate you” and olive means “peace be with you.” Osgood uses these definitions to ascribe secret messages. The list of illustrations for the plates provides the “secret message” that each illustrated arrangement is meant to convey.

Frances Sargent Osgood (1811 – 1850) was one of the most influential American women poets of her time. She was born in Boston to a family of poets together with her brother, sister, and step-sister. Early on, her parents recognized her talent and encouraged her pursuits. Her first poem was published when she was a young teenager. She was a prolific writer and published numerous works in magazines for women and children and also authored and edited several books.

Osgood married a painter, Samuel Stillman Osgood, in 1835. He had previously studied at the Royal Academy, and they moved back to London where he had a successful career painting portraits. During the four years that they lived abroad, Osgood remained active in her craft and in 1839 published a compilation of all her work in a volume entitled Wreath of Wild Flowers from New England. With the unexpected death of her father, the Osgoods returned to the States, first to her family home in Boston and then settling in New York in 1840. While in New York, Osgood published two volumes in the language of flowers genre in 1841 and 1847.

Osgood was very well known during her life-time, such that her biography appears in The American Female Poets; with Biographical and Critical Notices (1848), by Caroline May, and in The Female Poets of America (1849), edited by Rufus Griswold. Her notoriety and embracement of the language of flowers genre may have influenced and encouraged other women to write in the field of horticulture, botany, and natural history.

An interesting side note to her time in New York is Osgood’s association with Edgar Allen Poe. He published her poems and thought highly of her work. Their friendship is rumored to have developed into a love affair.

Frances Sargent Osgood died from tuberculosis in 1850 at 38 years old. She was buried in Mount Auburn Cemetery near Boston with her daughter that preceded her in death. Her other two daughters died just after her in 1851.

The Memorial (1851) by “Friends of the Late Mrs. Osgood” and edited by Mary E. Hewitt was a tribute to her life. Its 346 pages contain numerous pieces by different authors; it is truly an acknowledgement of her importance to her family, friends, and literary colleagues.

The Lenhardt Library of the Chicago Botanic Garden is digitizing 62 rare and unique language of flowers volumes published in the 19^th century as part of a grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) awarded to the Chicago Horticultural Society. Over three-years, the volumes are being conserved and digitized by expert staff at the Northeast Document Conservation Center. The Floral Offering is from the second set of volumes. You can explore volumes from sets one and two as well as other titles in the Language of Flowers collection in BHL. Learn more about other language of flowers volumes digitized as part of this grant in this past blog post.

References

Griswold, Rufus W. The Female Poets of America. Philadelphia: Carey and Hart, 1849. Internet resource.

Hewitt, Mary E. M, and Frances S. Osgood. The Memorial. New York: G.P. Putnam, 1851. Internet resource.

May, Caroline. The American Female Poets: With Biographical and Critical Notices. Philadelphia: Lindsay & Blakiston, 1848. Internet resource.

Earlier this year Dr. Simon Leslie, Francis Houssemayne du Boulay’s great-grandson, contacted Melbourne Museum about accessing du Boulay’s hand-painted Coleoptera volumes, held in the Museums Victoria Archives. Dr. Leslie and family accessed the physical volumes in February 2020. While I carefully supervised flipping through the pages of these volumes, I was intrigued by their aesthetic, and scientific and historic, value. Since then, the volumes have been digitised by Biodiversity Heritage Library (BHL) Australia.

Francis Houssemayne du Boulay was born in Sandgate, Kent, on 24 January 1837. As a young man in his early 20s, he migrated to Perth (c.1858). A scientist, entomologist, natural history artist, and Coleoptera (beetle) collector, du Boulay began to collect specimens in locations around Western Australia, Queensland, New South Wales, Victoria, and other parts of Australia. He settled in Beechworth, Victoria, where he lived out the rest of his life; du Boulay passed away on 12 January 1914.

In volume one of du Boulay’s hand-painted Coleoptera volumes, inside the front cover, is a handwritten inscription in ink, “F. H. Du Boulay 1880”. Du Boulay commenced work on the volume in 1880; however, it is likely that the work continued for several years. The cover also features a note handwritten in pencil, “Names in lead pencil inserted by H. M. Giles W. Australia (Du Boulay)”. Annotations inscribed in pencil are corrections by Henry Murray Giles, who assisted du Boulay in identifying scientific names of specimens. Giles worked as a Resident Keeper (1898) and later Head Keeper (1909 – 1910) at the Zoological Gardens, South Perth, Western Australia. Giles wrote an article in the Western Australian Year-Book for 1900-01 entitled “A Glimpse of Western Australian Entomology” (see pp. 285-297).

A total of 179 Coleoptera specimens are illustrated in volume one. Locations are noted where the specimens occur; however, the locations often only indicate the state where they were collected, for example New South Wales, Victoria, Queensland, Western Australia, South Australia; or a town or city, for example Cape York, Cardwell, Rockhampton, Brisbane. Some specimens identify the sex. It would be interesting to note if the colours used are scientifically accurate. Are the specimens drawn to scale? This would require the physical volume and specimens for comparison.

On the back of the volume is a sketch, in pencil, of a childlike illustration of a man, which is accompanied by an inscription, “W. Du Boulay”. This is an illustration of Francis du Boulay’s brother William, who was a fellow naturalist and collector. The yellow cover of the volume inscribed “DRAWING BOOK E. R. COLE BOOKSELLER AND STATIONER, SYDNEY” is well used, worn and has many inkblots. It has evidence of accompanying du Boulay in the field on his collecting trips around Australia.

Volume two is also well worn with inkblots on the cover. It has a leather-bound spine and leather corners protect the cover; otherwise the volume has no distinguishing features or title page. As in volume one, the specimen illustrations are printed, then hand coloured. Not all of the specimens are identified with their scientific names. The illustrations appear to be to scale. Specimens are illustrated from a dorsal perspective. Locations of where the specimens were collected are sometimes documented. Again as in volume one, the location is only noted from which state, for example, Queensland, Western Australia, Northern Territory, South Australia, New South Wales; or towns, cities, waterways or mountain ranges, for example Blue Mountains, Richmond River, Ropes Creek, Thompson River, Cairns, Coopers Creek, Cape York, Cooktown, Princess Charlotte Bay, Cleveland Bay, Port Mackay. The sex of the specimen is also sometimes identified.

While carefully presenting these volumes to Dr. Leslie, we were both surprised to come across several pages in the second volume containing beautiful Lepidoptera illustrations. Twenty-one Lepidoptera specimens are beautifully illustrated, but unfortunately do not include their scientific names or the locations where they were collected. Simon Hinkley, Collection Manager in Entomology at Museums Victoria, noted that the “Lepidoptera illustrated are detailed enough for identification purposes, for instance, the bottom left corner [see above] is a Caper White and the bottom middle specimen is a Spotted Jezebel.”

Dr. Thomas Darragh, Curator Emeritus at Museums Victoria, identified the loose sheet of paper interleafed in volume two, see above, as Professor Frederick McCoy’s handwriting. McCoy was the first director of the National Museum of Victoria, predecessor of Museums Victoria (1854 – 1899). While not an entomologist, he was a paleontologist, geologist, zoologist, academic and keen collector for the National Museum of Victoria, and he was clearly interested in this volume, enough to incorporate a rough sketch of a “Phaneroptera (Serv)”. Simon Hinkley noted the Phaneroptera is an old genus name of katydids in the subfamily Phaneropterinae and was described by Jean Guillaume Audinet-Serville in 1831.

Volume two includes a loose letter with illustrations of beetles from “Mr. Span, Rooke’s Farm, West Drayton, Middlesex”. The letter includes illustrations of two specimens from North Queensland—one from New South Wales and one from the “Interior of Continent.” An inscription below the address on the letter, written in pencil, “Compared with British Mus. Specimens by Mr Span for Mr Du Boulay”, notes that specimens held by the British Museum have been compared with specimens collected by du Boulay. A few pages following the loose letter is a specimen that has been hand-drawn from the dorsal and cross section with inscription “Schizorhina Mnizechii Larry” (an unpublished name), and beside this is an inscription, “Drawings by Mr Span from originals in Brit. Museum”.

Some of the specimen illustrations in volume two include cross-sections of the heads and magnified studies of the legs. Volume two has a total of 220 Coleoptera and 21 Lepidoptera illustrations, compared to a total of 179 Coleoptera specimens illustrated in volume one.

The National Museum of Victoria purchased several Coleoptera specimens from Francis du Boulay and his brother William (1880-1912), such as the beautiful Castiarina erasma (Carter, 1935), Dilochrosis atripennis (Macleay, 1863), and Castiarina balteata (Saunders, 1869).

Du Boulay’s Coleoptera volumes are significant documents of historical collecting with important scientific information for contemporary scientists. Now that the volumes are available on the BHL website, scientists can benefit from the historical and scientific data on Coleoptera collected by Francis du Boulay from locations across Australia in the late nineteenth century.

Published in 1914, Butterflies of Australia by Gustavus Athol Waterhouse and George Lyell was the first comprehensive work on Australian butterflies to appear in Western scientific literature. It is a thick and rather chunky volume, with descriptions of 332 butterfly species, and was the product of many years of research. The copy held in Museums Victoria’s Rare Book Collection is even thicker than a standard issue, as it is bound with lined pages interleaved throughout. It is an author’s copy, owned and annotated by George Lyell.

Lyell and Waterhouse worked on the book separated by some distance; Lyell’s location in Gisborne, Victoria was 862km (536 miles) away from Waterhouse’s residence in Sydney. They corresponded regularly via mail, and the Museums Victoria Archives now houses some 400 of Lyell’s letters from Waterhouse, which came to the museum with Lyell’s extensive donation of butterflies and moths in 1932. In 2019 a McCoy Seed Fund project enabled further exploration of the archival material to see what it could reveal about the scientists’ collaboration and Lyell’s collection. It also shed some light on the annotated copy in our collection.

The archival material reveals that their publisher, Angus & Robertson, prepared the handsome interleaved copy for Lyell and gave it to Waterhouse to pass on. In a letter dated 28 August 1914 Waterhouse writes “I have the interleaved copy for you, but it is much too bulky & too nicely done to trust to the post” (OLDERSYSTEM~03030, Museums Victoria Archives). Instead Waterhouse entrusted the volume to friend E. H. Proctor to give to Lyell’s brother in Melbourne.

Their correspondence also demonstrates how carefully they considered every aspect of the publication. For instance, a letter to Lyell on 20 March 1914 states “I like very much the black headings as they seem to show the divisions at a glance & generally speaking I like the size of the type” (OLDERSYSTEM~03030, Museums Victoria Archives), showing that the typography was carefully considered for readability. Waterhouse was pleased with the plates, writing on 4 Feb 1914 “Dear Lyell, Coloured plate no. 1 is glorious, magnificent drawings, just showed it to [Allan Riverstone] McCulloch who was delighted with it” (OLDERSYSTEM~03030, Museums Victoria Archives).

The illustrations are a combination of original drawings and photographic reproductions: original coloured plates by H. W. Simmonds, drawings of larvae and pupae by Miss J. Kong Sing, and the remaining are from photographs by Henry King. Butterflies of Australia includes 43 plates, and a total of 888 illustrations; its considerable scope and detail was considered very helpful by scientists and collectors when the book was published.

As Museums Victoria Archivist Nik McGrath recounts, Waterhouse destroyed his letters after entering the relevant scientific data onto index cards. While this might seem like a curiously destructive working method, it is not unheard of; researchers working with Charles Darwin’s correspondence have noted that he crossed out personal matters in his letters so he would not be distracted if he needed to return to them for scientific purposes [1]. In this case, in spite of the loss of Lyell’s letters, we retain a lot of the archival material relating to the book including a manuscript, index cards from Waterhouse, notebooks, proofs, black and white photographs of specimens used by illustrators for the book, specimen lists, and newspaper clippings of book reviews.

In addition to looking at the archival material, an examination of the book itself is also revealing. Annotations are dated throughout the 1910s and 1920s and most appear to record sightings. In the introduction to the work, Waterhouse and Lyell note of the geographical focus of their study: “We are hoping this work will serve to indicate the need and point to that direction, and so induce collectors to aid us: we are carefully tabulating every verified record reaching us, and will much appreciate dated specimens for examination and return, especially those from points distant from localities given in our list.”

Lyell is systematic in his approach to annotations, including roughly the same information and formatting for each entry. The marginalia primarily consists of locations added to specimen descriptions, often dated, and sometimes includes a number, gender, and occasionally an elevation.

There are also often initials entered next to the information, which relate to the person collecting the data, as you can see in the example above.

The annotations use a similar approach from the beginning to end of the text; Lyell underlines the printed text in pen, circling the relevant figure numbers, and then notes the date, locations and other data on the interleaved pages.

Though the method of data entry is reasonably consistent, there are noticeable changes in ink, indicating that Lyell completed the annotations across a period of time. It would appear that Lyell was copying across data from other sources such as his own field notes and correspondence from other scientists as he received it.

Lyell’s marginalia mainly seems to record observational data, but occasionally includes a reference to secondary reference material. One reference appears to have been copied in its entirety—this is Norman Tyndale’s description of Lycaeninae adaluma from the Transactions of the Royal Society of South Australia in 1922. Tyndale’s description references Waterhouse and Lyell’s work, and suggests a placement of the new species within their system. The placement suggested corresponds to where Lyell has copied in the description.

What exactly was Lyell doing with his annotations? It appears he was using the book to record ongoing research by himself and a group of naturalists across the east coast of Australia. H. J. Jackson notes in Romantic Readers that the practice of interleaving in books by scientists originated in earlier educational practices [2]. I have certainly come across other similar examples in the Museums Victoria Library. It is notable that Lyell’s annotations drop off after the early 1930s. He suffered an illness in 1931 that led to his decision to deposit his collection with the National Museum of Victoria. The rest of his life was dedicated to preparing his collection for transfer to the museum, and this seems to correlate to a decline in annotating.

References

1. Gregorio, Mario A. & Gill, N. (1990) Charles Darwin’s Marginalia Vol. 1, New York, Garland, p. xiv.
2. Jackson, H. J, (2005) Romantic Readers: the Evidence of Marginalia, New Haven & London, Yale University Press, p. 84.

Bibliography

Administration – George A. Lyell – Internal Correspondence 1891-1947- Waterhouse, G. A – Museums Victoria Archives, National Museum of Victoria OLDERSYSTEM~03030

Gregorio, Mario A. & Gill, N. (1990) Charles Darwin’s Marginalia Vol. 1, New York, Garland.

Jackson, H. J. (2005) Romantic Readers: the Evidence of Marginalia, New Haven & London, Yale University Press.

McGrath, Nik (2019) Kindred Spirits, Museums Victoria Blog, Retrieved from https://museumsvictoria.com.au/article/kindred-spirits/

McGrath, Nik (2019), Butterflies of the night, University of Melbourne Blog, Retrieved from https://blogs.unimelb.edu.au/insect-museum-collection/2019/01/30/butterflies-of-the-night/

John Sibthorp’s Flora Graeca (1806-1840) has been described as “the most costly and beautiful book devoted to any flora” [1]. Dedicated to the plants of Greece and the eastern Mediterranean, only 30 subscriptions for the first edition were sold and of those, only 25 were completed. While each copy was sold for £254, the cost to produce each copy was about £620 [2, 176].

Flora Graeca arose out of botanical expeditions carried out by English botanist John Sibthorp in Greece and Asia Minor between 1786-87 and 1794-1795. Sibthorp employed Austrian artist Ferdinand Lukas Bauer to accompany him on the first expedition and serve as illustrator. During the expedition, Bauer created around one thousand plant sketches, using a color coding process to record the exact colors of the specimens he observed in the field, allowing him to produce accurate final drawings based on his field sketches [3].

Unfortunately, Sibthrop contracted tuberculosis during the return from his second expedition. He died on 8 February 1796 in Bath, before the work could be completed. His will, however, provided an endowment to ensure the completion of the publication [4].

Sibthorp’s friend and fellow botanist, James Edward Smith, and Sibthorp’s brother-in-law, John Hawkins, oversaw the publication of the first six volumes between 1806-1828. Volume seven was published in 1830, and volumes eight through ten were edited by John Lindley and published between 1833-40. The first nine volumes included 100 plates each, with the final volume consisting of 66 plates [5]. The hand-colored plates were engraved on copper by Bauer, James Sowerby and James de Carle Sowerby after Bauer’s drawings [2, 175].

The Lloyd Library and Museum is fortunate to own one of the 25 complete copies of the first edition of this title. This copy was digitized by the Public Library of Cincinnati and Hamilton County as part of the BHL Expanding Access to Biodiversity Literature project (funded by the Institute of Museum and Library Services) and is freely available for all to enjoy in the Biodiversity Heritage Library. A volume from this title is also currently on display at the Lloyd Library & Museum as part of the current exhibit Treasures of the Lloyd, which is open until 21 February 2020.

References

[1] Stearn, W. T. (1960). “Franz and Ferdinand Bauer, masters of botanical illustration”. Endeavour 19(73).
[2] Stearn, W. (1967). Sibthorp, Smith, the ‘Flora Graeca’ and the ‘Florae Graecae Prodromus’. Taxon, 16(3), 168-178. doi:10.2307/1216982
[3] Walsh, H. (2003). “Ferdinand Lukas Bauer”. Rare Books from the MBG Library. 23 October. Accessed on 4 February 2020. http://www.illustratedgarden.org/mobot/rarebooks/author.asp?creator=Bauer, Ferdinand Lukas&creatorID=96.
[4] Christie’s. (1997). “Flora Graeca”. Lot 138, sale 8690. Accessed on 4 February 2020. https://www.christies.com/lotfinder/Lot/sibthorp-john-james-edward-smith-and-john-228372-details.aspx.
[5] Europeana. (2020). “Flora Graeca”. Accessed on 4 February 2020. https://www.europeana.eu/portal/en/record/92002/BibliographicResource_1000093325414_source.html.

The Zoological Sketches are two volumes of 100 plates published between 1857 and 1867. They show particularly rare animals from Regent’s Park in London, which Joseph Wolf captured in watercolours and on the basis of which Joseph Smit made lithographs. The edited notes were written by David William Mitchell, Secretary of the Zoological Society. After his death his successor, Philip Lutley Sclater, took over the work and completed the volumes.

The Library of the Museum für Naturkunde in Berlin holds a copy of this title in its collection. There is a digital copy of the work in BHL, contributed by the Ernst Mayr Library of the Museum of Comparative Zoology at Harvard University.

Regent’s Park, now London Zoo, was founded in 1828 for the purpose of scientific observation of wild animals from all parts of the British Empire. “In the year 1852 the Council of the Zoological Society […] resolved to commence the formation of a series of original water-colour drawings […]. For this purpose the Council were fortunate enough to secure the services of Mr. Joseph Wolf, who may be fairly said to stand alone in intimate knowledge of the habits and forms of Mammals and of Birds. …“(Preface).

Joseph Wolf was born on 22 January 1820 in Mörz (Germany). He was trained as a lithographer in Münster, but also mastered the work with pencil, water and oil paints, and coal. He worked in different places in Europe before coming to London in 1840 to work at the British Museum as an animal illustrator. By that time, he had already made a name for himself with his illustrations, especially of birds.  Sir Edwin Landseer described him as “… without exception, the best all-round animal painter that ever lived. …” (Palmer 1895, p. 283). The Zoological Society appointed Wolf as its resident artist in 1861.

Wolf, who until then only sketched animals in the wild, always dealt with the self-assertion of the individual and incorporated this into his works. The housing of the animals in the zoo in which they did not show their natural behaviour was therefore a challenge for him.

Animals that came to Regent’s Park in the 19th century often had a long, exhausting journey behind them. Wolf wrote “… for sometimes, when they arrived, they were in a miserable state, and hardly I knew what to make of them. I used to do two or three of these drawings in a day, if the material were good. All these were vignettes only; but I took care to get the true character of the animal” (Palmer 195, p. 110).

In addition to the embellished depictions of the individuals, most of the 100 plates show the zoo animals in an ideal, natural environment. A few, however, provide insights into zoo life and depict the animals in their enclosures or provide a view of the visitors. Although the animals are described anonymously by Mitchell and Sclater, the records of the Zoological Society allow us to deduce which individuals of Regent Park’s Wolf drew.

The hippopotamus bull Obaysh came to Regent’s Park as a calf on 25 May 1850 and quickly became a crowd puller. In 1854, he got a companion, Adhela. On plate XXVII (Part I) are two adult hippos, as well as a herd in the background, a mother with a calf and a western swamphen in a natural habitat. Since Joseph Wolf himself never visited Africa, he relied on third party sources for the design of the environment. For all the hippopotami depicted, especially the two individuals in the foreground, Obaysh and Adhela were probably models. Their names are not mentioned in the text and the representation of the right side of the body makes it impossible to identify Obaysh by a characteristic scar on his left side. As Obaysh and Adhela were the only hippos in the zoo, Wolf used different sketches of them for the herd to show different behaviours of the species.

The situation is similar with plate XXIV, Part 2, where a herd of elephants shows up in a supposedly natural environment. Probably Jumbo, who came to Regent’s Park on 26 June 1865, and Alice were depicted. This plate makes it clear that Wolf’s depiction of zoo animals does not show their natural behaviour. The picture of the bull elephant together with the cow and a calf rather reflects the ideal of a Victorian family, as bull elephants are rouges. Furthermore, in African elephants, both females and males have tusks but the cow elephant shown here does not seem to have any. This can be explained by the fact that Alice was only 2 years old when Wolf made his sketches, and her tusks were apparently not yet fully developed.

Plate XVII, Part 1 is one of the few that shows an animal in its zoo enclosure. The almost portrait-like drawing shows a Syrian Bear on straw in front of a board wall. It is not possible to take a closer look at the surroundings, e.g. to determine whether he lives together with other animals of the same species or to measure the dimensions of the enclosure.  By depicting the bear in its actual accommodation, Wolf focuses on the animal’s personality; the bear no longer remains anonymous. The accompanying text also mentions that the bear was a gift from the Persian Gulf and arrived in London in August 1851.

The discussed plates show a selection of the illustrations of the Zoological Sketches and set highlights on individual features that are characteristic for this work. Despite their idealization and partial embellishment, they remain true to their scientific purpose and are an outstanding example of 19th century European animal painting.

You can also explore all of the artworks from this title in the BHL Flickr: Volume One | Volume Two

Sources

Palmer, A. H. 1895. The life of Joseph Wolf,: animal painter. London: Longmans, Green.
Susset, Nicole Ricarda, and Nicole Ricarda Susset. 2013. Lebendigkeit im Bild: Joseph Wolf und die Tiermalerei im 19. Jahrhundert.
Schulze-Hagen, Karl, and Joseph Wolf. 2000. Joseph Wolf (1820-1899), Tiermaler. Marburg an der Lahn: Basilisken-Presse.

In this day and age, science is a serious business pursued by experts who are mostly employed by universities or research facilities. These rational organisations like to trace their lineages back to the late 18^th Century Enlightenment, but such narratives are never linear or straight-forward. In 2001 the Mitchell Library, State Library of NSW, acquired an extraordinary manuscript, The Naturalists Companion, Containing drawings with suitable descriptions of a vast variety of Quadrupeds, Birds, Fishes, Serpent and Insects; &c accurately copied either from Living Animals or from the stuffed Specimens in the Museums of the College and Dublin Society. This volume, of a miscellany of museum artefacts, natural history specimens, and material culture, exemplified the way many Europeans encountered natural history from the new world: not with Enlightenment rigour but with eclectic and unsystematic enthusiasm.

This curious volume was compiled by a youthful Kenelm Henry Digby. Digby was born in Ireland in 1800 and died in London in 1880. Although born into a strongly Protestant family, by the mid-1820s, having moved to England to attend Trinity College, Cambridge, he had converted to Catholicism and devoted most of the rest of his life to writing about the Catholic faith, for which he attracted some prominence. He was also a committed antiquarian, a latent interest already visible in The Naturalists Companion.

A Random Compendium…

It seems that Digby compiled The Naturalists Companion in the mid to late 1810s. It is a random compendium of natural history, ethnographic and antiquarian subjects, illustrated with birds, animals and insects from around the world (including Australia), Native American artefacts, Pacific artefacts (some collected by Captain Cook) as well as Irish antiquities. Yet this lack of the obvious taxonomy, which would now be expected of such publications—indeed its eccentric disorder—clearly illustrates a then-common world view, which celebrated the bounty of the Creator, and omnivorously described both the well known and the new, be it from Australia, the Pacific, Ireland or the Americas.

In every way, too, the volume illustrates the often apparently haphazard composition of early nineteenth century European museums. Comparisons with published catalogues from contemporary museums, such as the Leverian Museum or William Bullock’s Museum, shows how close Digby’s own manuscript museum was in conception to contemporary professional museums.

…The Wonder…of Brute Creation

The scale of his undertaking was enormous and quixotic, reflecting a prodigious and admirable youthful enthusiasm, which he later brought to his prolific writings on the Catholic Church. The album contains some 525 pages of text, which comprises both his own words and extracts from the works of others, and about 450 illustrations, which he drew himself. Digby himself wrote that his intention was to highlight to all “but the most insensible mind … wonder at the formation and the various properties, and dispositions of the Brute Creation” (p.453). In other words, the book was a celebration of the diversity of God’s creation, rather than a rational attempt to impose order on the natural world.

Digby drew his specimens from, amongst other places, the museums of Trinity College, Dublin, and the Dublin Society, now the Royal Dublin Society. Indeed the original specimens for some of his illustrations, such as the Giraffe or Cameleopard on page 116, the Kanguroo on page 8, or the Blue Shark on page 193, can be seen on display in WB Taylor’s 1819 aquatint Museum of T.C.D [Museum of Trinity College Dublin]. His text eschews entirely any semblance of scientific or taxonomic rigour, instead repeating anecdote and basic observation. Of the Blue Shark, for instance, he notes that “no fish can swim so fast as the shark, he outstrips the swiftest ships, such amazing powers, with such great appetites for destruction…”

It would seem too that at the time he was putting together the volume a menagerie was operating in Dublin: his drawing of a kangaroo, for instance, is said to be “copied from a living animal, exhibited in Dublin.” At least 23 of his illustrations are from a local menagerie.

Artefacts from the Pacific Voyages of Captain Cook

Of great importance are the numerous illustrations of Pacific artefacts, which are now of major historical and ethnographic interest. These drawings suggest how quickly and easily specimens from the Pacific dispersed throughout Europe. Many, such as Dress of a Chief Mourner, from Otaheite (p.221), depict material collected on Captain Cook’s Second voyage by surgeon James Patten, who settled in Dublin immediately after his return. He gave his collections to Trinity College in 1777, which were latter transferred to the National Museum of Ireland. The mourning dress itself was in turn presented to the Bishop Museum in Hawaii in 1971 [1].

The Trade in Natural History Specimens

It is an intriguing point that The Naturalists Companion includes at least eleven drawings of Australian animals. This is fascinating evidence for the commercialisation and trade of local fauna throughout Europe in the early nineteenth century. Further research would no doubt reveal what menageries were in Dublin at the time this volume was made. The drawings include cockatoos (see page 7 and page 296), two drawings of kangaroos (see page 8 and page 290), parrots (see page 4 and page 295) and a lyre-bird (see page 294, which has been mis-described as a black bird of paradise and probably copied from the engraving published in the second volume of David Collins An account of the English colony in New South Wales, 1802).

Combined, the Australian natural history and the Pacific ethnographic drawings of Digby’s The Naturalists Companion—scattered as they are amongst collections of fauna and artefacts from around the world—create a unique insight into the intellectual milieu in which Australia and its region began to be revealed to Europe. What makes The Naturalists Companion so important is its tangible illustration of a very conventional—even if by today’s standards chaotic—way of organising and describing the world. The unusual juxtapositions and non sequiturs of the volume—particularly evident in the biblical Peaceable Kingdom frontispiece—simply reflects the then common encyclopaedic approach to the description of the natural world and its phenomena: there was enormous interest in the world but for people like Digby, instead of trying to corral it into some kind of order, they accepted its diversity as evidence of the creativity the Creator.

..,the Visionary Subjects of the Traveller…

In this sense, The Naturalists Companion documents European attitudes towards Australia and the Pacific in the early nineteenth century, explaining clearly what interested Europeans about the Pacific. In many respects the youthful Digby’s enterprise parallels other projects undertaken by colonists in New South Wales at roughly the same time. For instances, two commandants of the penal colony at Newcastle, 160 kilometres north of Sydney, were also actively collecting and arranging local natural history. In 1813, Lieutenant Thomas Skottowe directed a convict artist under his charge to illustrate a manuscript he called Select Specimens of nature (Library call no. SAFE PXA 555). Skottowe was just as enthusiastic as Digby, noting that the illustrations he had commissioned of butterflies would challenge “many nice Critics” who would “dispute the Existence of the most of them, and put them down to the Visionary subjects of the traveller.”

Five years later, in 1818, Captain James Wallis commissioned a chest now known as the Macquarie Collector’s Chest (Library call no. XR 69). This extraordinary artefact, of painted panels and natural history specimens decoratively arranged, is another iteration of the sensory pleasure of curiosity and the exotic. Again, Wallis was not a natural historian or a taxonomist, but rather someone entranced by the sheer difference of Australian natural history. Pointedly, too, Wallis gave this chest to his superior, Governor Macquarie, in part as an elaborate but fairly conventional idea of “managing up”, as we would now say, but also very much as a celebration of the richness of Australian natural history, which was now in the embrace of the British Empire.

You can also browse all of the illustrations from this work in the BHL Flickr.

References

[1] See Rachel Hand, “‘A number of highly interesting objects’: the Cook-voyage collections of Trinity College Dublin”, in Jeremy Coote ed., Cook-voyage collections of ‘artificial curiosities’ in Britain and Ireland, 1771-2015 Oxford, Museum Ethnographers Group, 2016, p.123-190.

This blog post is part of a series from Smithsonian Libraries highlighting Unearthed, a new collection of paleobiology literature in the Biodiversity Heritage Library curated by Smithsonian Libraries in celebration of the opening of the National Museum of Natural History’s David H. Koch Hall of Fossils – Deep Time exhibit. Follow the series throughout 2019 as Smithsonian scientists and librarians discuss the collection, identify their favorite books within it, and explain the importance of paleobiology literature in research today.

I’m a Deep Time – Peter Buck Fellow in the Department of Paleobiology at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History where I study the ecology and evolution of prehistoric vertebrates, especially fossil mammals from the Indian subcontinent. The Indian subcontinent has one of the richest mammalian fossil records anywhere in the world. The Siwalik Hills and surrounding regions in Northwest India and Pakistan have a fossil record ranging from about 23 million years ago to about half a million years ago, making this region an ideal place to study how mammalian communities have changed through time.

Fossil mammals in India were first discovered by British explorers and naturalists in the 1830s and 40s. Hugh Falconer, Proby Cautley, W.E. Baker, and H.M. Durand discovered one of the largest deposits of fossil mammals from the Pliocene and Pleistocene (3.6 million years to 0.6 million years) in the region between the rivers Yamuna and Sutlej. These fossils eventually made their way back to the Natural History Museum in London and form one of the most important fossil collections in the world. These collections form the basis of my research on the reassessment of the taxonomy of fossil mammals from India, the biogeography of South Asian mammals, and paleocommunity change.

Understanding the taxonomy of a particular group in the fossil record (the basis for any study on diversity, biogeography, ecology, etc.) requires a review of the various species that have been named. A species is named when a scientist determines that a particular specimen is different enough from other species. This specimen is then classified as the holotype, or voucher specimen for the species. When a new fossil is found, or additional comparisons are made, some described species are determined to be synonymous, and therefore cease to be valid, or sometimes more than one species is found lumped together under the same name. Therefore, revisory studies require an expansive review of the literature, especially the descriptions of the holotypes.

Despite the excellent fossil record, mammals from India have received comparatively little attention from paleontologists in the past. So, to understand the diversity of fossil mammals in the collection, I had to go back to the original papers and books where they were described. In many cases, the species were named by Falconer, but formally described several years later by Richard Lydekker.

Lydekker was a staff member with the Geological Survey of India from 1877-1881, and thereafter came to work at the Natural History Museum, London in 1882. There, he compiled catalogues of fossil mammals, reptiles, amphibians and birds for Henry Woodward, the then Keeper of Fossils at the Natural History Museum. These catalogues are the first formal descriptive documents on Falconer’s Siwalik fossils and are extremely important for any student of fossil mammals. Lydekker also assigned what are known as lectotype specimens for many of the species (the name given to one specimen from a collection which is to be used as a voucher when a holotype has not been designated). Any taxonomic revision would now require a firm understanding of the lectotypes, other specimens referred to that species, and the original description.

These catalogues (Catalogue of the Fossil Mammalia in the British Museum and Catalogue of the fossil Reptilia and Amphibia in the British Museum by Lydekker) are housed in the paleobiology libraries at the National Museum of Natural History and have been digitized by the Biodiversity Heritage Library. They have become an invaluable resource for me in my research. I used the books as a reference to identify key specimens for comparison and used them to revise the taxonomy and biogeography of three-toed horses in the Pliocene of India. I am currently using the catalogues to sort out the taxonomy and diversity of proboscideans from the Pliocene and Pleistocene of the Indian Subcontinent.

In addition to these catalogues, Smithsonian Libraries also has copies of the Palaeontologia Indica Series X, where Lydekker described many other Siwalik species from specimens housed in the collections of the Geological Survey of India in Kolkata; the Fauna Antiqua Sivalensis, the book of Plates that Falconer and Cautley commissioned to illustrate their collection of Siwalik fossils; and Charles Murchison’s Palaeontological Memoirs of Hugh Falconer, which is a collection of Falconer’s notes and papers on the Siwalik fauna, among other related discoveries. These scientific journals and books have made my research possible, not only for my dissertation, but also for other projects that I have since embarked upon.

 

Selected BHL Books from Smithsonian Libraries in Unearthed

Catalogue of the Fossil Mammalia in the British Museum. Part 1-Part 5. 1885-1887. https://www.biodiversitylibrary.org/bibliography/61849

Catalogue of the fossil Reptilia and Amphibia in the British Museum. Part 1-Part 4. 1888-1890. https://www.biodiversitylibrary.org/bibliography/61848.

Indian Tertiary and post Tertiary Vertebrata. Palaeontologia Indica Series X. v.1-v.4. 1874-1902. https://www.biodiversitylibrary.org/bibliography/125505.

Fauna antiqua sivalensis, being the fossil zoology of the Sewalik Hills, in the north of India. 1846. https://www.biodiversitylibrary.org/item/124939.