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Taxonomic literature can be divided into Pre-Linnaean and Post-Linnaean literature, with Post-Linnaean literature being those works published after Carl Linnaeus developed his famous naming and classification schema, binomial nomenclature. This week’s book of the week, Historia Vermium, is an interesting example of a Pre-Linnaean text. The Smithsonian’s copy, pictured here, is one of only two copies in the Western Hemisphere, according to OCLC, and one of only twelve in the world. The author, Joachim Jung, was known chiefly as a mathematician and astronomer, being considered on par with the likes of Galileo. He also focused many of his studies on natural history, particularly in the realm of botany. Historia Vermium, like many of Jung’s works, was published posthumously.

This week, we highlight the botanical illustrations of Georg Dionysius Ehret.

Active during the 18th century, his illustrations became the must-have accompaniment for scientists interested in precise rendering of the species at hand. Born into a modest family of gardeners, his achievements (as they so often do) result from a combination of talent and circumstance.

For anyone who has seen the new BHL business cards, this week’s Book of the Week may look vaguely familiar. Several of the species images used on the cards (and indeed at the top of this webpage) were taken from plates found in the Report on the Zoological Collections Made During the Voyage of the H.M.S. ‘Alert.’

One such expedition, the Challenger Expedition of 1872-1876, served to help “lay the foundation for oceanography.” The expedition, leaving from Portsmouth, England, on the 21st of December, 1872, traversed over 68,000 nautical miles during its exploration. The findings were documented in the publication Report of the Exploring Voyage of the H.M.S. Challenger during the years 1873-1876. This publication, which cataloged over 4,000 new species, provided readers not only with in-depth text describing the findings from the voyage, but also a myriad of beautifully illustrated plates to correspond with these findings.

Today, February 12, 2008, we celebrate the 199th anniversary of the birth of Charles Darwin. Last year we honored the 300th anniversary of the birth of Carl Linné and next year will be the double celebrations for Darwin’s bicentenary and the sesquicentennial (mark your calenders now for November 24th!) of the publication of On the Origin of Species. 2008 is thus a good year for those of us involved with the Biodiversity Heritage Library (BHL) to pause for a moment between these landmark anniversary years of 2007 and 2009.