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Specimens, slips and systems: Daniel Solander and the classification of nature at the world's first public museum, 1753–1768

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  15 April 2018

EDWIN D. ROSE
EDWIN D. ROSE*
Affiliation:
Department of History and Philosophy of Science, University of Cambridge, Free School Lane, Cambridge, CB2 3RH, UK. Email: edr24@cam.ac.uk.
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Abstract

The British Museum, based in Montague House, Bloomsbury, opened its doors on 15 January 1759, as the world's first state-owned public museum. The Museum's collection mostly originated from Sir Hans Sloane (1660–1753), whose vast holdings were purchased by Parliament shortly after his death. The largest component of this collection was objects of natural history, including a herbarium made up of 265 bound volumes, many of which were classified according to the late seventeenth-century system of John Ray (1627–1705). The 1750s saw the emergence of Linnaean binomial nomenclature, following the publication of Carl Linnaeus' Species Plantarum (1753) and Systema Naturae (1758). In order to adopt this new system for their collections, the Trustees of the British Museum chose to employ the Swedish naturalist and former student of Linnaeus, Daniel Solander (1733–1782) to reclassify the collection. Solander was ordered to devise a new system for classifying and cataloguing Sloane's natural history collection, which would allow both Linnaeans and those who followed earlier systems to access it. Solander's work was essential for allowing the British Museum to realize its aim of becoming a public centre of learning, adapting the collection to reflect the diversity of classificatory practices which were existent by the 1760s. This task engaged Solander until 1768, when he received an offer from Joseph Banks (1743–1820) to accompany him on HMS Endeavour to the Pacific.

Type
Research Article
Information
The British Journal for the History of Science , Volume 51 , Issue 2 , June 2018 , pp. 205 - 237
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Copyright © British Society for the History of Science 2018 

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89 Sloane, op. cit. (7), p. 107; ‘Manuscript descriptions of Plants, written on slips of paper and systematically arranged, the Phanerogams and Vascular Cryptogams in accordance with Wildenow's edition of Linné’s “Species Plantarum,” the Cellular Cryptogams by Richard's edition of that work: the slips, now bound in 24 volumes, were originally kept in small Solander Cases, and designed to form a complete catalogue of the species of Plants then known’, NHM, London, Botany Manuscripts, MSS BANKS COLL SOL. Hereafter referred to as Manuscript Slip Catalogue, vol. XVIII, f. 167.

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104 Solander, BL Add. MS 45874, f. v2.

105 Letter from Daniel Solander to William Watson, 26 January 1763, BMCAOP, op. cit. (39), f. 176.

106 Müller-Wille, Staffan and Charmantier, Isabelle, ‘Natural history and information overload: the case of Linnaeus’, Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical Sciences (2012) 43, pp. 4–15CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed, 4. These cards were consistently rearranged as new editions of Linnaeus' works were published throughout the late eighteenth century. They have since been bound together into twenty-four volumes, probably during the mid-nineteenth century, according to the edition of Species Plantarum edited by Carl Ludwig Willdenow. This was the first recorded use of Solander boxes, a type of protective clam-shell case used for storing documents, to which Solander gave his name.

107 Charmantier, Isabelle and Müller-Wille, Staffan, ‘Carl Linnaeus’ botanical paper slips (1767–1773), Intellectual History Review (2014) 24, pp. 215–238, 218Google Scholar; Solander, BL Add MSS 45, 874, f. 6.

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109 Charmantier and Müller-Wille, op. cit. (107), p. 230.

110 Daniel Solander to the Trustees of the British Museum, 29 June 1765, BMCAOP, op. cit. (39), f. 211.

111 Daniel Solander to the Trustees of the British Museum, 13 February 1765, BMCAOP, op. cit. (39), f. 211; Duyker and Tingbrand, op. cit. (80), p. 265.

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114 BMCATM, op. cit. (6), f. 4.

115 Müller-Wille and Charmantier, op. cit. (106), p. 10.

116 Gunther, op. cit. (74), p. 40.

117 ‘Descriptions of plants from various parts of the world’, Daniel Solander and Hermann Spöring, MSS BANKS COLL SOL, NHM, London.

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122 NHM, London, HCR, Sloane Herbarium, H.S. 3: 40, Table 106, Figure 2.

123 Jarvis, Spencer and Huxley, op. cit. (20), p. 139; H.S. 3: 40, op. cit. (96).

124 See Spary, Emma C., ‘Codes of passion: natural history specimens as a polite language in late 18th-century France’, in Bödeker, Hans Erich, Reill, Peter Hanns and Schlumbohm, Jürgen (eds.), Sonderdruck aus Wissenschaft als kulturelle Praxis, 1750–1900, Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Puprecht, 1999, pp. 114–116Google Scholar; Terrall, Mary, Catching Nature in the Act: Réaumur and the Practice of Natural History in the Eighteenth Century, Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2014, p. 114Google Scholar.

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126 Sloane, op. cit. (7), p. 144.

127 Marshall, op. cit. (112), p. 4; Linnaeus, op. cit. (32). This copy was taken on the Endeavour by Joseph Banks and Daniel Solander, extensively interleaved and in six volumes. Much of the writing is in the hand of Hermann Spöring, Daniel Solander and Jonas Dryander. London, NHM, Botany Special Collections, 582 LINN 110, pp. 1369–1370. Unfortunately, Solander's copy of the 1758 edition of Systema Naturae cannot be traced.

128 This type of referencing was used by Solander in the zoological sections of the Manuscript Slip Catalogue.

129 Linnaeus, op. cit. (32), p. 1405.

130 McOuat, Gordon, ‘Cataloguing power: delineating “competent naturalists” and the meaning of species in the British Museum’, BJHS (2001) 34, pp. 1–28Google Scholar, 7.

131 Marshall, op. cit. (112), p. 4; Gascoigne, op. cit. (14), p. 105.

132 Marshall, op. cit. (112), p. 452.

133 Marshall, op. cit. (112), p. 4.

134 Gascoigne, op. cit. (14), pp. 105–106.

135 Dandy, op. cit. (23), p. 205; Marshall, op. cit. (112), pp. 8–9.

136 Sloane, op. cit. (7), vil. 1, p. 74; Linnaeus, op. cit. (32).

137 H.S. 1: 64, op. cit. (96); NHM, London, HCR, Sloane Herbarium, H.S. 1: 64, p. 74; Linnaeus, op. cit. (32), p. 719.

138 Rose, op. cit. (6), pp. 25–26.

139 Terrall, op. cit. (124), p. 160; for more on the authority added to a specimen by a label see Jim Endersby, Imperial Nature: Joseph Hooker and the Practices of Victorian Science, Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2008, pp. 138–143.

140 Sloane, op. cit. (7), p. 74.

141 Later users of this collection included figures such as Olaf Swartz (1760–1818), who conducted extensive research on Sloane's collection from 1786 to 1787.

142 Solander, BL Add MS 45, 874, f. 2.

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148 Solander, BL Add MS 45, 874, f. 2.

149 After examining the entirety of Sloane's entomological collection, it is now apparent that many of Solander's labels appear to have been removed during the early nineteenth century and replaced with names which relate to more recent taxonomic literature, possibly by Charles Koenig, keeper of the natural history collections from 1813 to 1851.

150 Caroli Linnaeus, Systema Naturae, Stockholm: Laurentii Salvii, 1758, p. 421.

151 Daniel Solander, ‘Manuscript descriptions of Animals, written on slips and systematically arranged in accordance with Linné’s “Systema Naturæ … Edito duodecima reformata”: the slips, now bound in 27 volumes were originally kept in small Solander Cases, and designed to form a complete catalogue of the species of Animals then known’, vol. III, Coleoptera, f. 73. NHM, London.

152 Petiver, James, Gazophylacii naturae & artis decas prima, 3 vols., London: Bateman, 1702–1706Google Scholar, vol. 1, Table 72.

153 Roos, op. cit. (121), p. 20; Kusukawa, Sachiko, ‘Drawings of fossils by Robert Hooke and Richard Waller’, Notes and Records of the Royal Society (2013) 67, pp. 123–138Google Scholar, 273.

154 This was also the case in botanic gardens; see Koerner, op. cit. (90), p. 119.

155 See, McOuat, op. cit. (130).

156 Daniel Solander in a Report to the Trustees of the British Museum, 24 June 1768, BMCAOP, op. cit. (39), f. 225.