Contribution and Co-production: The Collaborative Culture of Linnaean Botany

Summary

This essay aims to elucidate the collaborative dimension of the knowledge-making process in eighteenth-century Linnaean botany. Due to its ever increasing and potentially infinite need for information, Linnaean botany had to rely more and more heavily on the accumulation and aggregation of contributions by many people. This, in turn, had a crucial impact on the genesis and form of botanical publications: the more comprehensive the project, the larger the effect. It was the botanist Carl Linnaeus who managed to establish himself as the centre of this contributory knowledge-making process. Given the exponential growth in the number of known species and the resulting need for observation, this was the necessary condition which allowed him continuously to update and correct his systematic works, and allowed them to maintain their status as the central catalogues of a global botany for decades.

Notes

¹On eighteenth-century natural history in general: William Clark, Jan Golinski, and Simon Schaffer (eds.), The Sciences in Enlightened Europe (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1999); Nicholas Jardine, J. A. Secord, and Emma C. Spary (eds.), Cultures of Natural History (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996); on collections: Marco Beretta (ed.), From Private to Public: Natural Collections and Museums (Sagamore Beach, Mass.: Science History Publications, 2005); Anke te Heesen and Emma C. Spary (eds.), Sammeln als Wissen: Das Sammeln und seine wissenschaftsgeschichtliche Bedeutung (Göttingen: Wallstein, 2001); Emma C. Spary, Utopia's Garden: French Natural History from Old Regime to Revolution (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2000); Paula Findlen, Possessing Nature: Museums, Collecting, and Scientific Culture in Early Modern Italy (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1996); on systematics: Staffan Müller-Wille, ‘Collection and Collation: Theory and Practice of Linnean Botany’, Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical Sciences, 38 (2007), 541–62; id., Botanik und weltweiter Handel: Zur Begründung eines natürlichen Systems der Pflanzen durch Carl von Linné (1707–1778) (Berlin: Verlag für Wissenschaft und Bildung, 1999); Peter F. Stevens, The Development of Biological Systematics: Antoine-Laurent de Jussieu, Nature, and the Natural System (New York: Columbia University Press, 1994); Philip R. Sloan, ‘The Buffon-Linnaeus Controversy’, Isis, 67 (1976), 356–75; on correspondence see notes 3 and 4; on natural history expeditions see note 5; on excursions and the local nature of natural history: Bettina Dietz, ‘Making Natural History: Doing the Enlightenment’, Central European History, 43/1 (2010), 25–46; Alix Cooper, Inventing the Indigenous: Local Knowledge and Natural History in Early Modern Europe (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007); on the colonial, imperial, and transnational dimension: James Delbourgo and Nicholas Dew (eds.), Science and Empire in the Atlantic World (New York: Routledge, 2008); Susan Scott Parrish, American Curiosity: Cultures of Natural History in the Colonial British Atlantic World (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2006); Londa Schiebinger and Claudia Swan (eds.), Colonial Botany: Science, Commerce, and Politics in the Early Modern World (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2005); David Philip Miller and Peter Hanns Reill (eds.), Visions of Empire: Voyages, Botany, and Representations of Nature (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996); on the aesthetics of natural history: Bettina Dietz, ‘Mobile Objects: The Space of Shells in Eighteenth-Century France’, British Journal for the History of Science, 39/3 (2006), 363–82; Emma Spary, ‘Scientific Symmetries’, History of Science, 42 (2004), 1–46.

²On this see esp. Harold Cook, Matters of Exchange: Commerce, Medicine, and Science in the Dutch Golden Age (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2007); Brian W. Ogilvie, The Science of Describing: Natural History in Renaissance Europe (Chicago: Chicago University Press, 2006).

³To name just a few of the biggest projects: The Linnaean Correspondence, an electronic edition prepared by the Swedish Linnaeus Society, Uppsala, and published by the Centre international d’étude du XVIIIe siècle, Ferney-Voltaire <http://linnaeus.c18.net> [accessed 9 March 2012]; Neil Chambers (ed.), The Scientific Correspondence of Sir Joseph Banks, 6 vols. (London: Pickering & Chatto, 2007); Urs Boschung, Barbara Braun-Bucher, et al. (eds.), Repertorium zu Albert von Hallers Korrespondenz, 1724–1777, 2 vols. (Basel: Schwabe, 2002).

⁴A selection of relevant literature: Regina Dauser, Stefan Hächler, et al. (eds.), Wissen im Netz: Botanik und Pflanzentransfer in europäischen Korrespondenznetzen des 18. Jahrhunderts (Berlin: Akademie, 2008), esp. the Introduction, which contains a comprehensive survey of the literature; Emma C. Spary, ‘Botanical Networks Revisited’, ibid. 47–64; Cook, Matters of Exchange (note 2); Martin Stuber and Stefan Hächler (eds.), Hallers Netz: Ein europäischer Gelehrtenbriefwechsel zur Zeit der Aufklärung (Basel: Schwabe, 2005); David Philip Miller, ‘Joseph Banks, Empire, and “Centers of Calculation” in Late Hanoverian London’, in id. and Peter Hanns Reill (eds.), Visions of Empire: Voyages, Botany, and Representations of Nature (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), 21–37; see also Simon Shaffer, Lissa Roberts, et al. (eds.), The Brokered World: Go-Betweens and Global Intelligence, 1770–1820 (Sagamore Beach, Mass.: Science History Publications, 2009); Pamela H. Smith and Paula Findlen (eds.), Merchants and Marvels: Commerce, Science, and Art in Early Modern Europe (New York: Routledge, 2001).

⁵See Brian Ogilvie, ‘The Many Books of Nature: Renaissance Naturalists and Information Overload’, Journal of the History of Ideas, 64 (2003), 29–40; id., Science of Describing (note 2); a selection of publications on natural history expeditions and the flood of objects to which they gave rise: Neil Chambers, Joseph Banks and the British Museum: The World of Collecting 1770–1830 (London: Pickering & Chatto, 2007); Schiebinger and Swan (eds.), Colonial Botany (note 1); Müller-Wille, Botanik und weltweiter Handel (note 1); 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: Editions du Muse'um national d'histoire naturelle, 1997), 163–96; Miller and Reill (eds.), Visions of Empire (note 1); on information as a category of historiography oriented by media history and administrative history, see e.g. Edward Higgs, The Information State in England: The Central Collection of Information on Citizens since 1500 (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2004); Lucien Bély, L'information à l’époque moderne (Paris: P.U.P.S., 2001); Robert Darnton, ‘An Early Information Society: News and Media in Eighteenth-Century Paris’, American Historical Review, 105 (2000), 1–35.

⁶In this sense also Ann Blair, ‘Reading Strategies for Coping with Information Overload, c.1550–1700’, Journal of the History of Ideas, 64 (2003), 11–28; ead., Too Much to Know: Managing Scholarly Information before the Modern Age (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2010).

⁷See Bourguet, ‘La collecte du monde’ (note 3).

⁸Edward O. Wilson calls the global project of natural history, which continues into the present, ‘the great Linnean enterprise’. See id., ‘The Linnean Enterprise: Past, Present, and Future’, Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society, 149/3 (2005), 344–8.

⁹On the ubiquitous complaints in the correspondence about the inaccessibility of foreign specialist literature on natural history, and the various measures taken to remedy this situation see Dietz, ‘Making Natural History’ (note 1), 39–41.

¹⁰Staffan Müller-Wille and Sara Scharf, Indexing Nature: Carl Linnaeus (1707–1778) and his Fact-Gathering Strategies, Working Papers on The Nature of Evidence: How Well Do ‘Facts’ Travel? No. 36/08 (London School of Economics, 2009) <http://www.lse.ac.uk/collections/economicHistory/pdf/FACTSPDF/HowWellDoFactsTravelWP.htm> [accessed 9 March 2012]. Cf. an analogous argument in relation to the mobile arrangement of Linnaeus's herbarium, in Staffan Müller-Wille, ‘Carl von Linnés Herbarschrank: Zur epistemischen Funktion eines Sammlungsmöbels’, in te Heesen and Spary (eds.), Sammeln als Wissen (note 1), 22–38. Müller-Wille and Scharf also address the phenomenon of the multiple editions of Linnaeus's systematic works, which will here be discussed as the principle of iterative publication. See Müller-Wille and Scharf, Indexing Nature (note 10 above), 6–7.

¹¹The term ‘co-production’ will here be used in its everyday sense, referring to the common production of one product by several subjects. As is well known, Science and Technology Studies use the term in a different sense, relating to the simultaneous production of two objects, the ‘natural and social order’. See Sheila Jasanoff, ‘The Idiom of Co-Production’, in ead. (ed.), States of Knowledge: The Co-Production of Science and Social Order (New York: Routledge, 2004), 1–12, 2; ead., ‘Ordering Knowledge, Ordering Society’, ibid. 13–45.

¹²Boschung, Braun-Bucher, et al. (eds.), Repertorium zu Albert von Hallers Korrespondenz (note 3).

¹³ The Linnaean Correspondence, an electronic edition prepared by the Swedish Linnaeus Society, Uppsala (note 3).

¹⁴Chambers (ed.), The Scientific Correspondence (note 3).

¹⁵Herman Boerhaave, Historia plantarum, quae in horto academico Lugduni Batavorum crescunt, cum earum characteribus et medicinalibus virtutibus, 2 vols. (Leiden, 1727); Johann Jakob Dillenius, Hortus Elthamensis, seu Plantarum rariorum, quas in horto suo Elthami in Cantio coluit…Jacobus Sherard…Guilielmi P. M. frater, delineationes et descriptiones …(London, 1732); for a discussion of these sorts of flora in terms of the definition and instrumentalization of local nature in the early moden period, see Cooper, Inventing the Indigenous (note 1), 51–86.

¹⁶Dillenius to Richard Richardson, 5 September 1736, in James E. Smith (ed.), A Selection of the Correspondence of Linnaeus and other Naturalists, from the Original Manuscripts, 2 vols. (London: Longman, 1821), II, 151–2, 151.

¹⁷Dillenius to Haller, 29 October 1741, in Epistolarum . . . ad Alb. Hallerum scriptarum, II, 46–7, 46.

¹⁸Pietro Antonio Micheli, Nova plantarum genera iuxta Tournefortii methodum disposita . . . (Florence: Bernardo Paperini, 1729).

¹⁹John Ray, Synopsis methodica stirpium Britannicarum, 3 vols. (London, 1690–1724).

²⁰Dillenius to Haller, 29 October 1741, in Epistolarum . . . (note 17), II, 46–7, 47.

²¹I can mention only a selection of the extensive literature on Linnaeus here. See esp. Thierry Hoquet (ed.), Les fondements de la botanique: Linné et la classification des plantes (Paris: Vuibert, 2005); Tore Frängsmyr (ed.), Linnaeus: The Man and his Work (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1983); Gunnar Broberg (ed.), Linnaeus: Progress and Prospects in Linnean Research (Stockholm: Almquist & Wikssell with the Hunt Institute for Botanical Documentation, 1978); Staffan Müller-Wille, ‘Collection and Collation: Theory and Practice of Linnean Botany’, Studies in History and Philosophy of the Biological and Biomedical Sciences, 38 (2007), 541–62; id., ‘Carl von Linnés Herbarschrank’ (note 10); id., Botanik und weltweiter Handel (note 1); Lisbet Koerner, Linnaeus: Nature and Nation (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1999); James L. Larson, Interpreting Nature: The Science of Living Form from Linnaeus to Kant (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1994); id., Reason and Experience: The Representation of Natural Order in the Work of Carl von Linné (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1971); on his biography, see Gunnar Broberg, Carl Linnaeus (Stockholm: Swedish Institute, 2006); Wilfried Blunt, Linnaeus: The Compleat Naturalist (London: Frances Lincoln, 2004); Koerner, Linnaeus (note 21 above).

²²On Jacquin see Marianne Klemun, ‘Österreichische wissenschaftliche Sammelreisen nach den Amerikas, 1783–1789: Intentionen, Instruktionen und Implikationen’, Wiener Zeitschrift zur Geschichte der Neuzeit, 5 (2005), 21–35; Maria Petz-Grabenbauer, ‘Nikolaus Jacquin und die botanischen Gärten in Wien’, Österreichische Zeitschrift für Kunst und Denkmalspflege, 67 (2003), 498–507; Otto Nowotny, ‘Die Forschungs- und Sammelreise des Nikolaus J. Jacquin in die Karibik und zu den Küsten Venezuelas und Kolumbiens, 1755–1759’, in Elisabeth Zeilinger (ed.), Österreich und die Neue Welt: Symposium in der österreichischen Nationalbibliothek (Vienna: Österreichischen Nationalbibliothek, 1993), 89–94; Frans A. Stafleu, ‘Nikolaus Freiherr von Jacquin und die systematische Botanik seiner Zeit’, Veröffentlichungen der Kommission für Geschichte der Mathematik, Naturwissenschaften und Medizin, 31 (1981), 287–310; id., Linnaeus and the Linnaeans: The Spreading of their Ideas in Systematic Botany, 1735–1789 (Utrecht: A. Oosthoek's Uitgeversmaatschappij for the International Association for Plant Taxonomy, 1971).

²⁴Linnaeus to Jacquin, 25 August 1773, in Caroli Linnaei epistolae ad Nicolaum Josephum Jacquin, ex autographis edidit Car. Nic. Jos. eques a Schreibers (Vienna, 1841), 132. The letter ends with a few lines of text in which Linnaeus expresses a fuller opinion on two further plants. His next letter to Jacquin, dated 15 September 1773, follows a similar pattern. Ibid. 132–3.

²³See Jacquin to Linnaeus, 2 January 1765 <http://linnaeus.c18.net/texts, L3529> [accessed 9 March 2012].

²⁵Francisco Hernández, Rerum medicarum Novae Hispaniae thesaurus, seu plantarum, animalium, mineralium Mexicanorum historia ex F. H. . . . relationibus (Rome: Vitale Mascardi, 1649).

²⁶See Linnaeus to Jacquin, 22 November 1759 <http://linnaeus.c18.net/texts, L2612> [accessed 9 March 2012], reprinted in Caroli Linnaei epistolae ad Nicolaum J. Jacquin (note 24), 7–11.

²⁷ Nicolai Josephi Jacquin enumeratio systematica plantarum, quas in insulis Caribeis vicinaque Americes continente detexit novas, aut jam cognitas emendavit (Leiden, 1760).

²⁸See Jacquin to Linnaeus, 24 October 1759 <http://linnaeus.c18.net/texts, L2597> [accessed 9 March 2012].

²⁹See Jacquin to Linnaeus, 24 October 1759 <http://linnaeus.c18.net/texts, L2597> [accessed 9 March 2012].

³⁰Patrick Browne, The Civil and Natural History of Jamaica (London: printed for the author, and sold by T. Osborne and J. Shipton, 1756).

³¹See Jacquin to Linnaeus, 17 December 1759 <http://linnaeus.c18.net/texts, L2634> [accessed 9 March 2012].

³²Since the publication of Bruno Latour's Science in Action the terms ‘inscriptions’ and ‘immutable mobiles’ have shaped the discussion. See Bruno Latour, Science in Action: How to Follow Scientists and Engineers through Society (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press 1987); and based on this work, Spary, ‘Botanical Networks’ (note 4).

³³On botanical illustrations see esp. Kärin Nickelsen, Draughtsmen, Botanists, and Nature: The Construction of Eighteenth-Century Botanical Illustrations (Dordrecht: Springer, 2006).

³⁴See Jacquin to Linnaeus, 25 February 1768 <http://linnaeus.c18.net/texts, L4036> [accessed 9 March 2012].

³⁵See Jacquin to Linnaeus, 28 October 1770 <http://linnaeus.c18.net/texts, L4548> [accessed 9 March 2012].

³⁶Nikolaus Joseph von Jacquin, Selectarum stirpium Americanarum historia: In qua ad Linnaeanum systema determinatae descriptaeque sistuntur plantae illae, quas in insulis Martinica, Jamaica, Domingo, aliisque, et in vicinae continentis parte observavit rariores; adjectis iconibus in solo natali delineatis (Vienna, 1763).

³⁷Carl von Linné, Species plantarum (2nd edn. Stockholm, 1762).

³⁸Letter from Jacquin to Linnaeus, 23 April 1762 <http://www.linnaeus.c18.net, L3055> [accessed 9 March 2012].

³⁹Carl Linnaeus, Flora Lapponica exhibens plantas per Lapponiam crescentes, secundum systema sexuale collectas in itinere [ . . .] Additis synonymis, & locis natalibus omnium, descriptionibus & figuris rariorum, viribus medicatis & oeconomicis plurimarum (Amsterdam, 1737).

⁴⁰John Ray, Synopsis methodica stirpium Britannicarum, in qua tum notae generum characteristicae traduntur, tum species singulae breviter describuntur: ducentae quinquaginta plus minus novae species partim suis locis inseruntur, partim in appendice seorsim exhibentur. Cum indice & virium epitome, 3 vols. (London, 1690–1724).

⁴¹Dillenius to Linnaeus, 16 May 1737, in Smith (ed.), Selection (note 16), II, 85–94, 85.

⁴²Johann Jacob Dillenius, Historia muscorum in qua circiter sexcentae species veteres et novae ad sua genera relatae describuntur et iconibus genuinis illustrantur, cum appendice et indice synonymorum (Oxford, 1741).

⁴³Johann Jacob Dillenius, Historia muscorum in qua circiter sexcentae species veteres et novae ad sua genera relatae describuntur et iconibus genuinis illustrantur, cum appendice et indice synonymorum (Oxford, 1741).

⁴⁴Dillenius to Linnaeus, 15 October 1741, in Smith (ed.), Selection (note 16), II, 119–20, 120.

⁴⁵Dillenius to Haller, 14 August 1744, in Epistolarum . . . (note 17), II, 174–9, 176. Unless otherwise indicated, these and all other translations are my own.

⁴⁶For a rare example of an apology to cover all eventualities, dating from the early phase of the correspondence between Linnaeus und Dillenius, see below.

⁴⁷In the Foreword to the sixth edition of his Genera Plantarum (1764), Linnaeus refers to Dillenius and his Hortus Elthamensis (1732), and to Hendrik Adriaan van Rheede van Draakestein and his Horti Malabarici pars prima [-duodecima & ultima] (Amsterdam, 1678–1703) as the only two authors he trusted because of their precision (‘of whom I have observed, that they are accurate’; Ratio operis, § 24, XIV).

⁴⁸See Dillenius to Linnaeus, 18 August 1737, in Smith (ed.), Selection (note 16), II, 94–103, 94.

⁴⁹See below.

⁵⁰See e.g. Linnaeus's letter to Jacquin of December 1760, in which he expresses his appreciation of the genera newly introduced and described in Jacquin's Enumeratio systematica of Caribbean plants. In the same place, he attests that Jacquin writes like a mature man (not like a young one), and describes him as the person who had discovered the most new plants. See Linnaeus to Jacquin, 19 December 1760, in Caroli Linnaei epistoli ad Nicolaum J. Jacquin, 37–40, 39–40 <http://linnaeus.c18.net/texts, L2831> [accessed 9 March 2012].

⁵¹Carl von Linné, Species plantarum . . . Editio secunda aucta, 2 vols. (Stockholm 1762–3).

⁵²Jacquin to Linnaeus, 4 April 1767 <http://linnaeus.c18.net/texts, L3903> [accessed 9 March 2012]; Jacquin to Linnaeus, 10 April 1767 [date unclear] <http://linnaeus.c18.net/texts, L5437> [accessed 9 March 2012]. In the following, I refer to the second of the two documents, which can be downloaded from the link as a facsimile of the two-page Latin original.

⁵³Nicolaus Joseph, Baron von Jacquin, Hortus botanicus Vindobonensis, seu plantarum rariorum quae in horto botanico Vindobonensi coluntur icones coloratae et succinctae descriptiones, 3 vols. (Vienna, 1770–6).

⁵⁴Cf. Jacquin to Linnaeus, 4 February 1764 <http://linnaeus.c18.net/texts, L3375> [accessed 9 March 2012].

⁵⁵Carl von Linné, Species plantarum, exhibentes plantes rite cognitas, ad genera relatas, cum differentiis specificis, nominis trivialibus, synonymis selectis, locis natalibus, secundum Systema Sexuale digestas, 2 vols. (Stockholm, 1753; 2nd edn. Stockholm, 1762–3).

⁵⁶On this see, in relation to Albrecht von Haller, Dietz, ‘Making Natural History’ (note 1), 34–7; Luc Lienhard, ‘“La machine botanique”: Zur Entstehung von Hallers Flora der Schweiz’, in Stuber and Hächler (eds.), Hallers Netz (note 4), 371–410.

⁵⁷Cf. Linnaeus to Jacquin, 3 May 1767 <http://linnaeus.c18.net/texts, L3913> [accessed 9 March 2012], printed in Caroli Linnaei epistolae ad N. J. Jacquin (note 50), 87–9. Linnaeus refers to the following works by Jacquin: Selectarum stirpium Americanarum historia (1763); Nicolaus Joseph, Baron von Jacquin, Observationum botanicarum iconibus ab auctore delineatis illustratarum pars I–IV et ultima (Vienna, 1764–71); Nikolaus Joseph, Baron von Jacquin, Enumeratio stirpium plerarumque, quae sponte crescunt in agro Vindobonensi, montibusque confinibus. Accedunt observationum centuria et appendix de paucis exoticis (Vienna, 1762).

⁵⁸See Linnaeus, Flora Lapponica (note 39), 289–93.

⁵⁹Jacquin's works on the flora of central America, Enumeratio systematica plantarum and Selectarum stirpium Americanarum historia, were published in 1760 and 1763.

⁶⁰Cf. Jacquin to Linnaeus, 20 February 1760 <http://linnaeus.c18.net/texts, L2682> [accessed 9 March 2012].

⁶¹The 10th edition of Linnaeus's Systema naturae was published in two volumes in 1758–9. The third volume on mineralogy was planned for 1760.

⁶²See Linnaeus to Jacquin, 17 March 1760 <http://linnaeus.c18.net/texts, L2696> [accessed 9 March 2012].

⁶³See Linnaeus to Jacquin, 20 March 1761 <http://linnaeus.c18.net/texts, L2889> [accessed 9 March 2012].

⁶⁴See Jacquin to Linnaeus, 27 January 1762 <http://linnaeus.c18.net/texts, L3025> [accessed 9 March 2012].

⁶⁵See Caroli a Linné . . . Systema naturae. . . , 3 vols. (Stockholm 1766–8), II (1767); the entry for Morrisonia e.g. is supplemented with ‘Jacq. Amer. 156, t. 97’ (ibid. 465).

⁶⁶See Linnaeus to Jacquin, 26 February 1762 <http://linnaeus.c18.net/texts, L3037> [accessed 9 March 2012].

⁶⁷See Linnaeus to Jacquin, 8 May 1762 <http://linnaeus.c18.net/texts, L3075> [accessed 9 March 2012].

⁶⁸On enumerations of known and estimated numbers of species from the seventeenth to the twenty-first centuries see Sara T. Scharf, ‘Identification Keys and the Natural Method: The Development of Text-Based Information-Management Tools in Botany in the Long Eighteenth Century’ (unpublished doctoral thesis, University of Toronto, 2007), 31–42.

⁶⁹Cf. Linnaeus, Species plantarum (note 37), Foreword (Lectori), unpaginated. The geographical, intellectual and social spectrum of those who participated in the process of accumulating knowledge at different levels was extraordinarily wide. On local knowledge as an important qualification see, from two different perspectives, Dietz, ‘Making Natural History’ (note 1); and Scott Parrish, American Curiosity (note 1).

⁷⁰Carl von Linné, Gattungen der Pflanzen und ihre natürlichen Merkmale nach der Anzahl, Gestalt, Lage und Verhältniß aller Blumentheile, trans. from the 6th edn. by Johann Jakob Planer (Gotha, 1775), Introduction, § 20 (unpaginated).

⁷¹On the place of genera in Linnaeus's Systematik and on the procedure used to establish distinguishing characteristics, see Müller-Wille, Botanik und weltweiter Handel (note 1), 67–87.

⁷²Linnaeus, Genera plantarum (6th edn.), Foreword, unpaginated, §20: ‘Cumque non uni detur homini omnes videre Species, debet ille, qui plures videt, notasque in istis differentes observat, has in charactere excludere, ut tandem posteri absolutos videant labores.’

⁷³Thus Albrecht von Haller named his work on the flora of Switzerland ‘the beginning of a flora of Switzerland’, which shows that from the start he intended to supplement and revise it further, although this intention was never realized. Albrecht von Haller, Historia stirpium indigenarum Helvetiae inchoata, 2 vols. (Berne, 1768). One year after the publication of his work on the flora of the town Gießen, in Hesse, Dillenius produced a second version which, as the title indicates, had been expanded to include plants newly discovered in the interim. Johann Jacob Dillenius, Catalogus plantarum circa Gissam sponte nascentium . . . (Frankfurt, 1718); id., Catalogus plantarum sponte circa Gissam nascentium: Cum appendice, qua plantae post editum Catalogum, circa & extra Gissam observatae recensentur . . . (Frankfurt, 1719). Jakob Theodor Klein's ‘beginning’ of a natural history of birds, published in 1750, was followed by the publication of an ‘improved and more complete’ version in 1760. Jacob Theodor Klein, Historia avium prodromus . . . (Lübeck, 1750); id., Verbesserte und vollständigere Historie der Vögel (Danzig, 1760).

⁷⁴See Linnaeus to Jacquin, 28 Jan. 1763 <http://linnaeus.c18.net/texts, L3189> [accessed 9 March 2012].

⁷⁵Cf. Linnaeus to Jacquin, 1 April 1764 <http://linnaeus.c18.net/texts, L3397> [accessed 9 March 2012]. My translation of the Latin original, printed in Caroli Linnaei epistoli ad Nicolaum J. Jacquin (note 50), 74–6, 74.

⁷⁶In this context there is also the technique, used by authors of regional and local flora, of publishing a first ‘enumeratio’ (list) or ‘catalogus’ as quickly as possible, to be followed some years later by a more fully worked out and more complete version. See e.g. the sequence of publications that led to Haller's work on Swiss flora: Albrecht von Haller, Enumeratio methodica stirpium Helvetiae indigenarum, 2 vols. (Göttingen, 1742); id., Enumeratio stirpium quae in Helvetia rariores proveniunt (Lausanne, 1760); id., Historia stirpium indigenarum Helvetiae inchoata, 2 vols. (Berne, 1768). See also Jean François Séguier, Catalogus plantarum quae in agro Veronensi reperiuntur (Verona, 1745); id., Plantae Veronenses seu stirpium quae in agro Veronensi reperiuntur methodica synopsis, 3 vols. (Verona, 1745–54).

⁷⁷Linnaeus encouraged Jacquin to publish quickly after his return from the Caribbean, and complained that the collection put together by Pehr Forsskål, who had died on an expedition to Arabia, was as good as lost to science, although it had gone to the Norwegan natural historian Peder Ascanius. Linnaeus feared that Ascanius would never publish it. Cf. Linnaeus to Jacquin, 17 March 1760 <http://linnaeus.c18.net/texts, L2696> [accessed 9 March 2012]; Linnaeus to Jacquin, 20 Mar. 1768 <http://linnaeus.c18.net/texts, L4050> [accessed 9 March 2012].

⁷⁸See the correspondence between Linnaeus and Scopoli, comprising thirty letters written between 1760 and 1775 <http://linnaeus.c18.net/texts> [accessed 9 March 2012]. During Linnaeus's lifetime, Scopoli published: Flora Carniolica exhibens plantas Carnioliae indigenas et distributas in classes naturales: Cum differentiis specificis, synonymis recentiorum, locis natalibus, nominibus incolarum … (Vienna, 1760); 2nd expanded and revised edn., 2 vols. (Vienna, 1771–2); Entomologia Carniolica, exhibens insecta Carnioliae … distributa … methodo Linneana (Vienna, 1763).

⁷⁹See Linnaeus to Jacquin, 1 April 1764, L3397.

⁸⁰For details see the bibliography by Basil H. Soulsby, A Catalogue of the Works of Linnaeus, and Publications more Immediately Relating Thereto, Preserved in the Libraries of the British Museum (2nd edn. London: British Museum, 1933).

⁸¹Müller-Wille and Scharf, Indexing Nature (note 10), 6–7 also make a number of observations on this.

⁸²On this important aspect see Müller-Wille, Botanik und weltweiter Handel (note 1), 78–81; id., ‘Collection and Collation’ (note 1).

⁸⁷14 vols. (London, 1794–1810). For further translations and editions, see Soulsby, A Catalogue of the Works of Linnaeus (note 80), 16–21.

⁸³Carl von Linné, Systema naturae per regna tria naturae, secundum classes, ordines, genera . . . editio decima tertia, aucta, reformata. Cura Jo. Frid. Gmelin, 3 vols. (Leipzig, 1788–93); another edition with the same text was published in Leiden between 1789 and 1796. (This is the version which I used, and the foreword is quoted from it in the following).

⁸⁴Caroli a Linné . . . Systema naturae, per regna tria naturae, secundum classes, ordines, genera, species cum characteribus, differentiis, synonymis, locis . . . Editio decima tertia, aucta, reformata. Cura Jo. Frid. Gmelin, 3 vols. (Leipzig, 1788–93).

⁸⁵Caroli a Linné . . . Systema naturae, per regna tria naturae, secundum classes, ordines, genera, species cum characteribus, differentiis, synonymis, locis . . . Editio decima tertia, aucta, reformata. Cura Jo. Frid. Gmelin, 3 vols. (Leipzig, 1788–93) p. x.

⁸⁶ The Animal Kingdom, or Zoological System of the Celebrated Sir Charles Linneus . . . Being a Translation of that Part of the Systema naturae, as lately Published [1788–93] with Great Improvements by Professor Gmelin . . . Together with Numerous Additions from more Recent Zoological Writers . . . by Robert Kerr (London, 1792).