1Plumier had a great interest in fishes and there is ample evidence that he had plans to publish a treatise on the fishes that he had observed and drawn during his three voyages to the New World, as well as on those he encountered in his own country. In an undated letter to Isaac Baulot,1 Plumier described his need for additional field work on the French coast: “Please pardon me the liberty I take in asking you to be willing to have some of your sketch-artists draw me a sardine of Royan2 in its full size and natural shape. I have asked one of my friends at Marseilles to have one of those of Provence drawn for me. I shall be glad to see the difference between them, and if they both have the same characters. I beg your pardon for the liberty. I trust you will not mind doing me this favor. I am thinking about a treatise on fishes, a work suited to a Minim. For this subject, I need to do some travel along the shores of our seas, the west as well as Provence; it is for this reason that I was hoping especially to come spend a small part of the summer with you at Rochefort and La Rochelle, as well as on account of my treatise on shellfishes, in order to dissect some living ones.”

2Additional evidence that Plumier was preparing a publication on animals that would have included his fish drawings is provided by the celebrated German naturalist Marcus Elieser Bloch (1787: v-viii) in the foreword to volume three of his Naturgeschichte der ausländischen Fische (1785-1795). In this account, Bloch describes a manuscript of Plumier that was apparently assembled by Plumier himself in the hope of having it printed in Holland (Cuvier 1828: 93, 1830: 177-178, 1845: 251, 1995: 84, 90; Karrer 1980: 186). In some unknown way, the manuscript fell into the hands of a Parisian in the service of Prussia who took it to Berlin where Bloch purchased it at a public auction (Denina 1790: 265; Wells 1981: 8). It was titled Zoographia Americana, pisces et volatilia continens, auctore R. P. C. Plumier, and consisted of 169 pages in-folio, with drawings of various animals, including 70 fishes. Bloch (1787: vii) speaks with much praise of these drawings, done, he wrote, “with so much care that one can characterize each fish according to the Linnaean system and even count the number of [fin] spines” (Duvau 1823: 97-98). Bloch used a rather large number of these drawings (as well as Plumier’s descriptions) in his publications (for more on Bloch’s use of Plumier’s drawings, see below, p. 83).3

Ichthyological corpus

3Of the many manuscripts left by Plumier, fishes are depicted only in MS 24 (153 figures), MS 25 (112 figures), MS 30 (one tiny figure), MS 31 (79 figures), and MS 33 (six figures). Copies of many of the same drawings appear in more than one of the three larger sets, and often they occur in all three: twenty drawings are found only in MS 24, forty-nine are shared between MSS 24 and 25, forty-one between MSS 24 and 31, and versions of thirty-four are found in all three manuscripts (see Table pp. 90-93). But MS 24 contains a complete set; that is, full equivalents of the figures of whole specimens depicted in MSS 25, 30, 31, and 33 are all found in MS 24 –the latter thus provides the basis for the systematic catalogue provided below (see Table pp. 90-93).

4Folio 82 of MS 25 contains some minor exceptions: three views (82B, 82C, 82D; ventral, ventro-lateral, and dorsal) of Sicydium plumieri (left lateral view only in MS 24, figure 106D) are not present in MS 24. Plus, at the bottom of this same page there are two tiny drawings that do not appear in MS 24: MS 25, figure 82E, perhaps the Burbot, Lota lota; MS 25, figure 82F, “Tinca minima fasciata e Lacu Miragoan apud insulam San dominicanam nullus alius piscis in toto Lacu reperitur,” a killifish, perhaps genus Fundulus. MS 25, figure 82F, is repeated in MS 30, figure 27. Finally, MS 25 contains many drawings of anatomical details that are not present in the other manuscripts, while MSS 25 and 31 provide information on color and color pattern that is not present in MS 24.

5Rather surprisingly, French and Caribbean fishes are mixed haphazardly throughout the manuscripts –this is the case even with MS 25, despite the title Poissons d’Amérique. Of the 113 fish species represented in MS 24, approximately 72 are based on specimens that originated in the Antilles; the rest are eastern North Atlantic and Mediterranean, or from European freshwaters. But whether French or Caribbean, the provenance of Plumier’s fish drawings is not always clear. Of the 113 species represented in MS 24, Plumier provided Caribbean localities for only 24 (e.g., “insulas Americanas,” “insulam Sandominicanam,” “apud Martinicam,” “Sancti Vincentii,” and “Caraibarum”). A Caribbean origin for another four species can be assumed by Plumier’s direct references to Marcgrave’s (1648) Historiae rerum naturalium Brasiliae. The origin of another 44 marine species can be inferred from the known geographic distributions of the taxa in question, but for those with amphi-Atlantic or world-wide distributions (e.g., Dactylopterus volitans, Naucrates ductor, Sphyrna zygaena, and Thunnus alalunga), Plumier’s sources are problematic. Twenty-six species are freshwater fishes of Western Europe. How Plumier was able to include a drawing of the Longnose Gar, Lepisosteus osseus (MS 24, folio 73; said to be from the St. Lawrence River, Canada) –a species restricted to fresh and brackish waters of North America, ranging from Quebec to the Gulf Coast and Mexico– is unknown, but it is almost certainly based on a dried specimen made available to him in France (see above, p. 26).

6This geographic mix might have been left by Plumier himself, but it seems just as likely that it was the work of a later compiler, unfamiliar with the taxa and their geographic distributions. Additional questions of collation are puzzling: why, for example, in MS 25, which bears the title Poissons d’Amérique, do insects, a spider, a scorpion, a lobster, a seastar, bivalves and gastropods, snakes, and a duck (folios 2-6, 54, 63, 65, 68) appear interspersed haphazardly among the fishes; and, similarly, why in MS 31, entitled Poissons et coquilles, do we find an elephant, holothuroids, a polychaete, a swallowtail butterfly, an amphipod, and six drawings of what appear to be mushrooms (folios 5, 39, 77, 78)?

7According to Cuvier (1828: 92-93, 1843: 76-77, 1995: 84, 90), the Plumier manuscripts were catalogued by Louis Éconches Feuillée (1660-1732), a botanist, mathematician, astronomer, student of Plumier, and also a Minim. Born at Mane near Forcalquier, Provence, on 15 August 1660, Feuillée spent his early years at the convent of Santa Trinità dei Monti in Rome, and at Marseilles, under the direction of Plumier. He traveled as an astronomer to the Levant in 1699, to the Antilles and New Spain in 1703, to Peru and Chile, 1708-1711, and died in Marseilles on 18 April 1732. In his Journal d’observations de physique, Paris, 1714, two volumes, and the remainder in a third volume published in 1725, he included “many things pillaged from the papers of Plumier” (Cuvier, 1828: 92, 1995: 90). We can only speculate that perhaps Feuillée was responsible for the somewhat haphazard arrangement of the Plumier manuscripts.4

Manuscript 24

8MS 24, containing the “master” set of fish drawings, consists of 144 folio pages bound in red leather, measuring 46 x 30 cm. Of these 144 folios, the first 121 are devoted to fishes (as well as two marine mammals). The first 121 folios of MS 24 are followed by another 23 folios that depict birds (folios 122-138), reptiles (139-142, 144), and insects (143); “40” is written on the reverse of folio 39, but it otherwise remains blank. The drawings are all lightly penciled, then inked over with fine long strokes; color and color pattern are not indicated (with three exceptions: see folios 5, 13, 17); the scales of the fishes are usually all carefully drawn and inked in, some with details of the scale surface. Many include a sketch of a cross-section through the widest part of the fish (with muscle bundles indicated inside), providing an indication of the three-dimensional shape of the fish. Bloch (1782-1784, 1785-1795), well known for illustrating the girth and three-dimensional shape of his fishes with a cross-section (see Wells, 1981: 10), adopted this device from Plumier without acknowledgment. The French naturalist Pierre Joseph Bonnaterre (1752-1804), who, according to Cuvier (1828: 153, 1995:141), borrowed almost everything from his predecessors, took it from Bloch (see Bonnaterre, 1788; and Cuvier, 1845: 252).

9Each drawing of MS 24 is also accompanied by a brief Latin polynomial, but no descriptive text. If a single drawing appears on a page, it usually almost fills the page. Forty-eight drawings are accompanied by literature references to Rondelet (1554, 1555), Belon (1555), Gessner (1558), Salviani (1554-1558), and Marcgrave (1648) (see Plumier’s “sources,” below). Forty of the folios are signed by Plumier: “Fr. C. Plumier minimus” or, as in two cases, “Fr. Carolus Plumier minimus.” It is perhaps a bit strange that Plumier did not identify any of the drawing of MS 24, the most complete and diverse of all the manuscripts, with his royal title, Botaniste du Roi, as he did so often in MS 25 (see below, p. 64).

Manuscript 25

10MS 25 consists of 90 folio pages of which 78 are devoted to fishes. In addition to fishes and two marine mammals, MS 25 contains one folio showing a duck (folio 2), two depicting snakes (4 and 54), and six devoted to various invertebrates (3, 5, 6, 63, 65, 68); three folios (25, 44, 45) are numbered but otherwise remain blank. The binding is similar to that of MS 24 but the volume is slightly smaller, measuring 38.5 x 26 cm. In sharp contrast to MS 24, nearly all, 68 of the 78 folios, are colored to varying degrees. Fifteen of these are fully detailed, showing color and color pattern of a lateral view of the fish as well as elements of internal anatomy –including the gills, heart, liver, gall bladder, swimbladder, intestines, pyloric caeca, gonads, and skeleton– the parts carefully labeled and indicated by letter or number (for examples, see illustrations pp. 60-63). All fifteen are European species and, with three exceptions (folios 1, 24, and 52), all are freshwater lake-and river-dwelling forms, documented with text that identifies various internal anatomical structures and provides information on color. It is not surprising that these more-or-less finished renderings, which are in stark contrast to the relative lack of detail given to the remaining figures of MS 25, represent species that would have been readily available in ample quantity in the markets of Paris and where, working in his cell at the convent, both time and facilities would have been more available as well, presumably unlike the conditions in the Antilles.

11Folio 1 of MS 25, showing the Greater Weever, Trachinus draco (p. 60), is unique in providing not only a lateral view of the whole fish in full color, but almost the entire skeleton as well, including the cranium, jaws, suspensorium, opercles, hyoid apparatus, branchiostegal rays, and the vertebral column, with supporting elements of the unpaired fins. This rendering of the Greater Weever and others among this assemblage of fifteen are among some of the most beautiful of Plumier’s productions, attesting to his intense interest and extraordinary attention to detail, at a time when very few naturalists were paying much attention to the detailed internal structure of fishes (see also pp. 65-66).

12The osteology of fishes had hardly been touched by the beginning of the nineteenth century (Cuvier 1828: 237, 1995: 234). The earliest published work of any note was that of Johann Heinrich Ferdinand von Autenrieth (1772-1835), a German physician born in Stuttgart who in 1797 was appointed professor of anatomy, physiology, surgery, and obstetrics at the University of Tübingen. His osteological account of the European Plaice, Pleuronectes platessa, published in 1800, was not only descriptive but, quite surprising for the time, he attempted to compare the skeletal parts of fishes with those of other vertebrates. This work was quickly followed by that of the great French naturalist Étienne Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire (1772-1844) who in 1807 compared the bones that support the pectoral fin of fishes with those of the shoulder, upper and lower arm, and wrist bones of tetrapods. German anatomist Friedrich Christian Rosenthal (1780-1829) began his research on the osteology of fishes in 1811, with subsequent contributions that appeared from 1812 to 1822, but it was Georges Cuvier who really laid the foundation of this study, with major works published in 1812, 1815, and 1816. Clearly, however, in this endeavor, Plumier was ahead of his time by more than a century, and when it is realized that his interest in internal anatomy went well beyond fishes, with amazingly detailed drawings and descriptions of the skeletons of other vertebrates, including frogs, snakes, turtles, an iguana, a crocodile (MS 30), and a bird (MS 27), he deserves to be credited with the title of “first osteologist.”

13As mentioned above in describing the drawings of MS 24, many of those in MS 25 include a sketch of a cross-section of the fish. Eight drawings are accompanied by literature references to Rondelet (1554, 1555), Belon (1555), and Gessner (1558) (see Plumier’s “sources,” below). Twenty-four of the folios are signed by Plumier, twenty of which have the added indication of the title Botaniste du Roi (Botanicus Regius) bestowed on Plumier in 1690 by Guy-Crescent Fagon on behalf of King Louis XIV: “Fr. C. Plumier minimus B. R.” Finally, references to the publications of Bloch, Lacepède, and Bloch and Schneider have been neatly added by an unknown hand to twenty-two of the drawings.

Manuscript 30

14MS 30 contains 86 folio pages, but only one small fish, on folio 27, which it shares with three tiny drawings of gastropods. This figure, which appears to represent a killifish, perhaps genus Fundulus, is repeated in MS 25, figure 82F: “Tinca minima fasciata e Lacu Miragoan apud insulam San dominicanam nullus alius piscis in toto Lacu reperitur.”

Manuscript 31

15MS 31 consists of 119 drawings pasted on 97 folio pages of which 73 (including 79 individual figures) are devoted to fishes. In addition to fishes and one marine mammal, MS 31 contains two views of an elephant (folio 5) and 44 folios showing various invertebrates, primarily bivalves and gastropods (39, 77, 78-119). The binding is similar to those of MSS 24 and 25, while the volume itself is intermediate in size, measuring 43 x 28 cm. In contrast to the drawings of MSS 24 and 25, which are rendered directly on heavy paper, those of MS 31 are nearly all on thin tracing paper, pasted onto heavier stock; and twenty-three of the 79 drawings (equivalent to MS 24: 15, 79-93, 94-96, 99) are marked with small pin-holes along the inked lines of each figure (for examples, see Figures 16-23). These facts indicate that at least some of the figures of this set were used to produce one or more additional copies. Cuvier (1828: 92, 1995: 90) assumed they were copied by pouncing, a common technique used for centuries to transfer an image from one surface to another and thus create a copy that would then be finished as an oil painting or engraving. The most common method involves laying translucent paper over the original image, then tracing along the lines of the image by creating pricked holes on the top sheet of paper. This pounced copy made only of pin-holes is then laid over a new working surface. A dark powder such as chalk, graphite, or pastel is forced through the holes, leaving a series of dots on the working surface below that can then be connected by hand, thus transferring the image. The powder is applied by being placed into a small bag of thin fabric such as cheesecloth, then dabbed onto the pricked holes of the pounced drawing. Indeed, all of the pounced drawings in MS 31 are darkened by what looks to be graphite, black chalk, or similar dark pigment (e.g., see illustrations pp. 68-69).

16While pouncing might appear at first glance to be the most logical explanation for the presence of these pin holes, a closer look at the drawings reveals the possibility of a better explanation. Indeed, black powder appears to have been applied to the copied drawings, not to reproduce the drawings, but to make the pin-holes more visible, thus facilitating the process of connecting them more easily with pencil lines. This process would produce a smudgy, darkened, and therefore unattractive copy, but most of the black powder could be swept away after the holes were linked by pencil or ink and covered eventually by watercolor. More importantly, it must be remembered that the Plumier drawings were not definitive, but meant as models for the engraver, subsequent to publication. It is telling that even some of the apparently finished, colored drawings, also bear remnants of black powder. Finally, in this context, it should be noted that Plumier sometimes did not follow precisely the rows of pin-holes, using them more as approximations rather than exact guidelines, to improve the scientific accuracy of his drawings (see especially illustration p. 69).5

17As noticed by Cuvier (1828: 92, 1995: 90), “One may still see in most of them the pin holes used for pouncing the drawings, probably for the copy that was used by Bloch” in the preparation of his works on fishes (see also Karrer, 1980: 186). This assumption by Cuvier might well be true, but it is important to point out that only twenty-three Plumier drawings are disfigured in this way, whereas the manuscript available to Bloch (described above) contained some seventy figures of which Bloch copied and reproduced thirty-three (see Table pp. 90-93), and eleven of the twenty-three disfigured drawings do not appear in Bloch’s (1782-1784, 1785-1795) publications. Most of Plumier’s drawings of amphibians and reptiles (MSS 24, 25, and 30) are also pounced and appear blackened by the tracing process, but apparently none of those that depict birds, mammals, or invertebrates are similarly disfigured.

18With three exceptions (folios 20, 22, 46), the drawings of MS 31 are without color, but two are rather beautifully shaded in gray and black (folios 31 and 43; illustrations p. 70, 108). Many include a sketch of a cross-section through the widest part of the fish, as described above, and no fewer than thirty-nine are documented with descriptive text in French providing explanations of anatomy, and instructions on how the drawings should be colored –the latter information is often coded by letter or number. One drawing (folio 22B) is accompanied by a literature reference to Gessner (1558) (see Plumier’s “sources,” below). Six of the folios are signed by Plumier, one of which (folio 70) includes his royal title: “Fr. C. Plumier minimus Botanicus R.” Finally, references to the publications of Bloch and Lacepède have been added by an unknown hand to twenty-four of the drawings.

Manuscript 33

19MS 33 consists of a large collection of unnumbered folios; the binding is similar to those described above. It contains only six drawings of fishes, on three folios, all with equivalent figures in MSS 24 and 31. Five of the drawings are devoted to various views of a single species, the sharksucker or remora, and the sixth to a tuna. The collection also contains descriptions in Latin of various fishes, most of which can be identified with drawings in the manuscripts described above.

20To summarize the methods applied by Plumier to his drawings of fishes, it appears that all four manuscripts discussed above are working documents, none of which lend themselves to a final set that would have been acceptable to a publisher. MS 24 comes closest to a finished product, but even this set lacks the necessary refinement, organization, and descriptive documentation that would result in publication. It must be assumed therefore that the combined material presented in MSS 24, 25, and 31 formed the basis on which Plumier assembled the long-lost manuscript, intended by him for publication but which was later used instead by Bloch (see above, p. 83). The carefully delineated figures of MS 24 represent the full set from which Plumier probably choose the seventy drawings of fishes included in the Bloch manuscript; the drawings of MS 25, with their carefully labeled anatomical details and notes on color –the latter undoubtedly made with fresh specimens close at hand– might be considered equivalent to field or laboratory notes; the pounced drawings of MS 31 were the basis on which copies of the drawings were made for the final draft intended for publication; while MS 33 contains little more than some additional descriptive material and a few more drawings, all of which have equivalents in MSS 24 and 31. That the Bloch manuscript cannot now be found is an immeasurable loss to our understanding of Plumier’s method as it relates to his fishes.

Sources of Plumier’s knowledge

21Although only 65 of the 153 drawings of fishes in MS 24 are accompanied by a citation, it is obvious that Plumier made a concerted effort to identify his fishes using the available published literature of his day. In doing so, he relied on five sources, four mid-sixteenth century books: Rondelet (1554, 1555), Belon (1555), Gessner (1558), and Salviani (1554-1558) –books that in Plumier’s time were already nearly 150 years old– and one mid-seventeenth century book, Marcgrave (1648).6

Guillaume Rondelet (1507-1566)

22Guillaume Rondelet, born at Montpellier in 1507, the son of a pharmacist, was named professor in that town in 1545, traveled with Cardinal François de Tournon (1490-1568) in France, Italy, and the Netherlands, returned to Montpellier in 1551, and died there in 1566. According to Cuvier (1828: 51-52, 1995: 43), “Rondelet is superior to the other two [Renaissance] authors [Belon and Salviani] in the number of fishes he knew, and even though his drawings, which are wood engravings, do not compare with Salviani’s for beauty, they have greater accuracy, and are especially remarkable for their characteristic details.”7

23Rondelet’s Libri de piscibus marinis (1554) and Universae aquatilium historiae (1555), produced with the assistance of Guillaume Pellicier (1490-1568), bishop of Montpellier, were by far the most important published sources for Plumier’s knowledge of fishes. Nearly always bound together in the same volume, but bearing no title common to both, these two works are generally considered to be parts one and two of the same publication. Both were produced in folio at Lyon by Matthias Bonhomme. Libri de piscibus marinis is divided into eighteen books: the first four treat generalities; the fifth through the fifteenth describe the different kinds of fishes; the sixteenth deals with cetaceans, turtles, and seals; the seventeenth, molluscs; and the eighteenth, crustaceans. The second part, Universae aquatilium historiae, comprises two books on testaceous species, one book on worms (vers) and zoophytes, three books on freshwater fishes, and one on amphibians. There is an abridged French translation of this two-part work, published at Lyon, in 1558, in quarto, under the common title L’Histoire entière des poissons.8

24MS 24 contains no fewer than 48 specific references to Rondelet (1554, 1555). Twenty-seven of these citations refer to Rondelet’s chapters on marine fishes (“Rondel.,” “Rondelet,” “Rondeletii”; see folios 1, 9, 12, 13, 19, 28, 29, 32, 33, 35-37, 39, 42, 44, 50, 53, 62, 63, 67, 75-77, 98, 99, 104, and 105); 16 to his chapters on riverine fishes (“Rond. fluviatil.,” “Rondel. Fluv.,” “Rondel. Fluviatil.,” “Rondeletii Fluviatilium”; folios 31C, 46A, 46B, 46D, 46E, 47A-D, 48, 59-61, 71A, 71B, and 74); and five to his chapters on lake-dwelling fishes (“Rondel. Lacustr.”; folios 55, 57, 58, 68, and 72). MS 25 contains an additional three references to Rondelet (1554, 1555), which are not mentioned in connection with equivalent figures in MS 24: one refers to riverine fishes (folio 27A) and two to marine fishes (folios 38 and 50).

Pierre Belon (1517-1564)

25Pierre Belon was born in the small hamlet of Souletière, near Cérans-Foulletourte just south of Le Mans, in western France, in 1517. He studied in Germany under Valerius Cordus (1515-1544), traveled in Italy and throughout the Levant, and returned to France in 1550. Charles IX lodged him in the Chateau of Madrid in the Bois de Boulogne, and there he was occupied in translating Dioscorides when he was assassinated in the Bois on his way to Paris in 1564. He produced two primary works on fishes: L’Histoire naturelle des estranges poissons marins, published in Paris in 1551, in quarto; and De aquatilibus, libri duo, Paris, 1553a, in octavo oblong. In addition to these two books, his Les Observations de plusieurs singularitez et choses mémorables, trouvées en Grèce, Asie, Judée, Egypte, Arabie, etc., first published in Paris in 1553b, in quarto, contains numerous articles on fishes9. Plumier consulted a French translation of De aquatilibus titled La Nature et diversité des poissons, avec leurs pourtraicts, representez au plus pres du naturel, Paris, 1555, in octavo oblong. It is cited in MS 24 six times (“Bellonii nat. et portr. des poissons,” “Bellonii Icon. et nat. pisc.” see folios 31B, 34B, 34C, 39, 44, and 56). MS 25 contains an additional three references to Belon (1555) that are not mentioned in connection with equivalent figures in MS 24 (MS 25, folios 35, 38, and 47).

Conrad Gessner (1516-1565)

26Conrad Gessner, the most knowledgeable naturalist of the sixteenth century (Cuvier, 1828: 53, 1995: 50-51), was born in Zurich in 1516 and died there in 1565. Although he published several dozen books on virtually all aspects of human knowledge, his fame as an early naturalist rests primarily on his monumental Historiae animalium (1551-1587), printed in Zurich in five books in folio, but usually bound in three separate volumes. According to Adler (1989: 7), Gessner’s Historiae animalium “laid the foundation for standardization of scientific terminology by listing the equivalent names of animals in a dozen languages. Gessner combed the classical and medieval literature for information, added his own observations and those of correspondents, and then organized the whole in a very precise manner: synonymy, distribution, physical characteristics, and habits, use as food and medicine, etc. By adding numerous woodcuts he produced the first illustrated work covering the entire animal kingdom, the influence of which was to continue for two centuries through numerous reprintings and translations.”10 The fourth and largest of the books of Historiae animalium, “De piscium et aquatilium animantium natura,” appeared in 1558. This work is cited by Plumier once in MS 24 (“Gesneri,” folio 68), twice in MS 25 (“apud Gesnerum,” folios 47 and 57A), and once in MS 31 (“Gesneri libro 4o de aquitalibus,” folio 22B).

Hippolyte Salviani (1514-1572)

27Hippolyte Salviani, born at Città di Castello, near Urbino, in 1514, was a physician who practiced and taught medicine in Rome. In this capacity and as a student of natural history, he attracted the attention and patronage of Cardinal Marcello Cervini (1501-1555), who was pope for six weeks under the name of Marcellus II (Cuvier, 1828: 50, 1995: 50). With financial assistance from Cervini and two successive popes, he began in 1554 to publish his great work on Italian fishes, which he titled Aquatilium animalium historiae. Issued in parts over the next four years, it was completed in January 1558. The importance of Salviani’s book lies in the illustrations, which, according to Cuvier (1828: 50-51, 1995: 42-43), are “not so numerous but much finer [than those of Belon and Rondelet] copper-plate engravings [instead of woodcuts] on a rather large scale; some have not been surpassed in more recent works. They number ninety-nine; almost all are of fishes of Italy with some from Illyria and the Archipelago, not counting a few molluscs.” Salviani died at Rome in 1572.11 Plumier cites Salviani’s work only once: “Salviani, Histor. Aquatilium Animalium” (see folio 34A).

Georg Marcgrave (1610-1644)

28Georg Marcgrave, a German mathematician, physician and astronomer, was born at Meissen in 1610 and died on a voyage to Guinea in 1644. He, along with Heinrich Cralitz (died c. 1639), was sent to Brazil by the Dutch West India Company in early 1638 to assist Willem Piso (1611-1678) –physician under Count Johan Maurits of Nassau-Siegen (1604-1679) who was governor of Brazil from January 1637 to May 1644– in collecting plants and animals. Cralitz died soon after his arrival, but Marcgrave survived the climate and described with care many of the natural products of that country; at the same time, he made numerous astronomical and physical observations. The result was a joint work with Piso published in Leiden in 1648, titled Historia naturalis Brasiliae, consisting of two parts: “De medicina Brasiliensi,” an essay on medicine by Piso; and “Historiae rerum naturalium Brasiliae,” an account of the natural history by Marcgrave. Marcgrave’s work is divided into eight books, the fourth of which is on fishes. The descriptions are almost entirely his own; the illustrations are taken from collections of paintings made at the request of Count Maurits during his governorship of Brazil (see Whitehead, 1976, 1982; Whitehead and Boeseman, 1989: 22, 34-35). “Of all those who described the natural history of distant lands in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, he [Georg Marcgrave] was assuredly the most intelligent and the most exact, and the one who contributed the most to the natural history of fishes. He made known a hundred of them, all new to science at that time, and gave descriptions much superior to those of all the authors who preceded him” (Cuvier, 1828: 60, 1995: 47).12 MS 24 contains nine specific references to Marcgrave’s book (“Marcg.,” “Marcgr.,” “G. Marcgr.,” “Georg Marcgravii, Histor. pisc.”; see folios 2, 4, 8, 23, 27, 64, 66, 82, and 114).

29It is obvious why Plumier sought to identify his drawings with the woodcuts in Georg Marcgrave’s (1648) “Historiae rerum naturalium Brasiliae,” which was in Plumier’s time, and for a century and a half afterwards, the only available source of information on Neotropical fishes (Whitehead and Boeseman, 1989: 27; Boeseman et al., 1990: 5). It is perhaps also understandable why he did not consult Ulisse Aldrovandi’s (1613) De piscibus libri V, et de cetis liber unus, it being based almost entirely on Gessner (1558; see Cuvier, 1828: 54, 1995: 46). But why he failed to make use of Willughby’s (1686) De historia piscium, with its copies of all the illustrations of Rondelet, Salviani, Marcgrave, and numerous other naturalists, with a good number of previously unpublished figures added (Cuvier, 1828: 78, 1995: 72), is puzzling. Willughby’s book was more than a decade old when Plumier was busy preparing his fish illustrations for publication; it seems unlikely that he was unaware of its existence. Perhaps it was simply unavailable to him in the library of the monastery.

Uses made of Plumier’s drawings

Claude Aubriet (1665-1742) and the Vélins du Muséum

30Jean-Baptiste Gaston, Duc d’Orléans (1608-1660), younger brother of King Louis XIII, was an avid and informed collector, and he, like many of his contemporaries, showed from an early age a love for plants and gardens. Not content with growing plants from France and those brought from distant lands, he sought to ornament his cabinet with drawings and paintings that he commissioned from nature. Thus was born the Collection of vélins or vellums of the Muséum national d’Histoire naturelle, Paris.13 As the name implies, the vellums are paintings executed on very fine, white parchment, using a special watercolor technique. From around 1630 when the first paintings were made, the format has remained, to all appearance, unchanged (46 x 33 cm). Confined originally to watercolors of flowers and rare plants, the Collection, even during Gaston’s time, was opened up to zoological subjects, so that today it contains more than 6,000 paintings representing an impressive array of plant and animal taxa, as well as anatomical and paleontological specimens (see Laissus, 1967: 12).

31One of a series of successive artists assigned to the Collection of vellums was Claude Aubriet, born at Châlons-sur-Marne about 1665 and died in Paris on 3 December 1742. Aubriet was the illustrator of the works of Tournefort, who he accompanied on travels in the Levant (1700-1702). During that voyage, he amassed a large number of drawings and watercolors for reproducing later on vellum. Designated in 1700 to inherit the title of “painter of miniatures to the king,” then held by his teacher and immediate predecessor, Jean Joubert (1643-1707), Aubriet was appointed to that position in 1706. He was responsible for contributing significantly to the zoological side, showing a great liking especially for butterflies, fishes, reptiles, and mammals (Laissus, 1967: 9), but he stopped adding to the collection around 1727. In 1735, he relinquished his appointment to his student, Madeleine-Françoise Basseporte (1701-1780), who had already been performing Aubriet’s duties for some time (Laissus, 1967: 7).

32The Vélins du Muséum contain 59 paintings of fishes copied from the original drawings of Plumier (see Table pp. 90-93). Although all are attributed to Aubriet (see Cuvier, 1828: 93-94, 1995: 84, 91), a search through the volumes of the Vélins du Muséum revealed that only three paintings of fishes are annotated as such, probably written on the vellum itself in the first third of the nineteenth century: one labeled “Huso huso,” vol. 93, fig. 93; and two labeled “Torpedo marmorata,” vol. 94, figs. 70 and 72. Although none are actually signed by him, the artistic style, the use of color, and other details are similar to other paintings in the collection that are endorsed by Aubriet. In addition to the 59 copied from the originals of Plumier, there are eleven more fish paintings that were probably contributed by Aubriet, but taken from other sources: vol. 91, figs. 59, 60; vol. 93, figs. 23, 30, 32, 36, 37, 39, 40; vol. 94, figs. 2, 96.

33Cuvier (1828: 93-94, 1995: 84) described Aubriet’s copies as “rather inexact and too highly colored,” and explained that the artist, “who was paid by the page to continue the great collection [of vellums]... took originals wherever he could. It appears that he knew of Plumier’s drawings, but he painted his copies according to the descriptions only, or even according to his imagination. There is nothing to prove that he worked under the supervision of the original author [Plumier].”

34Aubriet was not specifically assigned to the vellums until 1706, so it seems most likely that he copied the Plumier drawings well after Plumier’s death (1704) and sometime before 1727 when he ceased to add to the collection. Lacepède had 37 of these drawings by Aubriet engraved for use in his Histoire naturelle des poissons, 1798-1803 (see below, p. 87).

Jacques Gautier d’Agoty (1717-1785)

35Jacques Gautier d’Agoty, born at Marseilles in 1717 and died at Paris in 1785, was a man of many talents: painter, engraver, physician, and anatomist, but of interest here as an author of numerous works embellished with color plates that were executed by a process of his own design (Cuvier, 1828: 92-93, 1995: 84, 90; see also Tétry, 1982). He copied and reproduced in color a number of Plumier drawings in his Observations sur l’histoire naturelle, sur la physique et sur la peinture, published in six volumes from 1752 to 1755. Many more were reproduced in a continuation of this series produced by his son, Arnault Éloi Gautier d’Agoty (died at Florence in 1783), two volumes, 1756 and 1757, produced with the help of François-Vincent Toussaint (1715-1772), each with a slightly different title. Observations sur la physique (called the Journal de physique after 1794) by l’Abbé François Rozier, Jean-André Mongez, and Jean Claude de La Métherie is itself a continuation of this work.

36Fourteen Plumier fish drawings were reproduced by Gautier d’Agoty (1752-1755, 1756, 1757), including the multiple views of Sphoeroides spengleri (MS 24, figures 108B, 108C; MS 25, folio 88) as well as a number of anatomical details associated with Coryphaena hippurus (MS 24, folio 8; see Table pp. 90-93). That Gautier d’Agoty copied these from the original Plumier manuscripts rather than from Aubriet’s vellums is evinced by the presence of four drawings and numerous anatomical details present in the manuscripts, but not represented in the vellum collection. How Gautier d’Agoty became aware of Plumier’s work is unknown.

Marcus Elieser Bloch (1723-1799)

37Marcus Elieser Bloch, a physician-surgeon by profession living in Berlin, was born at Ansbach in 1723, and died on 6 August 1799 while taking the waters at Karlsbad for a chest ailment (Karrer et al., 1994: 101). At the age of 47 he began to study and write about fishes, evidently as a hobby (Wells, 1981: 7; Pietsch, 2001a). Intending at first to collect, describe, compile, and publish a guide to the fishes of the German states, he produced from 1782 to 1784 Oeconomische Naturgeschichte der Fische Deutschlands, three volumes of text in quarto, with 108 color plates in folio. Attempting to expand his coverage to fishes of the world, Fische Deutschlands was followed shortly (1785-1795) by Naturgeschichte der ausländischen Fische, nine volumes in quarto, with color plates in folio numbered 109 to 432; the joint 12-volume work came to be known as Allgemeine Naturgeschichte der Fische. Almost simultaneous with the appearance of the first German edition, the two sets were translated into French and published together from 1785 to 1797. Produced in twelve volumes in folio, with 432 color plates, it was called Ichthyologie ou Histoire naturelle générale et particulière des poissons, a “title which promises far too much, for the author had no intention nor made any claim of treating all known fishes, but only those for which he was able to show original drawings” (Gill, 1872: 35-36)14.

38As sources for his work, Bloch relied to a large extent on actual specimens, which he either collected himself or acquired through contacts in the marketplace and harbor or through correspondence (Cuvier, 1828: 145-146, 1995: 137; Wells, 1981: 8). In some cases, he accepted manuscript sources, particularly those of Plumier. As described above, Bloch made good use of a collection of 70 Plumier fish drawings that he acquired at public auction in Berlin. Between Oeconomische Naturgeschichte der Fische Deutschlands (1782-1784) and Naturgeschichte der ausländischen Fische (1785-1795), Bloch makes reference to no fewer than 53 Plumier drawings, at least 33 of which served as originals for plates that appear in these published works (four cited twice in Table pp. 90-93). According to Cuvier (1828: 93, 1995: 90), Bloch reproduced a total of 34 Plumier drawings; Karrer (1980: 187) said that he used “about 35,” but I can account for only 33 (see Table pp. 90-93). It seems likely that Cuvier and Karrer counted Bloch plates attributed to Plumier in error. In fact, there are three Bloch plates labeled “Pat. Plümier del.” for which there are neither equivalents in the extant Plumier manuscripts nor mention of Plumier in Bloch’s text: Zeus vomer (pl. 193, figure 2), Chaetodon ocellatus (pl. 211, figure 2), and Chaetodon curacao (pl. 212, figure 1). It should be mentioned also that Bloch’s Gobius plumieri (pl. 178, fig. 3), certainly modeled after Plumier (MS 24, figure 106D), is erroneously attributed to one of Bloch’s principal artists, Johann Friedrich August Krüger (born 1754; see Wells, 1981: 9-10); and Coryphaena coerulea (pl. 176), again clearly after Plumier (MS 24, fig. 86), bears no attribution at all.

39That there is no mention of Plumier in Bloch’s descriptions of Zeus vomer, Chaetodon ocellatus, and Chaetodon curacao (the plates of which are attributed to Plumier) negates the idea that the Plumier manuscript on which Bloch based his work contained drawings not represented in any of the extant Plumier materials archived at the Bibliothèque centrale du Muséum (Karrer 1980: 186). Yet, in this context, it is worth noting that two of the 53 text references to Plumier figures made by Bloch cannot be readily associated with any known Plumier original: Tetrodon lagocephalus Bloch, 1785-1795, 1: 126, pl. 140 (“Orbe, Plüm. Manuscr.”) and Chaetodon faber Bloch, 1785-1795, 3: 107, pl. 212, fig. 2 (“Seserinus fasciatus, Plüm. Manusc.”). As for the latter, “Bloch said that he took this drawing [pl. 212, fig. 2] from Plumier, but everything points to his having corrected the details according to [Pierre-Marie-Auguste] Broussonnet’s drawing” (Cuvier, 1831: 114).

40Another three Plumier drawings were reproduced in Bloch’s Systema ichthyologiae (1801), his sequel to the Naturgeschichte, produced under the editorship of his younger friend and colleague, Johann Gottlob Schneider (1750-1822). Schneider, a German philologist and naturalist, was born in 1750 at Kollmen, near Oschatz, just southeast of Leipzig, and died at Breslau in 1822. He studied philology, especially the Greek classics, and natural history at universities in Leipzig (1769), Göttingen (1772), and finally Strasbourg, where he received his Doctor of Philosophy degree (1774). In 1776 he was appointed professor of philology at the University of Frankfurt (an der Oder), where he produced a large number of translations and commentaries on classical works. Schneider’s studies in natural history were secondary to his literary work, but he made several significant contributions to zoology, the most important in ichthyology being his edition of Bloch’s Systema ichthyologiae of 1801.15

41Writing in the introduction to Systema ichthyologiae (Bloch & Schneider 1801: xvi, as translated from the original Latin by Karrer et al., 1994: 109), Schneider describes further Bloch’s use of manuscript sources. Comparing the Plumier drawings with those of Brazilian fishes made during the 1640s under the direction of Johann Mauritz, Count of Nassau-Siegen (see Whitehead 1976, 1979a, 1982; Whitehead & Boeseman, 1989), which Bloch incorporated in his publications as well, Schneider wrote: “Much more accurate and in no way to be compared with these [the Brazilian drawings] are Plumier’s drawings of fishes; it is no more possible there, however, to make out the number of [fin] rays, which the learned Frenchman did not worry about; and I am still by no means convinced that he reproduced them correctly; therefore it is an utter waste of time to try to count the rays of the fins. Scholars who tried to turn the attention of natural scientists in this direction did so chiefly, I believe, to prevent themselves from being obliged to study parts that were less accessible and beyond the scope of a superficial examination. Plumier added notes to his drawings of fishes and, to many of them as well, a description and drawing of the internal parts from which it is possible to learn about the shape, life, and habits of the fish concerned. Plumier was an outstanding man who was extremely careful in his work. Despite this, in a few cases the first artist of Bloch made mistakes in copying Plumier’s drawings and thus involved my friend in his error. The fact that this had happened in the case of a [species of] Coryphaena was pointed out to Bloch too late.”

42One of Bloch’s artist changed the shape of the head of Plumier’s “La vive apud Martinicam” (MS 24, figure 5), a tilefish of the genus Malacanthus, to make it look like a dolphinfish (genus Coryphaena) and called it Coryphaena plumieri (Bloch, 1785-1795, 2: 146, pl. 175; see Bloch & Schneider 1801: 298-299). Lacepède (1798-1803, 4: 427, pl. 8, fig. 1) reproduced the same drawing more accurately, almost as it appears in Plumier’s manuscripts, but, on Bloch’s authority, still left it among the dolphinfishes (Cuvier 1828: 93, 1995: 91).

43Cuvier (1828: 146-147, 1995: 139) was rather more critical than Schneider (1801) in his appraisal of Bloch: “The drawings that he [Bloch] borrowed from the manuscripts of Prince Maurits and Plumier are the least dependable of all. Not only did he preserve a majority of the faults that are in these drawings, executed at a time when there was little exact knowledge of the anatomy of fishes, but also when he tried to correct these faults, he did so in a manner other than befitting, exchanging them for other mistakes. It is only by conjecture that he gave counts for the numbers of fin rays, which the artists had never thought of showing.”

44Accurate or not, eleven currently recognized species have resulted, at least in part, from Bloch’s descriptions and reproductions of Plumier drawings. Eight of these eleven are based solely or primarily on Plumier drawings, and thus in the absence of type specimens, the original renderings in Paris may be recognized as iconotypes.

45Acanthurus chirurgus (Bloch, 1787), Epinephelus striatus (Bloch, 1792), Malacanthus plumieri (Bloch, 1786), Oligoplites saliens (Bloch, 1793), Scarus coeruleus (Bloch, 1786), Scomberomorus regalis (Bloch, 1793), Scorpaena plumieri Bloch, 1789, and Sicydium plumieri (Bloch, 1786) are all based on Plumier drawings, and may therefore be considered iconotypes, with the following qualifications: in the case of Scarus coeruleus, Bloch (1786, 2: 148), along with his attribution to Plumier, makes reference to a description and figure in Mark Catesby’s (1731-1743: 18, pl. 18) Natural History of Carolina, Florida, and the Bahamas Islands, but Bloch’s plate (176) is clearly modeled after Plumier (MS 24, folio 86); for Scomberomorus regalis, Bloch (1793, 7: 38) lists eight literature sources in addition to that of Plumier, but again his plate (333) is obviously based on Plumier (MS 24, folio 10) and full attribution is given: “Plümier del.”

46While Bloch’s plates of Canthidermis maculatus (Bloch, 1785-1795, 2: 25, pl. 151), Prionotus punctatus (Bloch, 1785-1795, 7: 125, pl. 353), and Selar crumenophthalmus (Bloch, 1785-1795, 7: 79, pl. 344) are based on Plumier drawings, type material for all three exists in the Zoological Museum, Berlin (H.-J. Paepke, personal communication, 16 July 1998).

Bernard Germain Étienne Laville-sur-Ilon, Comte de Lacepède (1756-1825)

47The Comte de Lacepède was born at Agen, southwestern France, on 26 December 1756, and died in Paris on 6 October 1825. He was appointed curator (sous-démonstrateur et garde) of the King’s Cabinet in 1785, professor at the Muséum national d’Histoire naturelle in 1794 (where he held the chair of oviparous quadrupeds, reptiles, and fishes), member of the Institut de France in 1796, of the senate in 1799, and grand chancellor of the Legion of Honor in 1803 (Chaumié and Labit, 1975). A writer of great eloquence, he published works on music, general physical science, electricity, and natural history. His Histoire naturelle des poissons was printed in five volumes in quarto from 1798 to 1803.16

48Cuvier (1828: 172-173, 1995: 163-164) describes the difficult conditions under which Lacepède was forced to work: “Writing his book [Histoire naturelle des poissons] during the stormiest years of the Revolution, when France was separated from neighboring states by a cruel war, he could not profit from the wealth of material in foreign works. Even the great ichthyology of Bloch, that capital work that was finished by the time Lacepède began to publish his own work, was not yet available to him in its entirety, and it was not until the fourth of his volumes that he began to cite the last six volumes of the ichthyologist from Berlin. Likewise, Bloch himself, while composing his Systema ichthyologiae, which was published after his death, and even his editor Schneider, had knowledge of only the first two volumes of Lacepède’s work. These circumstances must be borne in mind when comparing the works of these two famous ichthyologists. Another difficulty no less great, at a time when we [France] had lost all our colonies, and none of our ships ventured across the seas, was that of procuring fishes from distant waters and examining them in a state of nature.”

49Thus, Lacepède was obliged to base his conclusions on the few specimens that were available to him in the King’s Cabinet and other relatively small collections that were sent to him by colleagues. More often than not, he relied on second-and sometimes third-hand information: drawings and lists of fishes provided by various naturalists; but his most abundant materials were extracted from the manuscripts of Philibert Commerson. Commerson, born at Châtillon-les-Dombes, Ain, on 18 November 1727, went to Montpellier in 1747, where he received a complete medical education, obtaining his bachelor’s degree in 1753 and his license and doctorate in 1754. Primarily interested in botany, he established a notable herbarium. Sailing with Louis de Bougainville (1729-1811) in 1766, he visited the coast of Brazil, Montevideo, Buenos Aires, the Falkland Islands, Tierra del Fuego, Tahiti, some islands near New Guinea, Java, and stayed on at Mauritius, where he died of pleurisy on 13 March 1773.17

50To the drawings of Commerson, Lacepède added those that Claude Aubriet (see above, p. 79) had copied from the manuscripts of Plumier for the vellum collection (Cuvier 1828: 173-174, 1995: 164). As might be expected, these various sources were not all equal in value: “The men who provided him information were by no means all professional ichthyologists. The copyist Aubriet had altered the originals in more than one place, and the originals themselves had often omitted essential characters. Commerson’s drawings were not always verified against his descriptions, and Lacepède often made one species from the description and another from the drawing; and, it is difficult to believe, but it also happened more than once that he made yet another species from the descriptive phrase written on the drawing in question. These strange aberrations can only be explained by the fact that he composed his articles in the countryside where the Terror had banished him, far from the papers he had consulted and only with notes that he had made of them, and also by the fact that he named the fishes engraved on his plates according to what he believed he recognized and not from what was written on the original drawing, which he no longer had in front of him” (Cuvier, 1828: 174-175, 1995: 164).

51In his Histoire naturelle des poissons, Lacepède (1798-1803) makes reference to no fewer than 40 Plumier drawings, 37 of which appear to have served as originals for figures that appear in his work (see Table below). Cuvier (1828: 94, 174, 1995: 84, 164) implied more than once that Lacepède’s knowledge of Plumier was based entirely on the copies of Plumier drawings made by Aubriet, but there is some evidence to the contrary: there are at least six engravings in Lacepède’s Histoire naturelle des poissons attributed to Plumier for which there are no equivalents in the collection of vellums (see Table below). While this could simply mean that the six vellums in questions were removed from the collection, and are now lost, it seems more likely that at some point in his studies Lacepède examined and took notes from the Plumier originals.

52Five currently recognized species have resulted, at least in part, from Lacepède’s descriptions and reproductions of Plumier drawings; all five are based solely or primarily on Plumier drawings, and thus in the absence of type specimens, the Plumier originals in Paris may be recognized as iconotypes. Cephalopholis cruentata (Lacepède, 1802), Gobiomorus dormitor Lacepède, 1800, Haemulon plumieri (Lacepède, 1801), Heteropriacanthus cruentatus (Lacepède, 1801), and Tylosurus acus (Lacepède, 1803) are all based on Plumier drawings, and may therefore be considered iconotypes, with the following qualification: for Cephalopholis cruentata, Lacepède (1802, 4: 156) lists five literature sources in addition to Plumier, but his figure (pl. 4, fig. 1) is clearly modeled after Aubriet’s copy of Plumier (MS 24, figure 17).

Georges Cuvier (1769-1832) and Achille Valenciennes (1794-1865)

53Much has been written about the famous collaboration of Cuvier and Valenciennes.18 In their monumental Histoire naturelle des poissons, published in 22 volumes from 1828 to 1849, they brought together nearly everything that was known about fishes up until that time. Nothing escaped their notice, including the fishes figured and described by Plumier. Within the 11,253 pages of their 22-volume series, Cuvier and Valenciennes make no fewer than 70 references to Plumier drawings (see Table below). Although their primary contribution, and that which takes up the majority of their text relevant to Plumier, is sorting out the mistakes and misconceptions of Bloch and Lacepède, they provided identifications and added Plumier names to their synonymies, describing four additional, currently recognized species based in part on Plumier drawings: Eugerres plumieri (Cuvier, in Cuvier and Valenciennes, 1830), Lutjanus buccanella (Cuvier, in Cuvier and Valenciennes, 1828), Megalops atlanticus (Cuvier, in Cuvier and Valenciennes, 1847), and Scorpaena grandicornis Cuvier, in Cuvier and Valenciennes, 1829. Type material exists for all four of these species in the collections of the Muséum national d’Histoire naturelle, Paris.