8. Artedi and Linnaeus, Their Contemporaries and Immediate Successors
p. 196-213
Texte intégral
1It was not until the first third of the eighteenth century that there appeared the work destined finally to give the natural history of fishes a truly scientific form, completing what Willughby and Ray had started —namely, the ichthyology of the Swede Peter Artedi.1
2Passionately interested from early childhood in studying fishes, and born with a true genius for classification, this naturalist promptly perceived that only Willughby had described these animals well; but he also took note that English ichthyology had not entirely achieved its goal, for lack of having established its genera, of having designated them by fixed and convenient names, or of having assigned to its species short and comparable characters based on their structure.
3He worked thenceforth without rest to fill this lacuna in the science. [The result was his Ichthyologia, sive Opera omnia de piscibus, published in 1738, a book consisting of five parts: “Bibliotheca ichthyologica,” “Philosophia ichthyologica,” “Genera piscium,” “Synonymia nominum piscium,” and “Descriptiones specierum piscium.”] After presenting in the “Bibliotheca” a list of the authors who had written about fishes before him, he analyzed in the “Philosophia” all the internal and external parts of these animals, created a precise terminology for the different forms these parts might take, drew up for himself some rules for nomenclature of the genera and species, and, finally, subdivided the class more accurately than Willughby had done. His orders are based solely on the consistency of the skeleton, the opercula of the gills, and the nature of the rays of the fins, disregarding habitat and anything else foreign to structure; he named them Acanthopterygii, Malacopterygii, Branchiostegi, and Chondropterygii. Mention is not made here of his Plagiuri, which contained the cetaceans. The order Branchiostegi, ill-defined and poorly composed, cannot survive; but the other three orders are natural, and nothing that has been tried since has been able to replace them.
4In the “Genera piscium” he defined for each genus an invariable substantive name and positive, clear-cut characters, based in general on the number of rays in the membrane of the gills [i.e., branchiostegal rays] (whose importance he was the first to notice), on the relative position of the fins, on their number, on the parts of the mouth where the teeth are situated, on the structure of the scales, and even on internal parts such as the stomach and the appendages of the cecum. These genera, numbering forty-five [see Table 3], are so well formed that almost all are valid today, and the subdivisions that have had to be introduced by the ever-increasing number of species have very rarely been such that it was necessary to separate them from each other. Thirteen additional genera were not formally established but simply mentioned in the appendixes of this and the following part of Artedi’s work;2 of these thirteen, Linnaeus accepted three, and several others have been revived by his successors. Under each genus is found a list of species known well enough so that the author believed he could classify them with their definitions and by short descriptions.
5In the “Synonymia nominum piscium,” arranged under each species with great erudition, are listed all the articles of earlier authors who mentioned the species, the drawings of the species, and the names that have been applied to them. Artedi listed even the Greek and Latin names, but according to Rondelet’s ideas rather than his own research. In the list he included 274 species of fishes, rejecting species when their existence or characteristics did not seem to him to be well enough established. In the appendix he added 17 others as belonging to the genera indicated; finally, in his “Descriptiones specierum piscium,” he described the 72 species he was able to see for himself, according to his terminology and with as much detail as clarity.
6Nothing like this had existed before in ichthyology, and even though Artedi constantly kept Willughby’s work before him in composing his book, it is nonetheless true that he brought science a great step forward and vastly surpassed his predecessor.
Carolus Linnaeus
Portrait (1775), oil on canvas by Alexander Roslin (1718-1793).
Cliché National gallery of Sweden
7The author was not fortunate enough to publish his work himself; but he found an editor worthy of him in his friend from youth, the famous Linnaeus, who retrieved the manuscripts from the hands of his landlord and devoted nearly a year of his time to revising, completing, and preparing them for printing. He published them at Leiden in 1738, but as early as 1735 he used them for his account of the fishes in the first edition of his Systema naturae, which appeared in Leiden that year as three large single-page tables [see Table 4].
8Linnaeus,3 who himself later became such a great authority in ichthyology, at first did not dare to depart from the footsteps of a friend who, in this science, had been his master. But in the second edition of his Systema naturae (1740), he had the great good sense to provide the number of fin rays for each species. This observation, imitated by his successors, produced unheard-of advantages for ichthyology, not exactly for determining species, but for recognizing the natural genera and subgenera to which each species should be attributed. Often it is the only guide that can lead us through the many confused and incomplete descriptions that fill the literature.
9In the sixth edition of the Systema naturae (1748),4 Linnaeus added only two genera to those of Artedi, Aspredo (asprèdes) and Callichthys (callichtes), both of which (in the tenth edition) he later suppressed. The ninth edition, reprinted at Leiden under the supervision of Gronovius,5 received only the new genera that that editor had just established in his Museum ichthyologicum [see Table 5]: Silurus (silures), Solenostomus (solénostomes), Gymnogastrus (gymnogastres), Charax (charax), Uranoscopus (uranoscopes), Atherina (athérines), Plecostomus (plécostomes), Polynemus (polynèmes), Mystus (mystes), Holocentrus (holocentres), and Callorhyncus (callorhynques). Yet most of these new genera had been indicated earlier in Artedi’s supplements or in the manuscript of the third volume of Seba, prepared by Artedi and of which Gronovius had knowledge.
A stonefish and seamoth
Synanceia horrida and Pegasus volitans. Fishes from Laurens Theodorus Gronovius’s Zoophylacium Gronovianum, 1763-1781, pt 1, pl. 11.
10It was only in the tenth edition of the Systema naturae, published in 1758-1759, that Linnaeus, trusting to his own resources, created a new ichthyological classification, divided some genera and combined others, gave the species some common names and characteristic phrases, and added several to those that Artedi had accepted as sufficiently verified.
11The most appropriate of the changes in the general distribution was to separate the cetaceans from the fishes, with which they had been grouped since the time of the ancients. Aristotle had already remarked that the cetaceans are warm blooded, that they breathe with lungs, that they give birth to live young and nurse them; in short, that their whole interior structure is that of a viviparous quadruped. Ray and Artedi repeated these characters, yet they continued to classify the cetaceans with the fishes. Brisson6 was the first to separate them and make them a class apart, which he placed immediately after that of the viviparous quadrupeds; Linnaeus in turn united the cetaceans and the viviparous quadrupeds to form his class Mammalia.
12Not so felicitously, Linnaeus placed Artedi’s chondropterygian fishes next to the reptiles under the name Amphibia nantes. It is not easy to understand how he could suppose that they have lungs, especially because he left the sturgeon (esturgeon) there and added the anglerfish (baudroie), which Artedi had placed in his Branchiostegi.
13Linnaeus carried this transgression against natural order much further in his twelfth edition, when he joined the rest of Artedi’s Branchiostegi to the Amphibia nantes, namely, the boxfishes (coffres), the puffers (tétrodons), and even the pipefishes and their allies (syngnathes), which Artedi had placed in his Malacopterygii.
14In my opinion, it was not a better change (although the change was to remain in effect for a long time) to abandon the division of bony fishes into Acanthopterygii and Malacopterygii (which had been in effect since the time of Willughby) and replace it with a distribution based on the presence or absence of pelvic fins and their position relative to the pectorals. Nothing interferes more with the true correlations of genera than to recognize as orders the Apodes, Jugulares, Thoracici, and Abdominales: the swordfish (xiphias), for example, is separated from the mackerels (scombres), and the barracuda (sphyrène), which is almost a perch, is placed among the pikes (brochets), and so on. In the twelfth edition of the Systema naturae, Linnaeus suppressed some of the genera of Artedi and Gronovius: Holocentrus (holocentres) was included with the perches (perches); Anableps (anableps), included with Cobitis (cobites); Coregonus (corrégones), Osmerus (osmères), and Charax (charax), all included within Salmo (saumons); and Aspredo (asprèdes), Callichthys (callichtes), and Mystus (mystes), included with Silurus (silures). At the same time, he divided other genera, separating Tetraodon (tétrodons) and Diodon (diodons) from Ostracion (ostracions), Callionymus (callionymes) from Trachinus (vives), and Mullus (mulles) from Trigla (trigles); and he added entirely new genera —Mormyrus (mormyres), Centriscus (centrisques), and Pegasus (pégases)— so that the total comes to fifty-seven. Moreover, he changed some of the names Gronovius had assigned: Plecostomus (plécostomes) of the Dutch ichthyologist became Loricaria (loricaires); Solenostomus (solénostomes) became Fistularia (fistulaires); Gymnogaster (gymnogastres), Trichiurus (trichiures); and Callorhyncus (callorhynques), Chimaera (chimères).
Amphibia nantes
Extracts of the tenth edition of Carolus Linnaeus’s Systema naturae (1758-1759).
An assortment of fishes
From Albertus Seba’s Locupletissimi rerum naturalium thesauri…, 1758, tome 3, pl. 34.
15The number of species recognized by Linnaeus came to 414 —some taken from publications printed after Artedi, such as the work of Edwards,7 the second volume of Catesby,8 the natural history of Jamaica by Browne,9 and especially the dissertations of Johann Friedrich Gronovius and the Museum ichthyologicum of Laurens Theodorus Gronovius; other species were observed by Linnaeus himself on his travels10 and personally examined in various collections.11 Still others were procured for him by students12 whom he sent to many foreign regions; the most zealous of his students in ichthyology at the time were Hasselquist,13 Osbeck,14 and Lofling.15
16The twelfth edition of the Systema naturae, published from 1766 to 1768, was enriched by several additional species and good citations taken from the Zoophylacium of L.T. Gronovius16 and from the third volume of the description of the collections of Seba,17 a volume valuable for its drawings of foreign fishes, superior to all others up to that time, the text of which had been prepared in 1734 and 1735 by Artedi, although it was not published until 1759, at the expense and under the supervision of Gaubius.18
17Linnaeus also profited in this edition from the natural history of Aleppo by Russell ;19 from the natural history of perches of the Danube by Schaeffer;20 from the first descriptions of the fishes in the museum of St. Petersburg published by Koelreuter;21 from descriptions published by a society formed at Trondheim by Bishop Gunner;22 and handwritten observations, since published, on the swordfish (espadon) by Kölpin.23 He even collected citations from older books, the description of the museum of Gottorp by Olearius24 and the Gazophylacium by Petiver.25 Finally, he included some fishes from the Carolinas, for which he was obliged to Alexander Garden,26 and he used two more from the same source in the appendix of his Mantissa plantarum.27 Had he known about them, he could have taken material from Meyer,28 Hill,29 Knorr,30 De Nobleville and Salerne,31 and especially from Kramer,32 who had followed his classification methods and where he would have found a new genus, Poecilia [actually Umbra].33 A multitude of those special descriptions called monographs would also have served him well, but their obscurity or small significance caused him to neglect them.
18What is remarkable, and what is not due to neglect, is that Linnaeus never cited the ichthyological fascicles of Klein,34 even though they offered new species, fine drawings, and some groups that could have formed the basis for good genera; but the names were poorly composed, and the distribution of the genera was ill-defined and not very natural [see Table 6]. Moreover, Linnaeus, who had been violently attacked by Klein,35 apparently wished to avenge himself against him as he did against Buffon36 —the only vengeance appropriate to a true scientist, if indeed even that was appropriate, the vengeance of not mentioning him.
Cabinet of Olearius
Fishes from Adam Olearius’s Gottorffische Kunst-Kammer worinnen allerhand…, 1674, tome 3, pl. 25.
19The distribution of orders was not at all improved in the twelfth edition of the Systema naturae; on the contrary, Linnaeus, as mentioned above, still placed all the members of Artedi’s Branchiostegi in the Amphibia nantes. To the genera already accepted he added Cepola (cépoles), indicated by Artedi under the name Taenia (taenia); Teuthis (teuthis), which corresponds to Hepatus (hépatus) of Gronovius; and Amia (amia) and Elops (élops), which he described from fishes sent by Garden, bringing the number of genera to sixty-one. He entirely ignored the new genera erected by Gronovius in the Zoophylacium [see Table 7], although there were quite good ones, which have since been recognized again by Bloch, by Lacepède, or by us, such as Gonorhynchus (gonorhynchus), Leptocephalus (leptocéphalus), Eleotris (éléotris), Amia (amia) of Gronovius, which is the same as Apogon (apogon), Mastacembelus (mastacembelus), and Umbra (umbra), which is a killifish (fondule), and so on [see Table 8].
20Linnaeus also ignored several remarkable species from the Zoophylacii Gronoviani, in particular Cynodus cauda bifurca, and such, which is the same as Cheirodactylus (chéirodactyle) of Lacepède, so that the total number of species comes to only 477. But numerical augmentation is of least consideration in the works of this illustrious naturalist: the precision of the characters, the convenience of a well-established terminology, easily remembered common names given to each species, and the binary nomenclature introduced into ichthyology as in all the rest of the system of nature were very important advantages. These advantages are what gave Linnaeus the preeminence that was granted to him in one way or another by every naturalist in his time and proved by the nearly universal adoption of his nomenclature, even to the almost exclusive use of his classification, however imperfect and artificial it may have been.
21If some writers, such as Duhamel du Monceau,37 continued to follow old classifications, it was out of ignorance rather than by a premeditated design of resisting the revolution taking place. For ichthyology particularly, the true naturalists writing immediately after Linnaeus either were in entire submission to him or had nothing original enough or even good enough in the changes they proposed to win over his followers.
22Pennant,38 in his British Zoology, even though he had the good sense to rejoin the Amphibia nantes with the cartilaginous fishes, made the mistake of reuniting the cetaceans with the fishes; and for the bony fishes he retained the Linnaean divisions Apodes, Jugulares, Thoracici, and Abdominales. His work was useful, however, because of its good drawings and for its little-known historical details.
23Goüan, under the overly broad title Historia piscium, referred only to genera, which, to be sure, he described in much detail, although in pedantic terms39 His classification was Artedi’s, based on the consistency of the skeleton and the fin rays, and he subdivided his classes according to the position of the fins, as did Linnaeus, even placing the Chondropterygii with the amphibians, as Linnaeus did in his tenth edition. Nothing was gained in method, but Goüan added three well-defined genera to those his master had established: Lepadogaster (lépadogaster), Lepidopus (lépidopes), and Trachipterus (trachiptères).
24Forster, in his Enchiridion historiae naturali inserviens,40 put the Amphibia nantes back among the fishes, as did Pennant, and took a course opposite that of Goüan for the bony fishes, which he first divided according to the presence or absence of pelvic fins and their position, further subdividing the resulting groups according to whether the fin rays are spiny or soft. He was not even very exact in this last respect, for he regarded the butterfish (stromatée), the scabbardfish (lépidope), and the silverside (athérine) as malacopterygians, and the cuskeel (ophidium) and the tarpon (elops) as acanthopterygians, which is contrary to the truth. He proposed only two new genera, Echidna (echidna), which is a moray eel (murène), and Harpurus (harpurus), not perceiving that it was the same as Teuthis (teuthis) of Linnaeus.
25Pallas, a man of genius who at that time readily perceived some of the true correlations of the animals that Linnaeus included indiscriminately under the name Vermes (vers), published only some special descriptions of fishes, not to be compared with the combined works of Artedi and Linnaeus.41 He introduced other fishes in the memoirs of the Academy of Sciences of St. Petersburg, but his principal work on this class, the third volume of his Zoographia Rosso-Asiatica, composed toward the end of his life, has not yet been published.42
26Otherwise the impetus that the influence of Linnaeus gave to research, had he no other merit but that, would suffice to immortalize his name. In simplifying natural history, or at least in making it appear so, he inspired a liking for it generally. Men of the upper class were interested in it; young people full of ardor hurried off in all directions, with the sole intention of completing the system; and at least as regards the species, nature everywhere was made to contribute to the well-being of the edifice for which this extraordinary man had drawn the plan.
Notes de bas de page
1 Peter Artedi, his father a pastor, was born in the parish of Anunds in Ångermanland in 1705. Destined for the church, he was sent in 1716 to the college of Härnösand, and in 1724 to the University of Uppsala, where his taste for alchemy led him to choose the field of medicine. It was there that Linnaeus met him in 1728 and formed a close friendship with him. Artedi left for London in 1734, and in 1735 he came to Leiden to find his friend Linnaeus, who introduced him to [Albertus] Seba as the man most capable of writing the part on fishes in the great description of Seba’s cabinet [see note 17 below]. [In the early hours of 28 September 1735, after an evening of socializing at the house of Seba], Artedi, at the age of thirty, drowned in one of the canals of Amsterdam. [For more on Artedi, see Lönnberg (Einar), Peter Artedi —a bicentenary memoir written on behalf of the Swedish Royal Academy of Science [tr. by Harlock W. E.], Uppsala: Almquist & Wiksells Boktryckeri, 1905, 44 p.; Merriman (Daniel), “Peter Artedi —systematist and ichthyologist,” Copeia, vol. 1, 1938, pp. 33-39; Merriman (Daniel), “A rare manuscript adding to our knowledge of the work of Peter Artedi,” Copeia, vol. 2, 1941, pp. 64-69; Wheeler (Alwyne C.), “The life and work of Peter Artedi,” in Wheeler (Alwyne C.) (ed.), Petri Artedi Ichthyologia, historiae naturalis classica, Weinheim: J. Cramer, 1961, pp. vii-xxiii; Wheeler (Alwyne C.), “The sources of Linnaeus’s knowledge of fishes,” Svenska Linnésällskapets årsskrift (Uppsala), vol. 1978, 1979, pp. 156-211; Wheeler (Alwyne C.), “Peter Artedi, founder of modern ichthyology,” Proceedings of the Vth European Congress of Ichthyology (Stockholm), vol. 1985, 1987, pp. 3-10; and Pietsch (Theodore W.), The Curious Death of Peter Artedi: A Mystery in the History of Science, New York: Scott & Nix, 2010, x + 222 p.]
2 [Artedi (1738) added a number of additional] genera in his supplements [to the Ichthyologia]: in the [’Appendix” to his] “Genera piscium” [pp. 82-84] be added Taenia (les cépoles), Silurus, Mustela (blenn. viviparus), Phycis, and Sphyraena; in the “Descriptiones specierum piscium” [pp. 112-118], he added Cicla (des labres), Hepatus, Capriscus (baliste), Pholis, Citharus, Atherina, Liparis, and Chelon (des muges) [see Gill (Theodore), “Arrangement of the families of fishes, or classes Pisces, Marsipobranchii, and Leptocardii,” Smithsonian Miscellaneous Collection, vol. 247, 1872, pp. 27-28].
3 Perhaps it is not necessary to dwell on the well-known life of Linnaeus, that great reformer of plant and animal nomenclature, the naturalist who exerted the most incontestable influence on his century, and whose language is spoken in every country where natural history is pursued. We shall confine ourselves to principal dates to refresh our readers’ memory. Carolus Linnaeus was born at Roeshult in Småland on 24 May 1707. He was sent to the college of Vexioe in 1717, went to the University of Lund in 1727 and the next year to Uppsala. He underwent every privation until 1728, when Olof Celsius [1670-1756] and Olof Rudbeck [1660-1740] employed him in their work. It was with Rudbeck that he laid the first foundations of his philosophy of botany. In 1732 he traveled to Lapland, lived for a while at Fahlun, then went to Holland, where for a while he looked after the gardens of a rich businessman named [George] Clifford [1685-1760]. It was in this capacity that he published his works: Fundamenta botanica [1736], Bibliotheca botanica [1736], Musa Cliffortiana [1736], Critica botanica [1737], Genera plantarum [1737], Methodus sexualis [1737], Flora Lapponica [1737], Hortus Cliffortianus [1737], Classes plantarum [1738], and what especially interests us, the first edition of his Systema naturae (1735) and the Ichthyologia (1738) of Artedi. Employed in 1738, through the patronage of the count de Tessin and Baron Carl de Geer, to teach botany at Stockholm, he published there the Museum Tessinianum [1753a], the first volume of the Museum Suae Regiae, Maiestatis Adolphi Friderici Regis [1754], and the Museum Ludovicae Ulricae Reginae Suecorum [1764]. In 1741 he was named professor at Uppsala, and he exercised that responsibility until his death in 1778. It is there that he published his Philosophia botanica (1751), his Species plantarum (1753), his Mantissa plantarum (1767, 1771), the numerous dissertations that fill the ten volumes of his Amoenitates academicae [the Linnaeus or Stockholm edition was published from 1749 to 1769], and the last four original editions of his Systema naturae [see note 4 below]. In 1773 his memory was already failing, and two apoplectic attacks, in 1774 and 1777, had much altered his health. [He died on 10 January 1778 at Uppsala, where he was buried in the cathedral. For more on Linnaeus and his work, see Frangsmyr (Tore), Linnaeus, the man and his work, Berkeley; Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1983, xii + 203 p., ills.]
4 The original editions of the Systema naturae can be reduced to six, the first published at Leiden in 1735, the remaining five all at Stockholm: the second in 1740a, the sixth in 1748a, the eighth in 1753c, the tenth from 1758 to 1759, and the twelfth from 1766 to 1768 [see Table 4; Gill (Theodore), “Arrangement of the families of fishes, or classes Pisces, Marsipobranchii, and Leptocardii,” Smithsonian Miscellaneous Collection, vol. 247, 1872, pp. 31-34]. The first four of these consisted of a single volume, the tenth was produced in two volumes, and the twelfth, in three volumes. The third edition, published at Halle in 1740b, is a copy of the first; the fourth, at Paris, 1744, is a copy of the second, supervised by Bernard de Jussieu [1699-1777], who added the names in French. The fifth, published at Halle in 1747, is also a copy of the second, to which were added the names in German. The seventh edition, produced at Leipzig, 1748, and the ninth, at Leiden, 1756, are taken from the sixth; however, in the ninth edition the part on fishes is augmented by several genera added by the editor [Laurens Theodorus] Gronovius [1730-1777]. The tenth edition was reprinted at Halle from 1760 to 1770 and at Leipzig in 1762; but Linnaeus must not have known about the reprinting at Halle because he counts the one at Leipzig as only the eleventh [the Leipzig edition of 1762 is probably nonexistent; see Hulth (Johan Markus), Bibliographia Linnaeana: Matériaux pour servir à une bibliographie Linnéenne, Uppsala: Almqvist och Wiksells, 1907, p. 7; Wheeler (Alwyne C.), Caroli Linne, Systema naturae editio 12, tomus 1, Regnum animale (1766) [a microfiche reproduction of the author’s personal annotated copy from the Linnean Society of London; with an historical introduction by Wheeler Alwyne], London: Natural History Museum in association with the Linnean Society of London, 1991, p. 9]. The twelfth edition was reprinted at Vienna from 1767 to 1770 as the thirteenth, but this did not prevent [Johann Friedrich] Gmelin [1748-1804] from assigning the number thirteen to his great edition of 1788-1793, the last, but which itself was reprinted at Lyons from 1788 to 1796 and in the years following.
5 The Gronovius family, originally from Hamburg and established at Leiden, produced several famous erudites and two naturalists. Johan Frederic Gronovius [1686-1762], second of that name, brother of Abraham [1695-1775], the editor of Aelianus, published several dissertations on fishes, in particular “Pisces Belgii” [1746] and “Pisces Belgii descripti” [1748] in Acta Societatis Regiae Scientiarum Upsaliensis for the years 1741 and 1742, respectively. He treated the same subject in his “Animalium Belgicorum centuria secunda,” included in the fourth volume of Acta Helvetica [ “Animalium in Belgio habitantium” was actually published by Laurens Theodorus Gronovius (see below) in five parts, 1760-1762, Acta Helvetica, vols 4 and 5]. He described in particular the loach (misgurn), Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society, London, vol. 44 [1747]; and in volumes of the Acta Societatis Regiae Scientiarum Upsaliensis, the dragonet (callionyme) [1744a], the salmon (becard) [1746], and the mackerel (maquereau) 1 and the perch (perche) [1751]. It is to him that we owe the method of preparing fish skins, as one would a herbarium, which he described in the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society, London, vol. 42 [1744]. Laurens Theodorus Gronovius [1730-1777], also the second of that name, son of the preceding, published Museum ichthyologicum, two fascicles in folio, at Leiden in 1754 and 1756, with seven plates, in which he described and represented several new fishes. They appear again with others in the first fascicle of his Zoophylacium, printed in 1763; the second fascicle, containing insects, appeared in 1764, and the third, which is on worms (vers), did not appear until after his death in 1781. In these works, Gronovius included genera that were unknown to Artedi, some of which were adopted by Linnaeus, and some by his successors. [For more on Laurens Theodorus Gronovius and his fishes, see Wheeler (Alwyne C.), “The Zoophylacium of Laurens Theodore Gronovius,” Journal of the Society for the Bibliography of Natural History, vol. 3, no. 3, 1956, pp. 152-157; “The Gronovius fish collection: A catalogue and historical account,” British Museum (Natural History) Bulletin. Historical series, vol. 1, no. 5, 1958, pp. 185-249, pls 26-34; “Further notes on the fishes from the collection of Laurens Theodore Gronovius,” Zoological Journal of the Linnean Society, vol. 95, 1989, pp. 205-218.]
6 Mathurin [Jacques] Brisson, born at Fontenay-le-Comte in 1723, assisted [René Antoine Ferchault de] Réaumur [see chap. 11, note 33] in arranging his cabinets; later a member of the Académie des Sciences and professor of physical science at the Collège de Navarre, he died in Paris in 1806. He began a general zoology under the title Le Règne animal, divise en neuf classes, published at Paris in 1756, one volume in quarto. This first volume, which contains the quadrupeds and the cetaceans, was followed by an “ornithology” in six volumes in quarto, 1760, but Brisson abandoned natural history after the death of Réaumur [1757], and toward the end of his life he had no remembrance of his first works. [For more on Brisson, see Allen (Elsa Guerdrum), “The history of American ornithology before Audubon,” Transactions of the American Philosophical Society, new series, vol. 41, no. 3, 1951, pp. 498-499.]
7 See above [chapter 6, note 13].
8 The [second] volume [of Catesby’s Natural History of Carolina, Florida and the Bahama Islands] did not appear until 1743.
9 Patrick Browne [1720-1790], physician at Jamaica, in his civil and natural history of that island, printed in English in folio, at London in 1756, described ninety-three fishes according to Artedi’s classification, and much better than Sloane had done.
10 Linnaeus published accounts of his travels in the Swedish provinces as a naturalist, seldom omitting to describe fishes; for example, his visit to Öland and Gotland in 1741 [Öländska och Gothländska resa, Stockholm and Uppsala, 1745], Västergötland in 1746 [Wästgöta-resa, Stockholm, 1747b], and Skåne in 1749 [Skånska resa, Stockholm, 1751b].
11 Linnaeus described a number of collections that contained new fishes: (1) the cabinet that the crown prince Fridrick Adolphus gave to the University of Uppsala: Museum Adolpho-Fridericianum published in 1749, Amœnitates academicae, vol. 1 [the dissertation of Laurentius Balk; see Linnaeus (Carl), Museum Adolpho-Fridericianum, quod, cum consensu ampliss. Fac. Medicae in Regia Acad. Upsaliensi, sub praesidio viri celeberrimi, D.D. Caroli Linnaei… Speciminis academici loco publico bonorum examini submittit Laurentius Balk Fil, Stockholm: Laurentius Salvius, 1746, [8] + 48 p., ills, in-4°; “Museum Adolpho-Fridericianum, sub praesidio Dn. D. Caroli Linnaei… propositum Laurent. Balk, Fil,” in Linnaeus (Carl), Amœnitates academicae…, vol. 1, Stockholm: Laurentius Salvius, 1749, pp. 277-327]. (2) The cabinet that the same prince, after he became king, assembled at the castle of Ulriksdal: one volume in folio titled Museum Suae Regiae, Maiestatis Adolphi Friderici Regis…, Stockholm, 1754, which includes thirty-six handsome illustrations of fishes; the second part of this work, which includes descriptions of ninety-three fishes, and which Linnaeus also cited in his twelfth edition of the Systema naturae, was printed in octavo without illustrations in 1764. (3) The cabinet that Magnus of Lagerström, director of the Swedish East India Company, received from China: Chinensia Lagerströmiana, published in 1759, Amœnitates academicae, vol. 4 [the dissertation of Johannes Laurentius Odhelius; see Linnaeus (Carl), Specimen academicum, sistens Chinensia Lagerströmiana. Quod, annvente nob: a Facilitate Medica. in R. Academia Upsal. praeside viro nobilissimo et experientissimo.... Publicae disquisition submittit Johannes Laurentius Odhelius, W.G., Stockholm: Jacob Merckell, 1754, [iii] + 36 p.; “Chinensia Lagerströmiana, praeside D.D. Car. Linnaeo, proposita a Johann Laur. Odhelio, W. Gotho. Upsaliae 1754, Decembr. 23,” in Linnaeus (Carl), Amœnitates academicae, Stockholm: Laurentius Salvius, 1759, vol. 4, pp. 230-260]. [The sources of Linnaeus’s knowledge of fishes are discussed by Wheeler (Alwyne C.), “The sources of Linnaeus’s knowledge of fishes,” Svenska Linnésällskapets årsskrift (Uppsala), vol. 1978, 1979, pp. 156-211; “The Linnaean fish collection in the Linnean Society of London,” Zoological Journal of the Linnean Society, vol. 84, 1985, pp. 1-76, “The Linnaean fish collection in the Zoological Museum of the University of Uppsala,” Zoological Journal of the Linnean Society, vol. 103, 1991, pp. 145-195; Caroli Linne, Systema naturae editio 12, tomus 1, Regnum animale (1766) [a microfiche reproduction of the author’s personal annotated copy from the Linnean Society of London; with an historical introduction by Wheeler Alwyne], London: Natural History Museum in association with the Linnean Society of London, 1991, 2 vols, ills; see also Fernholm (Bo) & Wheeler (Alwyne C.), “Linnaean fish specimens in the Swedish Museum of Natural History, Stockholm,” Zoological Journal of the Linnean Society, vol. 78, 1983, pp. 199-286.]
12 Linnaeus himself provided a list of these young explorers who came before his tenth edition; most of them sent to him specimens of the natural products they were able to gather: [C.] Ternström traveled in Asia, 1745; [Peter] Kalm [1716- 1779; see Allen (Elsa Guerdrum), “The history of American ornithology before Audubon,” Transactions of the American Philosophical Society, new series, vol. 41, no. 3, 1951, pp. 507-511], in Pennsylvania and Canada, 1747; [Lars] Montin, in Lapland, 1749; [Fredrik] Hasselquist, in Egypt and Palestine, 1749; [Olof] Toren (died 1753), Malabar and Surat, 1750; [Pehr] Osbeck, Canton and Java, 1750; [Pehr] Löfling, Spain and [South] America, 1751; [M.] Köhler, Italy, 1752; and [Daniel] Rolander, Surinam and St. Eustache, 1755. In the Swedish interior, [Peter Jonas] Bergius went to the island of Gotland in 1752 and [Daniel] Solander to Lapland in 1753 [see Linnaeus (Carl), Systema naturae per regna tria naturae, secundum classes, ordines, genera, species, cum characteribus, differentiis, synonymis, locis [10th ed. rev.], Stockholm: Laurentius Salvius, 1758-1759, vol. 1, p. ii (of unpaged front matter)].
13 Fredrik Hasselquist [born 1722], traveled to Egypt and Palestine from 1749 to 1752; he died in February 1752. His voyage was published under the auspices of Linnaeus: Iter Palæstinum, Stockholm, 1757, in octavo. Among many objects of natural history, he described thirty-one fishes in great detail. A German translation appeared in 1762, [an English translation in 1766], and a French translation in 1769 by Keralio, which omitted the only useful part, the natural history.
14 Pehr Osbeck [1723-1805] was, like Toren, a ship’s chaplain. His Dagbok öfver en Ostindisk resa, printed in Swedish at Stockholm in 1757, in octavo, contains the description of sixteen fishes [the pilotfish, Naucrates ductor, is figured in pl. 12, fig. 2]. There is a German translation, Reise nach Ostindien und China, by Georgi, Rostock, 1765; [and an English translation by Johann Reinhold Forster, London, 1771]. Osbeck also published in Nova Acta Physico-Medica Academiae Caesareae Leopoldino-Carolinae Naturae Curiosorum, vol. 4, 1770, some “Fragmenta ichthyologiae Hispanicae.”
15 Linnaeus cites only letters from Pehr Löfling [1729-1756], in the tenth edition. The voyage of this naturalist in Spanish America in 1751 was not printed until 1758 at Stockholm. He described nine fishes. There is a German translation by [Alexander Bernhard] Kölpin, Berlin, 1776.
16 The first fascicle of the Zoophylacium Gronovianum, which contained the fishes, was published in 1763 [see note 5 above].
17 Albertus Seba, born at Etzel, Ostfriesland, in 1665, was a rich pharmacist at Amsterdam who assembled at great cost a very considerable cabinet of natural history, part of which was purchased by Peter the Great and transported to St. Petersburg, and the rest dispersed upon the death of the owner. He had it described and magnificently engraved in four folio volumes, in atlas format, published at Amsterdam in 1734, 1735, 1758, and 1765, the last two volumes appearing posthumously. The text of the third volume contains very good articles on fishes by Artedi, which are rather finer than the rest of the work. The work remained in manuscript long after Seba’s death and the dispersal of his cabinet; but Gronovius knew it in that state and used it in his Museum ichthyologicum of 1754. Seba died in 1736. [For more on Seba, see Engel (Hendrik), “The life of Albert Seba,” Svenska Linnésällskapets årsskrift (Uppsala), vol. 20, 1937, pp. 75-100; Alphabetical list of Dutch zoological cabinets and ménageries [2nd ed. prepared by Smit Pieter], Amsterdam: Rodopi, 1986, x + 340 p., tab., ills; Holthuis (Lipke B.), “Albertus Seba’s ‘Locupletissimi rerum naturalium thesauri… ’ (1734-1765) and the ‘Planches de Seba’ (1827-1831),” Zoologische Mededelingen (Leiden), vol. 43, no. 19, 1969, pp. 239-252, pls 1-3; Boeseman (Marinus), “The vicissitudes and dispersal of Albertus Seba’s zoological specimens,” Zoologische Mededelingen (Leiden), vol. 44, no. 13, 1970, pp. 177-206, pls 1-4.]
18 [Hieronymus David Gaubius (1705-1780), professor of medicine at Leiden University.]
19 Alexander Russell [born c. 1715], died in 1768, a Scottish physician who lived at Aleppo, published in 1756, London, in quarto, The Natural History of Aleppo, and Parts Adjacent in which he has good illustrations of fishes of the river Orontes [see Russell (Alexander), The natural history of Aleppo, and parts adjacent, containing a description of the city, and the principal natural productions in its neighbourhood; together with an account of the climate, inhabitants, and diseases; particularly of the plague, with the methods used by the Europeans for their preservation, London: A. Millar, 1756, pp. 73-77, pls 12-13].
20 Jacob Christian Schaeffer was born at Querfurt in 1718, became a pastor at Ratisbon in 1741, and died in 1790. He wrote at length on insects, but he also published Piscium Bavarico-Ratisbonensium pentas at Ratisbon, 1761, in quarto, a small book that treats only five species but is remarkable for its accuracy.
21 Joseph Gottlieb Koelreuter [1733-1806], of Karlsruhe, the celebrated producer of plant hybrids (mulets végétaux), also interested himself in fishes. He published two memoirs in Novi commentarii Academiae Scientiarum Imperialis Petropolitanae, St. Petersburg, vols 8 and 9, 1763 and 1764, in which he described and illustrated nine species with great accuracy. In vol. 14 of the same journal (1770), he illustrated the navaga [a member of the gadid genus Eleginus] (narwaga), and in vol. 15 [1771], the lake whitefish (lavaret); vols 16 and 17 [1772, 1773], the anatomy of the sterlet (sterlet); vol. 18 [1774], the whitefish (salmo albula); vol. 19 [1775], the freshwater burbot (lote), and so on. He continued this work in Nova Acta Academiae Scientiarum Imperialis Petropolitanae until vol. 9 (1795), in which he had a final memoir, on the flounder (flet).
22 Tronhiemske Samlinger udgivne af philaletho [Memoirs of the Society of Trondheim, a periodical] fairly rich in information on objects of natural history of the North, began to appear at Trondheim in 1761, one volume in duodecimo, in Danish, the second volume in 1762, the third in 1763, and the fourth in 1764, all containing important articles on fishes [see Gunner (Johan Ernst), Tronhiemske Samlinger udgivne af philaletho, Trondheim: J. E. Gunner, 1761-1764, 5 vols]. The founder and principal collaborator was Johan Ernst Gunner, bishop of Trondheim (1718-1773). Hans Strøm, born in 1726 [died 1797], pastor of the church of Eger, also worked on this series of publications. He produced separately a physical and economic description of the bailiwick of Soendmoer in Norway, printed in Danish at Sorøe, 1762-1766, two volumes in quarto, which includes good descriptions of fishes.
23 [Alexander Bernhard Kölpin, 1739-1801; see Kölpin (Alexander Bernhard), “Anmärkningar vid svård-fiskens, xiphae, anatomie och natural-historie,” Kongliga Vetenskaps Academiens Nya Handlingar, vol. 31, 1770, pp. 5-16, pl. 2; “Ytterligane anmärkningar, vid svård-fiskens natural-historia,” Kongliga Vetenskaps Academiens Nya Handlingar, vol. 32, 1771, pp. 115-119, pl. 4.]
24 Adam Olearius or Oehlschlaeger, born in 1599 in the area of Anhalt, became secretary to the duke of Holstein, accompanied [Johann Albert] Mandelslo [1616-1644] on his travels in Persia, and later [1666] published a description of the cabinet of Gottorp. He died in 1671.
25 James Petiver, an apothecary at London [born 1665 or 1664], died in 1718. He was the author of several works, the plates of which were collected in two volumes in folio under the title Jacobi Petiveri opera, historiam naturalem spectantia; or, Gazophylacium…, London, 1764. There are 306 plates showing in no particular order a multitude of objects of natural history, including some fishes here and there but not very well drawn. [For more on Petiver, see Stearns (Raymond Phineas), “James Petiver, promoter of natural science,” Proceedings of the American Antiquarian Society, vol. 62, 1952, pp. 243-379; Edwards (Phyllis I.), “Sir Hans Sloane and his curious friends,” in Wheeler (A.C.) & Price (J.H.) (ed.), History in the service of systematics [Papers from the conference to celebrate the centenary of the British Museum (Natural History) 13-16 April, 1981], London: Society for the Bibliography of Natural History, 1981, pp. 29-31.]
26 Alexander Garden, a Scottish physician, born in 1730, lived in South Carolina and died in London in 1791 [see Berkeley (Edmund) & Berkeley (Dorothy S.), Dr. Alexander Garden of Charles Town, Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1969, XIV + 379 p., ills]. Letters from Garden are found in the Correspondence of Linnaeus with Various Scientists (published in 1821 by Sir James Edward Smith, London, two volumes in octavo), which had been enclosed with objects sent by Garden to the great Swedish naturalist and are often useful in understanding the articles Linnaeus wrote about the objects [see Goode (George Brown) & Bean (Tarleton H.), “On the American fishes in the Linnaean collection,” Proceedings of the United States National Museum, vol. 8, no. 13, 1885, pp. 193-208; Wheeler (Alwyne C.), “The Linnaean fish collection in the Linnean Society of London,” Zoological Journal of the Linnean Society, vol. 84, 1985, pp. 1-76].
27 Mantissa plantarum [Linnaeus, 1767, 1771] is a supplement to the sixth edition of the Genera plantarum [Linnaeus, 1764] and to the second edition of the Species plantarum [Linnaeus, 1762-1763]. The appendix [Linnaeus 1771] is an addition to the animal kingdom of the Systema naturae and contains references to only three fishes.
28 Johann Daniel Meyer [1713-1752], painter at Nuremberg, published in German a collection of 240 mediocre plates showing illustrations of various animals (including several common fishes), along with their skeletons, Nuremberg, 1748-1756, three volumes in folio.
29 John Hill, a pharmacist and later physician in London [born 1714], died in 1775, is the author of a great quantity of works, among them A General Natural History, three volumes in folio, London, 1748-1752, in English, the first volume of which is on animals and contains a long chapter on fishes [pp. 201-315], ordered according to Artedi. The illustrations are taken mostly from Willughby [1686]. [On Hill, see Rousseau (George Sebastian), “The much-maligned doctor ‘Sir’ John Hill (1707-1775),” Journal of the American Medical Association, vol. 212, no. 1, 1970, pp. 103-108; Rousseau (George Sebastian), “John Hill, universal genius manqué: Remarks on his life and times, with a check-list of his works,” in Lemay (Joseph A. Leo) & Rousseau (George Sebastian), The Renaissance man in the eighteenth century, Berkeley; Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1978, pp. 45-129; Laundon (Jack Rodney), “The date of birth of Sir John Hill,” Archives of Natural History, vol. 10, no. 1, 1981, pp. 65-66.]
30 Georg Wolfgang Knorr [1705-1761], a painter and engraver at Nuremberg, published several collections of drawings, one of which, titled Deliciae naturae selectae, Nuremberg, 1766-1767, two volumes in folio, contains fishes; the text is by Philipp Ludwig Statius Müller [1725-1776], the German translator of the Systema naturae [see Linnaeus (Carl), Des Ritters Carl von Linné… vollständiges Natursystem nach der zwölften lateinischen Ausgabe und nach Anleitung des holländischen Houttuynischen Werkes, mit einer ausführlichen Erklärung, ausgefertigt von Philipp Ludwig Statius Müller, Nuremberg: Gabriel Nicolaus Raspe, 1773-1776, 6 vols + suppl., in-8°], a naturalist of little education and a writer of poor taste.
31 [Louis Daniel] Arnault de Nobleville [1701-1778] and [François] Salerne [1706-1760], physicians at Orléans, in their Règne animal, Paris, 1756-1757, six volumes in duodecimo, wrote about fishes in the second volume, but it is only a poor compilation of common fishes.
32 Wilhelm Heinrich Kramer [1724-1765] was a physician at Dresden who lived at Bruck on the Leitha, on the border between Austria and Hungary. In his Elenchus vegetabilium et animalium per Austriam inferiorem observatorum, Vienna, 1756, he provides accounts of thirty-eight fishes, which he arranges according to the first method of Linnaeus and describes in his style. [For more on Kramer, see Mearns (Barbara) & Mearns (Richard), Biographies for birdwatchers, the lives of those commemorated in western Palearctic bird names, London: Academic Press, 1988, pp. 217-218.]
33 [Here again (see chapter 6, note 21), Cuvier indicates the presence in European waters of the strictly New World family Poeciliidae, this time as reported by Kramer (1756, 396): “Umbra Austr. Hundsfisch. Habitat in paludibus, et praesertim in cavernis subterraneis circa Leytaepontum.” Certainly not representing a new genus in Cuvier’s time, it had been christened Umbra some fifty years earlier by Kramer himself (in Scopoli, 1777: 450; see Eschmeyer (William N.), Catalog of the genera of recent fishes, San Francisco: California Academy of Sciences, 1990, p. 417) and the species was later named in his honor, Umbra krameri (Walbaum, 1792), the European mudminnow (Alwyne Wheeler, pers. comm., 13 November 1993; see Valenciennes (Achille), “Du genre Ombre (Umbra),” in Cuvier (Georges) & Valenciennes (Achille) (eds), Histoire naturelle des poissons, Paris; Strasbourg: Levrault, 1847, vol. 19, pl. 590).]
34 Jacob Theodor Klein, born at Danzig in 1685, died in 1759, secretary of that republic, was interested in all areas of zoology. His writings contradict almost all the naturalists of his time. The last three parts of his five-part Historiae piscium naturalis promovendae, printed from 1740 to 1749, contain several handsome illustrations, some new species, and some useful ideas. The first part is a description of the otoliths of fishes and is the only specialized treatise on this subject. The number of genera recognized by Klein is sixty-one, exactly as in the twelfth edition of Linnaeus (1766- 1768), but the divisions are entirely different. His method is different too; he bases his primary divisions on the general shape of the head and body, and he finishes with the number of dorsal fins, which departs from nature at least as much as Linnaeus’s system. [His classification is shown in Table 6. For more on Klein, see Gill (Theodore), “Arrangement of the families of fishes, or classes Pisces, Marsipobranchii, and Leptocardii,” Smithsonian Miscellaneous Collection, vol. 247, 1872, pp. 28-31; Adler (Kraig) (ed.), Contributions to the history of herpetology, Oxford (Ohio): Society for the Study of Amphibians and Reptiles, 1989, pp. 9-10. For a contemporary review of Klein’s Historiae piscium naturalis promovendae, see Eame (John), “An account… of a book intituled, Jacobi Theodori Klein ‘Historiae piscium naturalis promovendae missus primus Gendani, ’ 1740. Or the first number of an essay toward promoting the natural history of fishes, etc.,” Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society (London), vol. 42, 1742, pp. 27-33..]
35 [Klein’s attack on Linnaeus appeared] in a dissertation titled Summa dubiorum circa classes quadrupedum et amphibiorum in Linnaei systemate naturae, Danzig, 1743, in quarto [For more on conflict between Klein and Linnaeus, see Pietsch (Theodore W.) & Aili (Hans), “Jacob Theodor Klein (1685-1759) and his Petri Artedi operum brevis recensio: a previously unknown critique of Peter Artedi’s (1705-1735) Ichthyologia sive opera omnia de piscibus, Wishoff, Leiden, 1738,” Svenska Linné-sällskapets Årsskrift (Uppsala), 2014, pp. 39-84.]
36 The fourth volume in quarto of Buffon’s Histoire naturelle [published in forty-four volumes from 1749 to 1804; see below], in which the natural history of the quadrupeds begins, dates from 1753, and the thirteenth dates from 1765; nevertheless, Linnaeus did not cite Buffon in his tenth edition of 1758-1759 nor in the twelfth of 1766-1768. [Georges Louis Leclerc, comte de Buffon, French naturalist and philosopher, born at Montbard, Côte d’Or in 1707, died at Paris in 1788, member of the French Academy, perpetual treasurer of the Academy of Science, fellow of the Royal Society of London, and member of most of the learned societies of Europe. At the age of twenty-five he inherited a considerable fortune from his mother, and from this time onward he devoted himself to scientific study. In 1739 he became keeper of the Jardin du Roi and there began to collect materials for his great Histoire naturelle, générale et particulière, the first work to present the previously isolated and disconnected facts of natural history in a popular and generally intelligible form. Passing through several editions and translated into various languages, the Histoire naturelle was first published in Paris in forty-four quarto volumes between 1749 and 1804. The first fifteen volumes of this edition (1749-1767) were prepared with the help of Louis Jean Marie Daubenton and subsequently by P. Guéneau de Montbeillard, the abbé Gabriel Leopold C. A. Bexon, and Charles Nicolas Sigisbert Sonnini de Manoncourt. The following seven volumes (1774-1789) form a supplement to the preceding; these were later followed by nine volumes on birds (1770-1783) and five volumes on minerals (1783- 1788). The remaining eight volumes, which complete this edition, appeared after Button’s death and include the reptiles, fishes, and cetaceans, completed by Lacepède and published in successive volumes between 1788 and 1804. A second edition was begun in 1774 and completed in 1804, in thirty-six volumes in quarto (Encyclopaedia Britannica, 1951, vol. 4, p. 345).]
37 Henri Louis Duhamel du Monceau, an able and hardworking physical scientist and agronomist but a very bad ichthyologist, was born in Paris in 1700 and died in 1782. Among a multitude of works composed with H. L. de La Marre [I cannot find anything on this collaborator of Duhamel], is a Traité général des pêsches, which appeared serially from 1769 to 1782, in folio. Here he wrote on the natural history of fishes, but in a most confused manner, which indicates that he had not the least idea of what a natural history should be. Notwithstanding, this work is important to ichthyologists because of the numerous illustrations that adorn it, several being very handsome and quite accurate, although there are also some that are quite faulty, all depending on their sources. It also contains some interesting facts supplied to the author by his correspondents.
38 Thomas Pennant, a Welsh gentleman born at Downing in the county of Flint in 1726, died in 1798, discussed fishes in the third volume of his British Zoology, printed in 1768- 1770 in octavo and reprinted in 1776-1777 in quarto. He also wrote about fishes in his Arctic Zoology [1784-1787; see the “Supplement” of 1787, pp. 99-149], and in a short essay on Indian zoology [the first edition published in 1769 and a much expanded second edition in 1790]. [For more on Pennant, see Allen (Elsa Guerdrum), “The history of American ornithology before Audubon,” Transactions of the American Philosophical Society, new series, vol. 41, no. 3, 1951, pp. 491-494.]
39 Antoine Goüan [1733-1821], professor of botany at Montpellier, was one of the first proponents in France of Linnaeus’s methods and nomenclature [Gill (Theodore), “Arrangement of the families of fishes, or classes Pisces, Marsipobranchii, and Leptocardii,” Smithsonian Miscellaneous Collection, vol. 247, 1872, pp. 34-35]. His Historia piscium, printed at Strasbourg in quarto, in Latin and in French, in 1770, was probably intended only as an introduction to a true general natural history of these animals, which he never wrote.
40 We shall have more to say about Johann Reinhold Forster as an explorer [see chapter 9, note 13], but here we mention only his Enchiridion historiae naturali inserviens, published at Halle, 1788, in octavo. There is a French translation by Léveillé, Paris, 1799, in octavo.
41 Peter Simon Pallas, the naturalist with perhaps the broadest knowledge and most enlightened spirit in the eighteenth century, was born in Berlin in 1741 and began his scientific career in Holland in 1766 with his Elenchus zoophytorum and his Miscellanea zoologica; he spent his last years in the Crimea and returned to his native city, where he died in 1811. Fascicles 7 and 8 of his Spicilegia zoologica, printed in 1769 and 1770, contain very good descriptions and illustrations of twenty-six foreign fishes with interesting characteristics. His great journey to Siberia lasted from 1769 to 1774. In his Reise durch verschiedene Provinzen des russischen Reichs [published from 1771 to 1776], he discussed fishes and described eighteen new species; additional forms are described in the various memoirs of the Imperial Academy of Sciences of St. Petersburg [e.g., see Pallas (Peter Simon), “Labraces, novum genus piscium, oceani orientalis,” Mémoires de l’Académie impériale des sciences de St. Petersbourg, vol. 2, 1810, pp. 382-398, pls 22-23], but his main work on this class of animals is in the third volume of his Zoographia Rosso-Asiatica [1811- 1814], a posthumous work printed under the supervision of [Wilhelm Gottlieb] Tilesius von Tilenau [see chap. 13, note 42], which will be discussed below. [For more on Pallas and his fishes, see Rudolphi (Karl Asmund), Peter Simon Pallas. Ein biographischer Versuch, vorgelesen in der öffentlichen Sitzung der Königl. Akademie der Wissenschaften den 30ten Januar 1812, Berlin: Beyträge zur Antropologie und Algemeinen Naturgeschichte, 1812, [4] + 78 p., in-8°; Cuvier (Georges), “Éloge historique de Pierre-Simon Pallas, lu le 5 janvier 1813,” in Recueil des éloges historiques lus dans les séances publiques de l’Institut Royal de France, Paris; Strasbourg: Prince & Levrault, 1819, vol. 2, pp. 109- 156; Svetovidov (A. N.), “On the dates of publication of P.S. Pallas’ ‘Zoographia Rosso-Asiatica’.” Zoologicheskii Zhurnal (Moscow), vol. 55, no. 4, 1976, pp. 596-599; Svetovidov (A. N.), “The Pallas fish collection and the Zoographia Rosso-Asiatica: An historical account,” Archives of Natural History, vol. 10, no. 1, 1981, pp. 45-64; Mearns (Barbara) & Mearns (Richard), Biographies for birdwatchers, the lives of those commemorated in western Palearctic bird names, London: Academic Press, 1988, pp. 288-297.]
42 [Difficulty in establishing the date of publication of Pallas’s Zoographia Rosso-Asiatica, and Cuvier’s indication that the third volume of the book had “not yet been published” when he wrote the “Tableau historique des progres de l’ichtyologie,” results from a delay in the production of the plates, which continued for many years after the three volumes of the text had been printed (Svetovidov (A. N.), “The Pallas fish collection and the Zoographia Rosso-Asiatica: An historical account,” Archives of Natural History, vol. 10, no. 1, 1981, p. 46). Although still often misdated, the publication dates have been established by declaration of the International Commission on Zoological Nomenclature (1954; see also Hemming (Francis), & Noakes (Diana), Official list of works approved as available for zoological nomenclature. First instalment: Names 1-38, London: International Trust for Zoological Nomenclature, 1958, x + 12 p.): vols 1 and 2 date from 1811, vol. 3, from 1814 (see chap. 13, note 29; see also Sherborn (C. Davies), “On the dates of Pallas’s ‘Zoographia Rosso-Asiatica’.” Ibis, vol. 4, no. 1, 1934, pp. 164-167; Sherborn (C. Davies), “On the dates of Pallas’s “Zoographia Rosso-Asiatica.,” Bulletin of zoological nomenclature, vol. 1, 1947, pp. 199-200; Sclatter (William Lutley), “On the date as from which the names published in Pallas (P.S.) Zoographia Rosso-Asiatica are available nomenclaturally,” Bulletin of zoological nomenclature, vol. 1, 1947, pp. 198-199; Stresemann (Erwin), “Date of publication of Pallas’ Zoographia Rosso-Asiatica,” Ibis, vol. 93, no. 2, 1951, pp. 217-219).]
Le texte seul est utilisable sous licence Licence OpenEdition Books. Les autres éléments (illustrations, fichiers annexes importés) sont « Tous droits réservés », sauf mention contraire.
Michel-Eugène Chevreul
Un savant, des couleurs !
Georges Roque, Bernard Bodo et Françoise Viénot (dir.)
1997
Le Muséum au premier siècle de son histoire
Claude Blanckaert, Claudine Cohen, Pietro Corsi et al. (dir.)
1997
Le Jardin d’utopie
L’Histoire naturelle en France de l’Ancien Régime à la Révolution
Emma C. Spary Claude Dabbak (trad.)
2005
Dans l’épaisseur du temps
Archéologues et géologues inventent la préhistoire
Arnaud Hurel et Noël Coye (dir.)
2011
Michel-Eugène Chevreul
Un savant, des couleurs !
Georges Roque, Bernard Bodo et Françoise Viénot (dir.)
1997
Le Muséum au premier siècle de son histoire
Claude Blanckaert, Claudine Cohen, Pietro Corsi et al. (dir.)
1997
Le Jardin d’utopie
L’Histoire naturelle en France de l’Ancien Régime à la Révolution
Emma C. Spary Claude Dabbak (trad.)
2005
Dans l’épaisseur du temps
Archéologues et géologues inventent la préhistoire
Arnaud Hurel et Noël Coye (dir.)
2011
