12. Lacepède and His Immediate Successors
p. 315-327
Texte intégral
1Such was the progress ichthyology had made by the end of the eighteenth century, at which time Lacepède began to make it the object of his studies.1 During the 120 years after Willughby, ways had been discovered of firmly establishing the nomenclature of fishes; a considerable number of fish species had become established by detailed descriptions and accurate drawings; highly diverse methods of distribution had been attempted for classifying them; almost all their organ systems had been studied by capable anatomists; and close observations had been made of their habits and economy. It is not to be doubted that this eloquent writer —who had conceived the plan of his book in a grand and elevated manner and who had a talent for finding the appealing side of the story of these organisms that seem to touch us so little and do not arouse our imagination— it is not to be doubted, I say, that he would have built an impressive monument had he found himself in more favorable circumstances. But writing his book 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,2 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.
2Another difficulty no less great, at a time when we 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.
3The French naturalist thus found himself obliged to accept as foundation for his work the lists of fishes drawn up by Gmelin and Bonnaterre, and it is from these that he took the characters of his divisions and of most of his genera, in the meantime adding species from various sources. The king’s cabinet furnished him some; he found some in the cabinet of the stadholder, which was brought to Paris in 1795.3 A few were given to him by Le Blond, a physician at Cayenne.4 Bosc, a learned naturalist who had been consul at New York for some time, sent drawings made in that country.5 Other individuals, especially Noël6 and Mesaize of Rouen,7 sent drawings and notices on fishes that had come to them by chance and that seemed remarkable to them; but his most abundant materials came from the manuscripts of Commerson and the drawings made under the supervision of that observer, to which he added those that Aubriet had copied from Plumier’s manuscripts for the vellum collection. Unfortunately, as mentioned above, he was not able to profit from the fishes themselves that Commerson had sent with his drawings and that had remained unknown after Buffon’s death.
4These materials were not all of the same 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 be explained only 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 with only 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.
5Like many other naturalists, Lacepède was liable not to recognize certain species that earlier authors had already described, either because the organisms had lost their color or their shape, or because the descriptions themselves had been based on altered organisms, or simply because he had not sufficiently taken into consideration the descriptive terms.
6The result was that to the duplications that already existed in the published classifications of various authors, which he consulted with too much confidence, he added a large number of others, and the total number of his species (1,463) should be reduced by more than 200; but his multiplication of genera has contributed even more mightily to the confusion in his work.
7The primary source of these multiplications was again in not sufficiently comparing the figures and the descriptions in the Commerson manuscripts. One genus based on a note from that traveler next reappeared under another name according to his drawings, and often it was reproduced a third time according to some other naturalist.8
8The implicit confidence he had in all these predecessors was another source of these imaginary genera. Whenever Brünnich, Houttuyn, Forsskål, or Gmelin placed a fish in one of their genera, Lacepède, believing they could not be mistaken, supposed the fish had all the characteristics common to that genus,9 and then finding in its particular description some trait that seems useful for distinguishing it, from his first supposition and the species character he composed his new genus character. It sometimes happened that he created new genera from fishes he observed in nature without noticing that they were already in his book, taken from other authors and represented under other names.10
9Moreover, the motives that made him remove some species from a genus, or leave them in, were subject to strange variations. For example, he left the anchovies (anchois) in the genus Harengus (harengs), although they have none of the characteristics he assigned to this genus, and he distinguished Clupanodon (clupanodons), which are very little different from the other herrings (harengs).
10The general classification established by Lacepède is that of Pennant, into cartilaginous and bony fishes, with the subdivisions of Linnaeus based on the position of the pelvic fins applied to both; but between these two partitions he intercalates another one, based on the presence or absence of opercula and branchiostegal rays. Even had the facts been consistently followed, this intercalated division would still have the disadvantage of being artificial, because it would, for example, separate the moray eels (murènes) and the swamp eels (synbranches) from the freshwater eels (anguilles); but what is more objectionable is that the characters assigned to the classes are not always to be found in the fishes placed in them. Thus the anglerfishes (baudroies), the triggerfishes (balistes), and the elephantfishes (mormyres) have opercula, although Lacepède supposed the contrary; and there are opercula and branchiostegals in the moray eels (murènes), the swamp eels (synbranches) and the other genera separate from freshwater eels (anguilles), although he denies it [see Table 10].
11The natural history of fishes that Sonnini published after his edition of Buffon, and to which he gave his own name and even his portrait, is almost a word-for-word copy of Lacepède’s, with preliminary articles taken from Artedi on the authors of ichthyology and on terminology, and with memoirs by Duverney and Broussonet on various parts of their organization.11
12Philippe Loos has begun a translation into German of the work of Lacepède, Berlin, in octavo.12
13Such as it is, this natural history of fishes by Lacepède forms an epoch also in ichthyology, and it has served, along with the great work by Bloch, as the main basis for what has been written on this science up to the present time.
14That cannot be said in all truth about the natural history of the fishes of Vizagapatam by Russell.13 It was published in 1803, but because it was written in India several years before, it still followed Pennant’s classification, the only thing added being a genus taken from Bloch. But despite some rash placements of species, it is incontestably the most important work we have on fishes in the oriental seas, and the English East India Company, in ordering its publication, has acquired a right to the gratitude of naturalists. It contains two hundred species, accurately drawn by an artist of the country and carefully engraved in England. There is hardly a drawing that does not sufficiently present all the characters needed for determining the species, and even for placing it in its genus or subgenus. In the text, the author added a description of principal colors and interesting facts of life history.
15The influence of Lacepède is more noticeable in the part on fishes in the General Zoology by Shaw.14 This is hardly anything more than a development of Gmelin’s system augmented by species taken from Bloch and Lacepède along with a few of their genera, the others being based on those of Gmelin. Moreover, there is no criticism of either the duplications or the incorrect placement of the species. A large number of the new species are distributed among the old genera in a fashion that may be qualified as absurd. For example, within the genus Sparus (spares), Shaw placed some species of Serranus (serrans), Crenilabrus (crénilabres), Girellus (girelles), and Sciaena (sciènes); within Labrus (labres) he included some species of Sciaena (sciènes), perches (perches), and so on. Most of the figures are copied from Lacepède and Bloch, except for perhaps five or six taken from fishes that Shaw examined in the British Museum and of which he had custody. One of these fishes forms a new genus, Stylephorus, but it would be difficult to determine its affinities from what the author says about this genus and the drawing he gives, which is of a deteriorated individual.15
16The two general works written at this time by Duméril for student use, his Traité élémentaire d’histoire naturelle of 180416 and his Zoologie analytique of 1806, worked together to make Lacepède’s work more popular in facilitating the determination of his genera. The latter work in particular shows the genera in synoptic tables and distributes them among orders and families with precisely fixed distinctions; however, he too used for a foundation characters based on the alleged absence of opercula and [branchiostegal] rays which Lacepède had proposed [see Table 11].
17From that time the French ichthyologist’s work was used by the authors of several special treatises as the basis of their work. For example, Delaroche,17 a young naturalist taken away from science too early, collected many fishes at Ibize, Majorca, and Bayonne and in 1809 published a catalog of 105 species according to Lacepède’s system, with notes on their habits and utility. He added detailed descriptions of 32 species and drawings of 18 that were either new or incompletely determined at that time.18 This work, which included his observations on the swimbladder, was an important addition to ichthyology not only because of its great accuracy but also because the author deposited his specimens in the king’s cabinet, where their characters can still be verified.
18The first edition of the Ichthyologie de Nice by Risso, published in 1810, was also arranged, overall and in detail, according to Lacepède’s classification, even in its errors;19 for the moray eels (murènes) are again stated to lack opercula and branchial membranes. But this work was interesting because it contained information on a great number of Mediterranean fishes almost forgotten since Rondelet, or even unknown to that earlier naturalist, and also because of the new and precise details it gave of their habits. It describes 317 species according to observations from nature made by the author, who deposited the most interesting specimens at the Muséum national d’Histoire naturelle, Paris. Several are new, of which 40 are represented, but the nomenclature of the established species is not always free of error, for it was in fact difficult to verify the nomenclature using such a work as that of Lacepède.
19Risso presented to the Institut de France in 1820 a supplement that contained additional interesting species20 and described others in the memoirs of the Academy of Sciences of Turin.21 He then worked on a new edition of his ichthyology in which he sought to profit from the progress of the science, and he added several more new species; it is included in volume 3 of a general work that he published under the title Histoire naturelle de l’Europe méridionale.22 We shall discuss elsewhere the method he used in arranging it.
Notes de bas de page
1 Bernard Germain Étienne de la Ville, the comte de Lacepède, born at Agen in 1756, curator of the king’s cabinet in 1785, professor at the Muséum national d’Histoire naturelle in 1795, member of the Institut de France in 1796, of the senate in 1800, grand chancellor of the Legion of Honor in 1802, died in 1825. Lacepède was a writer of great eloquence and man of great benevolence who published works on music, general physical science, electricity, and the natural history of oviparous quadrupeds and snakes [1788-1789], fishes [1798-1803], and whales [1804] as a sequel to Buffon’s great natural history of viviparous quadrupeds [1753- 1765] and birds [1770-1783], the materials of which were assembled partly by [Louis Jean Marie] Daubenton, [Philippe] Guéneau de Montbeillard, and [G. L. C. A.] Bexon. Lacepède’s Histoire naturelle des poissons was printed in five volumes in quarto [1798-1803] and in fourteen volumes in duodecimo [1799-1804]. [On Lacepède, see Cuvier (Georges), Histoire naturelle des poissons, ouvrage contenant plus de cinq mille espèces de ces animaux, décrites d’après nature et distribuées conformément à leurs rapports d’organisation, avec des observations sur leur anatomie et des recherches critiques sur leur nomenclature ancienne et moderne; par M. le Baron Cuvier… et par M. Valenciennes… Prospectus rédigé par M. le baron Cuvier, Paris; Strasbourg: F. G. Levrault, [1827]; Swainson (William), “Sketch of the life and character of the late count de Lacepède,” Zoological Journal, vol. 3, 1827, pp. 73-76; Gill (Theodore), “Arrangement of the families of fishes, or classes Pisces, Marsipobranchii, and Leptocardii,” Smithsonian Miscellaneous Collection, vol. 247, 1872, pp. 38-39; Appel (Toby A.), “Lacepède,” in Gillispie (Charles Coulston) (ed.), Dictionary of Scientific Biography, vol. 7: Iamblichus to Landsteiner, New York: Charles Schribner’s Sons, 1973, pp. 546-548; Adler (Kraig) (ed.), Contributions to the history of herpetology, Oxford (Ohio): Society for the Study of Amphibians and Reptiles, 1989, p. 14; Bornbusch (Alan H.), “Lacepède and Cuvier: A comparative case study of goals and methods in late eighteenth-and early nineteenth-century fish classification,” Journal of the History of Biology, vol. 22, no 1, 1989, pp. 141-161.]
2 The twelfth volume of the French edition of Bloch’s Histoire naturelle, générale et particulière des poissons was published in 1797. The first volume, in quarto, of the Histoire naturelle des poissons by Lacepède was published in 1798; the second in 1800; the third in 1801, the fourth in 1802; and the fifth in 1803.
3 [In January 1795, after the French revolutionary army, under the command of General Charles Pichegru (1761- 1804), invaded the Netherlands in the abnormally cold winter of 1794-1795 (advancing over the frozen rivers, which then did not present the usual formidable barriers against invasion), the stadholder and his family fled to England (see Edmundson (George), History of Holland, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1922, pp. 342- 343). The French army then confiscated the natural history collection of the prince and transported it to Paris to enrich the Muséum national d’Histoire naturelle, where the first shipment, composing about half of the collection and packed in ninety-five crates, arrived in October 1795 (Boyer (Ferdinand), “Le transfert à Paris des collections du Stathouder (1795),” Annales historiques de la Révolution française, vol. 43, no. 205, 1971, p. 397; Pieters (Florence F.J.M.), “Notes on the menagerie and zoological cabinet of Stadholder William V of Holland, directed by Aernout Vosmaer,” Journal of the Society for the Bibliography of Natural History, vol. 9, no. 4, 1980, pp. 541-542). In 1815, shortly after the fall of Napoléon Bonaparte (1769-1821), professor of natural history Sebald Justinus Brugmans (1763-1819) of Leiden University was sent to Paris to retrieve the stolen material, but he met with strong opposition, especially from Jean Baptiste de Lamarck (1744-1829), who at the time was writing his Histoire naturelle des animaux sans vertèbres (published between 1815 and 1822) and did not want to release the invertebrates. Many other objects, particularly the stuffed giraffe, were highly valued by the French, and they argued strongly for their retention. Moreover, the prince’s collection had been integrated into the Paris museum in such a way that most of the specimens were no longer recognizable as having belonged to the stadholder (Pieters (Florence F. J. M.), “Notes on the menagerie and zoological cabinet of Stadholder William V of Holland, directed by Aernout Vosmaer,” Journal of the Society for the Bibliography of Natural History, vol. 9, no. 4, 1980, p. 542). Finally, after long negotiations, Alexander von Humboldt (see chap. 15, note 58) intervened and suggested a compromise: in exchange for leaving a large part of the Dutch collection in Paris, Brugmans was given some ten thousand duplicate items from the Muséum National d’Histoire Naturelle (Hamy (Ernest-Théodore), “Alexandre de Humboldt et le Muséum d’Histoire Naturelle. Étude historique publiée à l’occasion du centenaire du retour en Europe de Humboldt et Bonpland,” Nouvelles Archives du Muséum d’Histoire Naturelle, ser. 4, vol. 8, 1906, p. 23). This compensatory material, along with that part of the stadholder’s collection that had been retrieved earlier, was presented by his son King William I to Leiden University, and from there it ultimately made its way into the Rijksmuseum van Natuurlijke Historie at Leiden after its foundation in 1820 (see Gijzen (Agatha), ‘S Rijks Museum van Natuurlijke Historie 1820- 1915, Rotterdam: W. L. & J. Brusse’s Uitgeversmaatschappij N.V., 1938, pp. 26-27, 46; Boeseman (Marinus), “The vicissitudes and dispersal of Albertus Seba’s zoological specimens,” Zoologische Mededelingen (Leiden), vol. 44, no. 13, 1970, pp. 184-187; Pieters (Florence F.J.M.), “Notes on the menagerie and zoological cabinet of Stadholder William V of Holland, directed by Aernout Vosmaer,” Journal of the Society for the Bibliography of Natural History, vol. 9, no. 4, 1980, p. 543).]
4 [Jean Baptiste Le Blond, born at Toulongeon, Saône-et-Loire, in 1747, traveled to Martinique in 1766, ascended the Orinoco, and continued on to Peru. Returning to France in 1785, and appointed physician-botanist in 1786, he left again for the New World, where he remained at Cayenne until 1802. He died in 1815.]
5 [Louis Augustin Guillaume Bosc d’Antic, born at Paris in 1759, sailed as French consul to New York (see Beale (Georgia Robison), “Bosc and the Exequatur,” Prologue: Quarterly of the National Archives and Records Administration, Paris, fall 1978, p. 151), where for two years he collected an immense amount of natural history material. Returning to France, he was named inspector of the gardens and nurseries of Versailles in 1803 and of those belonging to the ministry of the interior in 1806. He died at Paris in 1828.]
6 [Noël is probably Simon Barthélémy Joseph Noël de la Morinière, 1765-1822; see chap. 16, note 67.]
7 [Pierre François Mesaize (born 1748), a medical officer at Rouen, was a resident member of the Rouen Emulation Society in 1799. He sent several fishes from the area around Rouen, along with observations that Lacepède used in his natural history of fishes.]
8 For example, a drawing by Commerson is reproduced [by Lacepède] under the name Synode renard [or Synodus vulpes; 1798-1803, vol. 5, p. 321, pl. 8, fig. 2]; a note inscribed on this drawing gives reason for establishing the genus Butirin and the species Butirin banane [see Lacepède, 1798-1803, vol. 5, p. 46]. Another drawing of the same species found in the manuscripts of Plumier appears under the name Clupée macrocéphale [or Clupea macrocephala; Lacepède, 1798-1803, vol. 5, p. 458, pl. 14, fig. 1]. This drawing by Plumier reappears in Schneider’s edition of Bloch under the name Albula plumieri [see Bloch (Marcus Elieser) & Schneider (Johann Gottlob), M. E. Blochii… Systema ichthyologiae iconibus CX illustratum. Post obitum auctoris opus inchoatum absolvit, correxit, interpolavit Jo. Gottlob Schneider Saxo, Berlin: Sumptibus auctoris impressum et bibliopolio Sanderiano commissum, 1801, pp. 432-433, pl. 86]; and neither Schneider nor Lacepède perceived that this fish is the same as Argentina glossodonta that they adopted from Forsskål [Forsskål (Peter), Descriptiones animalium avium, amphibiorum, piscium, insectorum, vermium; quae in itinere orientali observavit Petrus Forsskål, Prof. Haun [post mortem auctoris edidit Carsten Niebuhr], Copenhagen: Mölleri, 1775, p. 68].
9 Thus it was that Centriscus scolopax of Linnaeus [1766- 1768, vol. 1, p. 415], mistaken by Forsskål [Descriptiones animalium avium…, op. cit., pp. xiii, 66] for a catfish (silure) and named Silurus cornutus, became under Lacepède [1798-1803, vol. 5, p. 136] the genus Macroramphosus (macroramphose).
10 Such a case is his genus Pogonias [Lacepède, 1798-1803, vol. 3, p. 137], which does not differ, not even on the species level, from Pogonathus (pogonathe), which he [Lacepède, 1798-1803, vol. 5, p. 120] presents according to Commerson.
11 [Charles Nicolas Sigisbert Sonnini de Manoncourt, 1751– 1812], Histoire naturelle, générale et particulière des poissons, Paris, 1803-1804, thirteen volumes in octavo.
12 [Philippe Werner Loos (1754-1819), Naturgeschichte der Fische, als eine Fortsetzung von Buffons Naturgeschichte], Pts 1 and 2 of the first volume were published in 1799; pt 1 of vol. 2 in 1803; pt 2 of vol. 2 in 1804. I do not know whether more volumes have appeared [see Lacepède (Bernard Germain Étienne), Naturgeschichte der Fische, als eine Fortsetzung von Buffons Naturgeschichte [tr. from the French with notes by Loos Philipp W.], Berlin: Pauli, 1799-1804, 4 pts in 2 vols].
13 Descriptions and Figures of Two Hundred Fishes; Collected at Vizagapatam on the Coast of Coromandel, by Patrick Russell [1727-1805], M.D., London, 1803, two volumes in folio. [On Russell, see Adler (Kraig) (ed.), Contributions to the history of herpetology, Oxford (Ohio): Society for the Study of Amphibians and Reptiles, 1989, pp. 16-17.]
14 George Shaw, born in 1751 at Bierton, Buckingham, died in 1813, curator of the zoological collection at the British Museum, author of several memoirs among those of the Linnaean Society of London, of a collection of plates titled The Naturalist’s Miscellany [with figures by Frederick Polydore Nodder (c. 1751-c. 1800) and afterward by Elizabeth and Richard P. Nodder, published from 1789 to 1813]; a Zoology of New Holland [with figures by James Sowerby (1757- 1822), published in 1794]; and in particular, a compilation titled General Zoology, or Systematic Natural History, thirteen volumes published from 1800 to 1826. Vols 4 and 5 of the last, containing the fishes [a total of 1,230 nominal species; see Gill (Theodore), “Arrangement of the families of fishes, or classes Pisces, Marsipobranchii, and Leptocardii,” Smithsonian Miscellaneous Collection, vol. 247, 1872, pp. 40-41], each divided into two parts, were published in 1803 and 1804, immediately after the last of Lacepède’s [1798-1803] volumes. [For more on Shaw, see Adler (Kraig) (ed.), Contributions to the history of herpetology, Oxford (Ohio): Society for the Study of Amphibians and Reptiles, 1989, p. 17].
15 [See Shaw (George), General zoology, or Systematic natural history by George Shaw, M.D.F.R.S. etc., with plates from the first authorities and most select specimens engraved principally by Mr. Heath, London: George Kearsley, 1803, vol. 4, pt 1, pp. 86-89, pl. 11] [Henri de] Blainville’s [1818] drawing and description [of Shaw’s Stylephorus], published in the Journal de Physique, de Chimie et d’Histoire naturelle (Paris), vol. 87, are much to be preferred.
16 [André Marie Constant Duméril, born at Amiens in 1774, was appointed professor of anatomy in Paris in 1801, and from 1803 he substituted for Lacepède in the chair of ichthyology and herpetology before becoming his successor in 1825. He published works on the classification of fishes but devoted himself especially to herpetology (see Adler (Kraig) (ed.), Contributions to the history of herpetology, Oxford (Ohio): Society for the Study of Amphibians and Reptiles, 1989, pp. 31-32), leaving to Cuvier the task of putting the fish collections in order. He died in 1860. A much expanded second edition of his Traité élémentaire d’histoire naturelle appeared in 1807.]
17 François Étienne Delaroche [also spelled De La Roche and de Laroche], born at Geneva in 1781, died at Paris in 1813 [a doctor of medicine who served as a naturalist to the Commission of Spain, charged with pursuing the measurement of the meridian], [He was the brother-in-law of André Marie Constant Duméril (see note 16 above).]
18 [Delaroche], in Annales du Muséum d’Histoire Naturelle, (Paris), vol. 13 [1809a].
19 [Joseph Antoine] Risso, pharmacist and professor at Nice [born there in 1777, he became professor of physical sciences and natural history at the Lycée Impérial in 1813, professor of botany at the medical-surgical school of Nice in 1814, and professor of mineralogical chemistry and botany at the preparatory school of medicine and pharmacology, which he established at Nice in 1832. In ichthyology his two major works are] Ichthyologie de Nice, ou Histoire naturelle des poissons du département des Alpes Maritimes, Paris, 1810, one volume in octavo [and Histoire naturelle des principales productions de I’Europe méridionale et particulièrement de celles des environs de Nice et des Alpes Maritimes, Paris, 1826, five volumes in octavo, vol. 3 containing the fishes. He died at Nice in 1845]. [For more on Risso’s life and work, see Monod (Théodore) & Hureau (Jean-Claude), “Essai de bibliographie de Risso,” Annales du Muséum d’Histoire Naturelle de Nice, vol. 5, 1978, pp. 159-163; and Vayrolatti (François-Edmond), Gasiglia (Roger), Hureau (Jean-Claude) & Monod (Theodore), “Biographie. Un pharmacien nicois. Antoine Risso (1777- 1845): Sa vie – son œuvre,” Annales du Muséum d’Histoire Naturelle de Nice, vol. 5, 1978, pp. 7-26.]
20 [See Risso (Antoine), “Mémoire sur quelques poissons nouveaux observés dans la mer de Nice,” Journal de Physique, de Chimie et d’Histoire naturelle (Paris), vol. 91, 1820, pp. 241-255.]
21 [Risso] on four lanternfishes (scopeles) [from off Nice], Memorie della Reale accademia delle scienze di Torino, vol. 25 [1820]; and on a new genus that he calls Alepocephalus (alépocéphale) [from those same waters], Memorie della Reale accademia delle scienze di Torino, vol. 25 [1820].
22 [Risso, Histoire naturelle de I’Europe méridionale méridionale et particulièrement de celles des environs de Nice et des Alpes Maritimes], Paris, 1826, five volumes in-8°.
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