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P. F. STEVENS: George Bentham (1800–1884): the life of a botanist's botanist
George Bentham (1800–1884) is seen as a pre-eminent botanist whose prodigious output was in part connected with his freedom from obligations other than his work and his legal background. The first 25 years of his life were spent in a variety of circumstances, the Bentham family being widely connected with European society; Bentham had no formal education. After some years of uncertainty as to his career, he married in 1833 and spent the rest of his life on taxonomic botany, producing some of the classic works of the nineteenth century. As a person, Bentham seems to have been rather shy and diffident about receiving honours. In the 1850s both he and his colleagues questioned his status as a botanist: was he an amateur or not? He was active in a number of institutions (the Horticultural, Zoological and in particular the Linnean societies, where he was president 1862–1874), although he generally preferred to follow others when trying to institute change. His manifest achievements as a botanist can only be understood when we clarify how he and other nineteenth century botanists saw the relationship between “natural” classifications and their taxonomic work, which they often treated as some kind of conventions.
KEY WORDS: botany – classification – conventions – amateur – professional.
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GORDON McOUAT: The logical systematist: George Bentham and his Outline of a new system of logic
George Bentham was not only a great natural historian, he was, initially, a philosopher and logician of enormous promise. His first published work, the oft-forgotten Outline of a new system of logic (1827) has been heralded by some as the opening salvo in the overthrow of the Aristotelian syllogism's grip on logical inference. The move was a defiant political gesture. The young Bentham composed Outline in close concert with his famous uncle, the great utilitarian Jeremy Bentham, expanding and evolving Jeremy's attempts at a new logical system. Bentham meant Outline to be a contribution to the development of the whole utilitarian project.
Yet, after 1827, Bentham was never again to write explicitly on logic and philosophy. His heart seemed to lie in natural history, his first love. However, Bentham never really abandoned the utilitarian picture of logic and philosophy. Recent discoveries in the Bentham papers reveal the strong connection between the Benthamite attack on received philosophical categories and George's role in the development of modern institutional natural history. Bentham the logician can be discovered in Bentham the reformist naturalist. This paper examines Bentham's role in the development of the "new" logic and attempts to explore the notions of a reformed naturalism in his later works. This offers an explanation for Bentham's cautious response to the second great revolution of the nineteenth century: the Darwinian revolution.
KEY WORDS: Jeremy Bentham – essentialism – logic.
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D. E. ALLEN: George Bentham’s Handbook of the British flora: from controversy to cult
George Bentham’s Handbook of the British flora sold steadily for almost a century from its publication in 1858 to the relatively inexperienced for whom it was explicitly intended, thanks to full descriptions, dichotomous keys and a lengthy exposition of botanical terminology. But in using it as a vehicle for his controversially broad conception of species, and in aggressively dismissing in the preface the validity of much work by those who, unlike him, had long investigated that flora critically, Bentham provoked lasting hostility to the book among the more advanced. The continued buoyancy of its sales after Bentham’s death owed less to limited revisions by Sir Joseph Hooker than to the dying‑off of its competitors and the addition of W. H. Fitch’s line-drawings of every species, the colouring-in of which became popular as a substitute for collecting specimens. The book’s aggregate approach in its taxonomy, however, had a divisive effect on the field botany community, a situation ended in 1952 by the Flora of the British Isles of A. R. Clapham, T. G. Tutin and E. F. Warburg and its subsequent associated volumes.
KEY WORDS: field botany – taxonomy – identification manuals – botanical publishing.
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A. B. SHTEIR: Bentham for “beginners and amateurs” and ladies: Handbook of the British flora
George Bentham’s Handbook of the British flora (1859) had a mixed reception during its publishing history. From motivations that were both botanical and educational, Bentham aimed to write a “popular” book for “beginners and amateurs” rather than a textbook or a flora for experts, but his book was caught in cross-currents of mid-Victorian science. While some botanists welcomed the accessibility of Bentham’s book, others were more critical and dismissive. Because Bentham wrote as an expert, his product was subject to judgment from those who were preoccupied with technical issues and debates. This essay charts the genesis of Bentham’s book and studies its reception at a time of considerable change in cultures of natural history. It probably was not possible for Bentham’s book to satisfy several quite different contemporary agendas. Recent scholarship about book history, forms of science writing, and sharpening demarcations between “amateurs” and “professionals” can help explain why Bentham’s Handbook of the British flora had a category problem.
KEY WORDS: “popular” botany – book history – Joseph Hooker – professionalization.
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A. M. LUCAS: Assistance at a distance: George Bentham, Ferdinand von Mueller and the production of Flora australiensis
George Bentham’s seven volume Flora australiensis (1863–1879) was the first continental Flora, and for over a century was the only flora treating the whole of Australia. The work was produced with the “assistance” of Ferdinand Mueller, later von Mueller, the Government Botanist of Victoria from 1853, who loaned his collection, group by group, to Kew, enabling Bentham to compare the specimens with those in British and European herbaria. Mueller, who himself had wished to write the Flora, was stimulated to produce descriptions of the species as they were prepared for shipment, and Bentham’s timetable strongly structured his publication programme. The limits of taxa recognized by each were similar, although there were often differences in the rank accorded the taxon. The return of Mueller’s now authenticated specimens also temporarily transferred the power over Australian plant systematics to Melbourne, a power Mueller later used. Despite his initial disappointment that Bentham was assigned the Australian Flora by William Hooker in the series of colonial Floras, Mueller’s association with the project later became a lifeline, helping him keep his self esteem after he was dismissed from his concurrent post as Director of the Melbourne Botanic Gardens in 1873.
KEY WORDS: metropolitan and colonial scientific relations – Australia – colonial Floras.
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RICHARD BELLON: “The great question in agitation”: George Bentham and the origin of species
George Bentham initially expressed reservations about Darwin’s Origin of species (1859). What most troubled Bentham was the potentially disruptive nature of Darwin’s ideas for natural history. Bentham, renowned even among other naturalists for always proceeding with the utmost intellectual caution, decided to ignore Darwin’s theory. This reticence disappointed Darwin, who pressured Bentham unsuccessfully to give an assessment of the Origin. Bentham did, however, publicly praise Darwin’s work on the fertilisation of orchids as an ideal model for natural history research. Finally, in his 1863 presidential address to the Linnean Society, Bentham directly addressed “the great question in agitation”, evolution. His judicious praise of the Origin would, Darwin was convinced, “do more to shake the unshaken & bring on those leaning to our side, than anything written directly in favour of transmutation.” Bentham’s tentative conversion to evolution came only after Darwin’s work, particularly on orchids, convinced him that evolution would add “stability” to systematic work. As a result, evolution’s influence on systematic botany was largely conservative. It validated, rather than challenged, the method, systems, world view and intellectual authority of established experts like Bentham.
KEY WORDS: Charles Darwin – evolution – systematic botany – Joseph Hooker – Linnean Society – Asa Gray – species concepts.
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HANS-JÜRGEN LECHTRECK: A history of some fruit models in wax and other materials: scientific teaching aids and courtly table decorations
Two early nineteenth century texts treating the production and use of wax models of fruit reveal the history of these objects in the context of courtly decoration. Both sources emphasise the models’ decorative qualities and their suitability for display, properties which were not simply by-products of the realism that the use of wax allowed. Thus, such models were not regarded merely as visual aids for educational purposes. The artists who created them sought to entice collectors of art and natural history objects, as well as teachers and scientists.
Wax models of fruits are known to have been collected and displayed as early as the seventeenth century, although only one such collection is extant. Before the early nineteenth century models of fruits made from wax or other materials (glass, marble, faience) were considered worthy of display because contemporaries attached great importance to mastery of the cultivation and grafting of fruit trees. This skill could only be demonstrated by actually showing the fruits themselves. Therefore, wax models made before the early nineteenth century may also be regarded as attempts to preserve natural products beyond the point of decay.
KEY WORDS: Friedrich Justin Bertuch – scientific models – pomology.
Anhand von zwei im frühen 19. Jahrhundert entstandenen Texten, die über die Herstellung und die Verwendung von Obstmodellen aus Wachs informieren, wird die Vorgeschichte dieser Objekte im Kontext fürstlicher Repräsentation näher betrachtet. Beide Texte sprechen ausdrücklich von den dekorativen Qualitäten und dem Schauwert von Wachsfrüchten. Diese Eigenschaften sind keine Nebenprodukte der Naturtreue, die mit dem Werkstoff Wachs erreicht werden kann, sondern der eigentliche Grund für die Herstellung. Im 18. und frühen 19. Jahrhundert richtete sich demnach nicht nur der rational-klassifikatorische Blick des Wissenschaftlers auf Wachsfrüchte, sondern auch der Blick des selbstbewußten Sammlers und seiner erstaunten Gäste. Die Vorgeschichte dieses Blickes läßt sich bis in das frühe 17. Jahrhundert zurückverfolgen, da sich aus dieser Zeit vereinzelt Beispiele von Naturalien-Modellen und Hinweise auf ihre Herstellung und Sammlung erhalten haben.
Früchte aus Wachs und anderen Werkstoffen verdankten ihren Schauwert dem Umstand, daß die Zeitgenossen der Kultivierung und Veredlung von Obstbäumen eine sinnbildliche Bedeutung beimaßen. Bis in das 19. Jahrhundert hinein dienten die Obstmodelle dem Zweck, die erfolgreiche Ausübung dieser Tätigkeit dauerhaft zur Schau zu stellen. Dabei resultieren Anschaulichkeit und Naturtreue der Naturalien-Modelle aus dem Verlangen, die Sichtbarkeit von Natur der Vergänglichkeit zu entreißen und repräsentativ auszustellen.
KEYWORDS: Friedrich Justin Bertuch – wissenschaftliche Modelle – Wachsfrüchte – Pomologie – Tafelzier.
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L. J. DORR, D. H. NICOLSON, and L. K. OVERSTREET: Bibliographic notes on H. Stansbury’s Exploration and survey of ... / Expedition to the valley of the Great Salt Lake
Howard Stansbury’s classic work is bibliographically complex, with two true editions as well as multiple issues of the first edition. The first edition was printed in Philadelphia; its 487 stereotyped pages were issued in 1852 under two different titles with three variant title-pages (an official US government issue and two trade issues). A second edition was printed in Washington in 1853 and had 495 typeset pages (with corrections and additions in the appendices). The issue of 1855 is identical to the 1852 trade issue, except for the change of the date on the title-page. Each issue and edition, with its bindings and plates, is described.
KEY WORDS: Utah – Great Salt Lake – US Army exploration – Howard Stansbury (1806–1863).
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ELLIS L. YOCHELSON: The trilobite from Ohio with preserved legs: Mickelborough 1883 and Walcott 1884
Part and counterpart of a trilobite collected from Upper Ordovician strata near Cincinnati, Ohio, USA, provided additional information on the legs of trilobites. These appendages had only been certainly known for less than a decade. The specimen was described by a local paleontologist in the local natural history journal, but part of the text was repeated in a leading American biological journal, and repeated in full in the Geological magazine. This trilobite was subsequently redescribed by C. D. Walcott in Science, following a speech in which he discussed it before the Biological Society of Washington. The specimen is now in the collection of the National Museum of Natural History in Washington..
KEY WORDS: John Mickelborough – Charles Doolittle Walcott – Upper Ordovician – Cincinnati – Biological Society of Washington.
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SAMUEL J. M. M. ALBERTI: Natural history and the philosophical societies of late Victorian Yorkshire
Natural history, so popular a pursuit in nineteenth-century Britain, was a thriving part of the activities of the literary and philosophical societies that epitomized urban middle-class cultural life. The “lit and phils” are most famous for their museums, but this paper outlines the range of other activities pertaining to natural knowledge that went on within their walls, focusing on the thriving societies in England’s largest county, Yorkshire. Foremost among these were regular lectures: this paper discusses the speakers, audience and content, as well as the significance of the architecture of the halls in which they were staged. More exclusive meetings and didactic classes are also examined, as well as their (often extensive) libraries. After a brief examination of the purported decline of the philosophical societies around the turn of the century, a conclusion outlines the importance of science within these voluntary associations both to the provincial middle classes and the emerging professional men of science.
KEY WORDS: education – lectures – libraries – middle classes – popularization
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Please note: Abstracts are not available for Short Notes.
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