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WHITNEY BARLOW ROBLES

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Among the most curious objects in the Harvard Hall collection was a conspicuously flat flounder. William Dandridge Peck, a self- taught naturalist, transformed the fish into an object of scientific study in 1793 by slitting it in half and sewing the skin to a piece of parchment (Fig. 1). Peck produced a few dozen flattened half-skins of fishes in this manner, removing organs, bones, and eyes before affixing the specimens to paper, unifying animal with page. After graduating from Harvard in 1782, Peck served as the institution’s first and only Massachusetts Professor of Natural History from 1805 until his death in 1822; during his tenure, he used these paper fishes to demonstrate Linnaean classification in the lectures that he delivered in the Philosophy Chamber. (When not in use, they were stored in the University Museum, down the hall from the library.) Collected in North America and Europe, and ranging from ribbon- like gunnels to sturdy suckers, Peck’s fishes sometimes shared a sheet with up to three other specimens, showcasing a variety of forms (see Plate 42). “The Sea affords an inexhaustible field for the researches of the naturalist,” Peck, son of a shipbuilder, wrote to

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the reverend Jeremy Belknap in 1790. “The discoveries Using Peck’s two-dimensional fishes as the anchor which have as yet been made in it, are comparatively of this essay, I examine various flat materials and flat- nothing.”1 tened representations within Harvard Hall—including During its life, the flounder experienced natural these half-skins, portraits, and microscope slides— transformations that seem to encourage its book-like to consider the various advantages and limits of re- preservation on a piece of paper. Flounder larvae begin creating and studying life on one plane. Repurposing their lives, like most fishes, with an eye on either side John Berger’s classic query, “Why look at animals?” I of the head. As they develop, one eye wanders across ask: Why look at flattened animals—or plants, or peo- the skull to join the other on a single side, while the ple, or animalcules, for that matter?3 I argue that the fish’s body compresses to adapt to its seafloor hab- flattened sea life, plants, and microscopic creatures itat. Flattening, however, was not the obvious choice in Harvard Hall converged conceptually with natural of preservation for another of Peck’s specimens—the history illustrations of wildlife. When forced into two lumpfish—as its common name suggests (Fig. 2). When dimensions, life—especially former life—imitated art. it lived, rows of knobby ridges crossed the lumpfish’s While scholars often assume that naturalists crafted bulbous body, which would have approximated the illustrations and specimens to evoke live animals, many shape of a football. Flattened and fixed to paper, the flattened specimens resembled drawings, paintings, or specimen resembles a deflated balloon, and its coloring, prints rather than their earlier, living selves.4 Flattening which may have included blues, reds, grays, or speckles natural objects rendered them page- and canvas-like, in life, flatlines as a uniform brackish brown in death.2 making specimens legible to learned audiences and Peck styled this half-skin with its mouth stretched interpretable as objects of natural theology. open, not to evoke terror, but presumably to expose In this manner, flatness, both as a mode of repre- the creature’s miniscule teeth. sentation and as a physical quality of certain species, reinforced a view widespread in early American science: that God was both author and artist, nature his Fig. 1 William Dandridge Peck, book and handiwork. However, for all the practical and Mounted Flounder, 1793. Animal specimen and ink on paper, 33.7 philosophical ends achieved through flattened repre- × 56.6 × 1.7 cm (141/16 × 225/16 × sentation, Harvard Hall’s compressed objects also bore 11/16 in.). Collection of Historical distortions, omissions, and monstrous magnifications Scientific Instruments, Harvard University, 0038. that betrayed their inability to stand in for the original,

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casting doubt on the metaphor of the book or page of ornithology and ichthyology, his knowledge was more nature. As we shall see, the tactile scientific work taking extensive than that of any other individual in this part of place in Harvard Hall, facilitated by flattened stingray the United States, and perhaps in the nation”; yet “before skin (a material called “shagreen,” used as a grip on his removal from his obscurity to Cambridge, it appeared scientific equipment), underscored the shortcomings astonishing how, with advantages so slender, and under of purely visual or rational approaches to understanding discouragements so chilling, he could have acquired so the natural world. One could not simply read the book of much.”5 The collection of funds to inaugurate the Mas- nature, but also had to venture out and get a grip—quite sachusetts Professorship of Natural History was, in fact, literally—on its materiality. a calculated attempt to draw Peck from his isolation. Given his insularity, Peck may have arrived at his fish-flattening method on his own, as he did create de- vices such as microscopes by hand. However, he more WHY FLATTEN A FISH? likely encountered instructions for preparing fish half- skins as described in the 1740s by Dutch naturalist John Harvard’s flattened fishes possess a certain homemade Frederick Gronovius in Philosophical Transactions, the charm, augmented by the decay some of them have ex- journal of the Royal Society. Peck certainly was reading perienced over the last two centuries. Although Peck’s the Transactions by the 1790s, the decade in which he reputation as a keen naturalist preceded him at Harvard, prepared his fishes. Further, he mentioned Gronovius he was largely self-educated, having prepared many in his ichthyology lectures once he became a professor, of his fishes and other specimens while living in rural suggesting that Peck was familiar with Gronovius’s work seclusion with his father in Kittery, Maine (then part of and perhaps his method. In either case, Peck’s fishes Massachusetts). According to Peck’s obituary, “In zoology, and those prepared in the Gronovius tradition are of a piece. The process described by Gronovius involved

Fig. 2 William Dandridge Peck, cutting a fish in half from head to tail with scissors, Dried Specimen of Cyclopterus removing bones and internal organs, and positioning lumpus (Lumpfish). Animal specimen and ink on paper, 44.8 × half of the fish on a board to dry in the sun, its fins and 30.5 cm (175/8 × 12 in.). Museum tail expanded with pins. After these steps, one could of Comparative Zoology, Ich- then separate the skin from the flesh, further flatten thyology Department, Harvard University, MCZ 154782. the skin, and apply it to parchment.6

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Whether Peck followed Gronovius’s template or authorities whom Peck had read by the time he prepared used a similar method of preparation, his specimens his half-skins in the late 18th century. In a 1794 letter suggestively resemble Swedish naturalist Carl Linnae- to Eliphalet Pearson describing a draft of what would us’s own collection of fish half-skins, many of which now become his first and only ichthyology publication, Peck reside in the Linnean Society of London (Fig. 3).7 Scottish explained: “They [the fishes in his publication] are all physician Alexander Garden, a Linnaeus devotee based rare here, except fig. 3, & two of them appear to me to in South Carolina, sent Linnaeus many of these skins be nondescript; but as I am very little acquainted with consciously prepared in the Gronovius style, though it any author but Linné [Linnaeus] I may be mistaken.”12 appears that a “black servant” (possibly a slave) did much Peck’s flattened skins were especially well suited of the actual labor to create the exquisitely preserved to Linnaean-style classification of fishes. Instead of specimens.8 Peck’s fishes can thus be seen as part of a serving as wholesale transpositions of nature, these larger universe of dried and flattened specimens—in- specimens preserved and exposed diagnostic mor- cluding Garden’s, Gronovius’s, and Peck’s own—darting phological features needed to file the fishes within the across oceans in the 18th and 19th centuries.9 The Linnaean system. Linnaeus often described species resemblance of Peck’s fishes to Linnaeus’s is especially in terms of discrete, usually externally visible “charac- significant, for at a time when the latter’s methods of ters,” or traits, many of which could be quantified.13 For naming and organizing species were influential but example, Linnaeus counted and compared stamens controversial, Peck idolized the Swede.10 Linnaeus’s and pistils in order to classify plants. To guide genus Systema Naturae, originally published in 1735 and funded and species designations in ichthyology, his system in part by Gronovius, revolutionized classification. From considered various morphological features, paying the 10th edition onward, it employed the system of special attention to the number and placement of a binomial nomenclature still used by scientists to name fish’s fins and the quantity of bony rays in each fin.14 organisms, first by indicating their genus and then their Eighteenth-century naturalists often referred to fishes species. Peck’s letters reveal that he consulted Systema simply as “the finny tribe,” so it is fitting that fins played Naturae religiously. In his own origin story as a naturalist, a pivotal role in their identification.15 The spreading he allegedly found a damaged copy of Linnaeus’s tome in of fins in a dry specimen, which made the fin’s rays a wrecked ship.11 While the story might be embellished, readily countable, was one of the standout features of it seems true that Linnaeus was one of the only fish the flattened preparations. When Garden sent his half- skins to Linnaeus, he explicitly connected this mode of preservation with the display of fins, writing: “I have caused their skins to be dried, by which I think you will be able to see the true situation of the fins. This will be more satisfactory to you than a bare, and perhaps inaccurate, description of mine.”16 As indicated by Gronovius’s instructions, in order to maintain these countable features in the flat specimens, a fish’s fins had to be deliberately spread and pinned during the drying process to prevent the appendages from clumping into uncountable rigid masses.17 The Dutchman’s skill in this area was praised by American botanist John Bartram, who noted of the half-skins he obtained from Gronovius: “I have received ... the skin of the Fish, with its fin curiously displayed on paper; all which was very acceptable.”18 Peck, too, was interest- ed in the data afforded by this process: tallies of the number of rays per fin appear on the paper supporting several of Peck’s fish specimens, in annotations next to his drawings of fishes, and in the text of his ichthyology publication, “Description of Four Remarkable Fishes, Taken near the Piscataqua in New Hampshire.”19 These calculations also came into play in his lectures, where, in addition to teaching the species’ scientific names and geographical distribution, Peck demonstrated key morphological features, as when he told students that the catfish Silurus catus (now called Ameiurus catus) Fig. 3 Carl Linnaeus, Dried Spec- imen of Scophthalmus maximus “is distinguished by having the hinder back fin without (Turbot). Animal specimen and rays, 20 rays in the anal fin, & 8 cirrhi about the mouth. ink on paper. Linnean Society of The first ray of the pectoral fin is angular, very sharp, & London, the Linnaean Fish Col- lection, LINN 42. toothed only on the inner edge.”20

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Using a varnish, Peck also affixed white labels with some logistical challenges as well, since liquor evap- binomial species names directly onto the sides of many orated from many jars during transoceanic journeys of his fish specimens (see Plate 42), not unlike the la- and specimens could be “corrupted” if they touched beled minerals in Harvard Hall’s geological displays the bottom of the bottle or rubbed against each other (Fig. 4). Garden similarly wrote numbers on the skin of in overcrowded jars, as often happened due to limited his specimens, reinforcing their status as nature’s page. space or storage capacity.21 Thus, the flattening method did not strive to create an Specimens in spirits were also bulkier to ship than illusion of the live animal, in contrast to the other taxi- sheet-like fishes that could be filed in a box—a concom- dermy featured in the college’s collection; rather, these itant benefit of flattening, as evident in the fact that objects had specific classificatory ends, bearing literal most of Peck’s fishes reside to this day in a space-saving annotations in the mode of natural history illustration. cabinet in Harvard’s Museum of Comparative Zoology. In Resembling the coins and medallions throughout Har- a 1776 booklet containing handwritten instructions for vard Hall that featured human faces in profile (Fig. 5; preparing biological specimens for overseas shipment see also Plate 64), fishes in profile efficiently showcased from various colonies to Europe, George Humphrey, the information needed for their accounting. a London-based purveyor of curiosities, described a When naturalists did not dry fish specimens, they method of flattening fishes and affixing them to paper usually submerged the animals whole in alcohol—rang- quite similar to Gronovius’s directions. He noted, “By this ing from brandy to wine—and stored them in con- Method many kinds of Fishes may be so preserved as to tainers on shelves (Fig. 6). Some naturalists, such as take up very little more room than a Drawing, and will William Swainson, preferred this method, since one look infinitely better.”22 Humphrey’s comment explicitly could retrieve the fish from its jar to peer inside the shows the illustration-like nature of these specimens gills or pull the fins apart to count the number of rays. and also suggests that the fishes’ compression facili- But to observe the fins in this manner, one had to get tated their journeys across seas or storage elsewhere. his hands dirty. Preserving fishes in alcohol presented Despite some advantages of preserving fish specimens in alcohol, drying and flattening fishes often increased specimen survival rates and did away with the Fig. 4 Marble Specimens of Italian Fig. 5 Sestertius of Nero, 64– messiness of retrieving animals suspended in spirits. and American Origin (detail), late 68 CE. See Plate 64 for full object Facts such as the number of rays per fin were spread 18th century. See Plate 49 for full information. object information. out in plain view for the onlooker, and often also written

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out in ink, rather than concealed within folds in a jar and & fall with a touch tho even so gently handled.”24 These requiring manual manipulation of a slippery, pickled specimens thus risked destruction by their very form of specimen. Preparing a fish like the page of a book preservation. A desiccated, paper-thin, paper-like fish, rendered visible a being that existed in shadowy, murky in comparison to a jarred and pickled one, amounted to depths. It removed the fish from its watery milieu and the difference between viewing a picture of a fish and brought it into ours. grabbing one underwater—Peck’s fishes were legible to Yet converting fishes into flattened half-skins still the eyes and intellect, but not necessarily to the hands. presented challenges. Peck was acutely aware of the loss of color in his fishes, an incidental effect of preparing piscine specimens, as epitomized in the discolored lumpfish described earlier.23 In his writings, Peck took RENDERING LIFE great pains to describe the color of fishes as living, respiring beings. In an ichthyology lecture in the Phi- In creating his specimens, Peck faced many of the paint- losophy Chamber, he presented a specimen drained of erly concerns of someone like John Singleton Copley, color and told his students that although the species had whose portraits of Harvard benefactors adorned the been “described as having the back of a golden colour, walls of the Philosophy Chamber. Peck varnished his the rest of the body silvery,” this particular specimen fishes, fretted over color, and faced the task of reviv- “had the back bluish pearl colour.” Peck noted that this ifying the deceased in order to create likenesses that individual “was taken on the Piscataqua coast from an would convince viewers of the subject’s connection immense Shoal in the year ’93,” like several of his other to a real life.25 He excelled at drawing and was also a dry specimens. The fish was almost certainly a dried and painter; although none of his paintings are known to flattened half-skin, based on this collection date and survive, his lecture notes still contain many drawings, locality, as well as on Peck’s caution to his students in from fishes to human skulls that indicate racial types the lecture hall: “The scales are very loosely attached, (see Plate 62).26 Preoccupations with representing life reverberated throughout the Philosophy Chamber’s

Fig. 6 Levinus Vincent, engraving Fig. 7 Laurentius Theodorus Gro- specimens and artistic productions, as seen in the work of a cabinet of curiosities in Won- novius, Plecostomus, table 2 in of Benjamin Waterhouse, who was Harvard Hall’s other dertooneel der Nature (1706–15). Museum ichthyologicum [...] chief naturalist, Peck’s predecessor in delivering the col- Houghton Library, Harvard Uni- (1754). American Philosophical versity, NH 357.06*. Society, Philadelphia. lege’s natural history lectures, and, consequently, a rival

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of Peck. Despite the enmity between them, Peck and in a three-quarter pose (see, e.g., Plate 21), a technique Waterhouse had much in common, including a desire to also employed in some natural history illustrations spread the study of natural history in the young nation, (Fig. 7). Three-quarter orientations let the onlooker admiration for Linnaeus, an object-oriented teaching see partial views of two sides of a subject at once, and philosophy, and keen artistic taste. Waterhouse sent they also endowed an otherwise static surface with a his reflections on the arts of painting and sculpture to sense of movement.28 When applied to natural history, local newspapers, including one such undated tract this pose could simulate the turning of a specimen in preserved in manuscript form and titled “Statuary and one’s hands. Peck’s fishes, by contrast, do not attempt Painting No. 4.” In it, Waterhouse praised the mimetic to feign rotation with such a posture. Instead, they im- arts, especially portraiture. He wrote of Rembrandt: “In plicitly insist—at least in the case of bony fishes, with taking likenesses, he was so exact in distinguishing the their narrow dimensions and bilateral symmetry—that features and character, that his portraits appeared to the flattened plane substitutes for the turning: what you be alive, and starting from the canvas”—in other words, see on one side is what you get on the other. Of course, lunging out of their two-dimensional medium and into a three-dimensional specimen allowed one to actually three-dimensional, dynamic space.27 turn the creature over and back in one’s hands. Portrait Confining fishes to a single plane and painting peo- busts in the Philosophy Chamber enabled something ple on a flat surface posed many of the same challenges. similar for human likenesses, since a person could In each case, the two-dimensional surface generally encircle these stately, disembodied heads. Take, for eliminated interiority, as well as the chance to see a example, George Washington, who was represented in subject in the round. The Philosophy Chamber’s painted the chamber many times in various forms, including in portraits brought their subjects to life by setting them a portrait painted in 1793 by John Trumbull (Fig. 8) and as a bust after Jean-Antoine Houdon by an unknown artist (Fig. 9). The color absent from the bust could be found in the painting, and the spatial dimensions lacking Fig. 8 John Trumbull, George Fig. 9 After Jean-Antoine Hou in the painting appeared in the bust. Washington, c. 1793. Oil on can- don, George Washington. Marble, vas, 76.8 × 61 cm (301/4 × 24 in.). 60.5 × 35 × 30 cm (2313/16 × 133/4 In fact, juxtaposing several iterations of a single Harvard University Portrait Col- × 1113/16 in.). Harvard Universi- subject brings some of flattening’s most pressing issues lection, Gift of Andrew Craigie ty Portrait Collection, Probably into focus. Peck’s sucker fish sequence—consisting of a to Harvard College, 1794, H54. purchase from Isaac P. Davis, 1814, S49. flattened specimen (Fig. 10), a drawing (Fig. 11), and an

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engraving (Fig. 12) based on the drawing and published features that distorted animals further. Confining the in “Description of Four Remarkable Fishes”—further bulbous, the jutting, and the three-dimensional to a flat reinforces the limits of flattened representation, as well surface often warped what was being represented, like as the convergence of flattened specimens with natural the far reaches of Mercator-projected maps. Forster history illustration.29 While the three versions of the did note in his article that servants of the Hudson’s fish share much in common, a number of differences Bay Company collected the specimen for the Royal between Peck’s specimen and the two images come Society. Thus, unlike Bruno Latour’s concept of an to light, the most significant of which Peck reveals in immutable mobile—something that remains stable as the text that accompanied the engraving of the sucker. it travels—Forster’s specimen was a mutable mobile: In his essay, Peck devoted considerable length to an- it did not survive the journey from America to Europe other account and engraving of the sucker published without losing meaning, and an engraving based on a in Philosophical Transactions and authored by naturalist deformed specimen perpetuated that loss in print.31 John Reinhold Forster (Fig. 13). Peck wrote: “Dr. Forster Meanwhile, Peck touted the importance of con- observes that, in his specimen, ‘the head was full of ducting science on the ground instead of sending spec- elevations and tubercles; that he could not determine imens from the periphery to a metropolitan center the colour of the iris of the eye; that the body was com- for analysis. Working with fresh specimens became pressed or flat.’ It seems probable from these circum- a rallying cry for American naturalists embroiled in stances, that his specimen had been exposed to the the debate over the supposed degeneracy of Ameri- air and in some measure dried before he received it.”30 can fauna in comparison to their Old World corollar- Drying and flattening thus not only created omissions, ies, a viewpoint upheld by Europeans such as French as seen in Forster’s inability to describe the color of the naturalist Georges-Louis Leclerc, Comte de Buffon. fish’s eyes; these processes also added skin projections, Scottish-American ornithologist Alexander Wilson, for or tubercles, which helped Peck infer that Forster de- one, suggested that Europeans conceived of American scribed a dried and flattened specimen. The head of the wildlife as smaller and feebler precisely because they specimen in Forster’s engraving, with a rotating view worked with shriveled or stuffed specimens that had that simulates his manual examination of the fish, does decayed on their transatlantic voyages. indeed have a macabre appearance. Flattening thus not In his “Description of Four Remarkable Fishes,” Peck only took away color, depth, and life—it also introduced stated of his own engraving: “The delineation here given

Fig. 10 William Dandridge Peck, Fig. 11 William Dandridge Peck, Fig. 12 William Dandridge Peck, Dried Specimen of Catostomus Cyprinus catostomus, 1793. Sucker, engraving (detail of Fig. 4 bosteniensis (common sucker), Graphite and ink on paper, 25.5 × on Plate 2) in “Description of Four 1790. Animal specimen and ink 45.5 cm (10 × 1715/16 in.). Harvard Remarkable Fishes, Taken near on paper, 35.8 × 56.5 × 1.8 cm University Archives, HUG 1677, the Piscataqua in New Hamp- (141/16 × 221/4 × 11/16 in.). Collection Box 2, Drawings and Sketches shire,” Memoirs of the American of Historical Scientific Instru- Folder. Academy of Arts and Sciences ments, Harvard University, 0040. 2 (2) (1804). Houghton Library, Harvard University.

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was made with tolerable accuracy from a specimen newly taken. The head had not remarkable elevations.”32 Thus, Peck did not pattern his drawing from a flattened specimen as one might expect, given their similarity, but from a recently killed individual.33 While the dried skin was a remnant of the swimming fish, it resembled Peck’s drawing more than it reflected the animate creature. Scholars typically view a preserved specimen as more authentically representative of a living being than an illustration: the former serves as an index of the organism, while the latter offers merely a derivative rendering. Sue Ann Prince, for instance, observes that “a specimen is a curious means of representing nature because what is used—whether a skeleton, a skin, or a dried flower—is composed of all or part of what was the living thing itself. It is thus more than a representation but less than real, live nature.”34 Peck’s hand-drawn representation of the sucker, however, is more faithful to the original than the flattened half-skin in many ways, underscoring the extent to which compressed biological matter represented a convergence of object and image. An illustration could restore signs of life evaporated from the ghostly shell of a fish.

THE BOOK OF NATURE

In delivering a sermon dedicated to Peck on the Sunday after his death in 1822, the reverend John Thornton Kirkland, President of Harvard at the time, said Peck “was accustomed to see God in his works.”35 The many plants Peck prepared during his lifetime also reveal the illustration- or book-like quality of compressed nature, which made flattened specimens legible to naturalists as God’s artistic work. For without certain traditions of botanical preservation, Peck’s fishes may never have existed. In his autobiography, Linnaeus noted the resemblance of his own fish half-skins to botanical specimens, writing that he stored “in his cupboards innumerable fish glued on paper as if they were plants.”36 When reviewing Linnaeus’s specimens, former Linnean Society of London president Albert C.L.G. Günther noted this method of preservation made the fishes “like specimens of a hortus siccus,” a frequently used Latin term meaning “dry garden” that referred to a long tradition of drying plants and preserving them two- dimensionally in books known as herbaria.37 Gronovius told John Bartram that he sent “dryed fishes, to be kept as plants in an Herbarius.”38 Also in a letter to Bartram, Peter Collinson mentioned the dry fish collection of Bartram’s son William, saying: “I am pleased to see that he has gott so pretty a Way of Drying Fish. Bye it we Fig. 13 John Reinhold Forster, Cy- prinus catostomus (The Sucker), may have a Hortus Siccus or rather Oceanus Siccuss engraving (detail of head on Plate of Fish.”39 Flattening fishes thus fell quite visibly into a 6) in “An Account of Some Curi- ous Fishes, Sent from Hudson’s history of preserving plants. Bay,” Philosophical Transactions In addition to his fishes, Peck dried and pressed 63 (1) (1773). Houghton Library, numerous plants that still accompany his lecture notes, Harvard University. and he maintained an herbarium, several fragments of

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which linger today (Fig. 14). Botany proved to be a major theme throughout Peck’s short career. Upon assuming the Massachusetts Professorship of Natural History, he promptly embarked on a multiyear tour of Europe to obtain books, observe botanical gardens and natural history institutions as potential models for Harvard, and procure seeds and a gardener for Harvard’s own soon-to-be-established botanical garden, where Peck would serve as the inaugural curator until his death in 1822. Peck owned a machine devoted to flattening plants, as revealed in a catalogue of his belongings auctioned upon his death that also listed “sundry books and packages of dried plants.”40 It is no coincidence that naturalists wrote of the metaphorical “book” or “page” of nature and kept their dried and pressed plants in actual books on actual paper, for herbaria self-consciously literalized these metaphors. Herbaria frequently were bound like books, placed in libraries like books, and cited like books.41 The concept of nature as a text had existed since antiquity, but gained momentum with the spread of printing and Protestantism.42 Studying nature’s characters closely and keeping specimens in an herbarium amounted to a kind of exegesis of God’s text, offering a window into the workings of his mind. The leaf of the plant and the leaf of the page shared formal and material consisten- cy as well, the page itself being made from plants.43 Dried and flattened specimens of plants were even

called “natural illustrations,” reinforcing their affinity with pictorial representations.44 The fact that Peck’s plant specimens today reside in an archive of personal papers and not in the collections of a natural history museum or official herbarium speaks to the ways in which flattening renders nature legible to literate audiences across time. Importantly, flattening also made natural objects recognizable to naturalists as products of the Cre- ator’s imagination. In his botany lectures, Peck used the metaphor of the “page of Nature itself” frequently, as when he wrote:

If, which is all that lectures can do, we have raised a little the veil which concealed from your View the innumerable wonders of the Vegetable world, It is for You to enter the extensive field & acquire skill with experience. You will then find in pleasing & wonderful variety, irrefragable proofs of the ... Omniscient mind at whose quiet volition, creation sprang into being; of whose miracles every Tree, every herb is a Volume.45 Fig. 14 William Dandridge Peck, Fig. 15 Page from blank book Limeum. Specimen and ink on used by Benjamin Waterhouse as paper, 9.5 × 12 cm (33/4 × 43/4 in.); an herbarium. Francis A. Count- Peck thus envisioned trees and herbs as vital sections diameter of specimen: 3 cm way Library of Medicine, Harvard (13/16 in.). Harvard University Ar- University, B MS b10.1. of nature’s book. He continued by noting the fine struc- chives, HUG 1677, Box 2, Dried tures and adaptations visible in plants, and suggested Specimens, Herbarium Folder. that “[t]hese, as they are intended to do, should ever The text is transcribed from an entry in Systema Naturae. remind us of the omniscient Creator while we examine

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his works. The study of plants will thus elevate our thoughts, effectually banish ennui, by affording inter- esting & innocent amusement & every plant, however minute will give pleasure & instruction.”46 Nature thus provided an enjoyable book, as the author intended it. At Harvard, Peck was hardly alone in his interpretation of nature as a text, as Waterhouse asked: “Should we not ... encourage the natural curiosity of our countrymen to read that sacred scripture written by the finger of the Deity himself, upon every animal, every plant, and every mineral? ... The Great Book of Nature ... is peculiarly inviting in this country; its ample pages strike all who have eyes to see and hearts to feel!”47 Yet to call dried and pressed plants “natural illustrations” also implied their inability to match the living plant. In the words of artist Craigie Horsfield, “The specimen pressed flat is lacking the vitality, the ‘plantness’ of the plant, its essential being, in the way that the husk of a dead thing is less than the husk of the living embodiment.”48 Much like the desiccated fishes Peck displayed in his lectures, brittle herbaria specimens always threaten to fall apart: their mode of preservation is also their undoing, evident in the cracked leaves, stray flowers, and missing pieces throughout Harvard’s herbarium collections (Fig. 15).49 Further, dry fishes and plants appeal to insects. Many arthropods earned the title “herbarium pests” in Peck’s day.50 As Oliver Wunsch shows in the following essay, these creatures posed a threat to the Philosophy Chamber’s preservations, whose keepers used rounds of camphor and tightly sealed receptacles to ward off hungry insects and other threats such as mold. Another type of Peck’s flattened botanical preparations—the leaf impression—proved more robust. His leaf rubbings, which can be categorized within a larger class of objects known as “nature prints,” assumed a hybrid status between specimen and illustration (Fig. 16). Peck produced these impressions by holding a damp leaf that was pressed to a pane of glass above a fire until the leaf evenly blackened from the smoke; he then set the leaf on a table, placed paper on top of it, and ran a roller across the paper to preserve a “beautiful impression of the leaf with every vein and ramification.”51 Peck thus added the medium of smoke, giving the impressions an ephemeral quality similar to the smoke prints Lucie Steinberg discusses elsewhere in this book. But Peck’s prints were still indexical and “botanographical,” or “drawn by the plant itself.”52 Nature prints derive their authenticity from direct contact: the specimen has touched the paper, branding it with its former presence. Like Peck’s fishes, however, the impressions’ ghostly appearance underscores the inadequacy of this illustration-like rendering of nature, created through several iterations of literal flattening: Fig. 16 William Dandridge Peck, Fig. 17 William Dandridge Peck, first onto glass, then onto a table, and finally onto paper Impression of a Leaf Collected Leaf Impression (Ranunc. casur. near Harvard Hall. Detail from fol. radicale) (detail from sheet with a rolling implement. Several of Peck’s impressions sheet, 20 × 10.5 cm (77/8 × 41/8 in.). of four impressions). Harvard bear stark lines introduced during the smoke transfer Harvard University Archives, HUG University Archives, HUG 1677, process, as well as a halo effect near the stems (Fig. 17). 1677, Box 1, Leaf Impressions Box 1, Leaf Impressions Folder. Folder. He imprinted plants onto the page of nature, as if part

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of God’s movable type, but the resulting impressions creature must be double images, for, much like a coin, failed to re-embody those plants without distractions the top differs dramatically from the bottom (Fig. 18). or distortions. A survey of illustrations and engravings of rays from the period reinforces this fact. While it is not known if Peck prepared a ray specimen, he did create a drawing of the animal to accompany his lectures, and indeed, this REFIGURING FLATNESS drawing presents a recto-verso image, with the top of the ray shown on one side of the paper (Fig. 19a) and its While uniplanar flounders and fronds script their trans- underside on the other (19b). As Peck’s accompanying fer to the page to some degree, not all that is naturally lecture notes indicate, diagnostic traits appear on both flat lends itself to illustration-like representation. A sides of a ray’s body. The material form of rays thus stingray, though flattened and flush, cannot be depicted created the conditions for how these animals could or prepared in profile: it would appear as little more than be understood and used. Rays necessitated reversals a line, rendering Peck’s standard mode of fish repre- that evaded the simpler convergence of illustration sentation problematic for this group of cartilaginous and animal that bony fishes permitted, pointing to the fishes.53 Further, a single, flattened depiction of a ray limits of flattening in the pursuit of natural knowledge. is not possible given their top-and-bottom, heads- Ray specimens made several appearances in Har- or-tails configuration. Unlike images of bony fishes, vard Hall, but in three dimensions. Ray skin was further where one side of the animal serves as a proxy for the flattened with a stone and dyed to make a material other, all images of rays devoted to capturing the entire called shagreen, which was bent and rolled to cover cases containing scientific instruments as well as the barrels of telescopes or compound microscopes.54 Fig. 18 Charles Alexandre Shagreen was flatness refigured. Here, the specimen Lesueur, Raja say, illustration in “Description of Three New Spe- still functioned as art, having been harvested from cies of the Genus Raja,” Journal of hidden pockets of the sea like a pearl.55 But shagreen the Academy of Natural Sciences 1 (1) (1817–18). Engraving. Bio- also served practical scientific purposes. The rough, diversity Heritage Library. The flattened placoid scales from the ray’s skin allowed the species depicted here is now material to be steadily gripped, preventing scientific referred to as Dasyatis say (the bluntnose stingray). instrument cases from being dropped and allowing one

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Microscopy enabled one to appreciate nature’s surfaces on an unprecedented level, opening a new universe of observation, as noted by Aleksandr Bierig in his essay in this volume.58 The design of the microscope itself aligned with its role as a seemingly divine instrument. A common form of compound microscope in the 18th century was a device originally designed by Englishman Ed- mund Culpeper that spawned a number of imitations and emulations. These so-called Culpeper-type microscopes stood on three legs, and the microscope’s adjustable barrel was typically covered with shagreen (Fig. 20a). A disc with circular slides around its rim

a accompanied many of these microscopes, arranged much like a palette of paint (Fig. 20b). The disc sat on the microscope’s “stage,” positioned above a concave mirror that reflected sunlight or candlelight to increase illumination of the specimen, which might be a whole animal, such as a flea, or a fragment, such as a fly’s wing or mosquito’s needle.59 The disc would be rotated on this stage to switch from specimen to specimen—a literal slideshow of God’s works. And microscopes offered something Peck’s fishes could not: transparency. These instruments gratified the fantasy of seeing the whole specimen at once. Microscopes let naturalists peer beyond surfaces, into interiors normally hidden from sight, thus circumventing illustration’s dilemma of one-sidedness. In Micrographia

b (1665), Robert Hooke praised the wonders of “internal curiosities,” considering it “a general rule in Nature’s to grasp the barrel of the microscope in order to adjust proceedings, that where she begins to display any the focus, albeit rudimentarily. Although something excellency, if the subject be further search’d into, it would be lost in a flattened illustration of a ray, much will manifest, that there is not less curiosity in those could be gained from converting it to a tactile, three- parts which our single eye cannot reach, then [sic] in dimensional form, coarse with its own materiality. If those which are more obvious.”60 An accessory that Peck’s delicate dried fishes whispered don’t touch, a accompanied one Culpeper-type microscope made by stingray converted into a handle demanded contact, Londoner Matthew Loft was a cradleboard-like metal suggesting the need to grasp material nature rather contraption called a fish plate (or frog plate) that bears than simply apprehending it optically or cognitively. signs of extensive use to this day (Fig. 20c). The design Shagreen thus facilitated observations of yet an- of this particular fish plate contained three straps of other instance of flattened nature found in Harvard Hall: green rope used to confine a live frog or fish to the specimens flattened on a microscope slide. The micro- metal plate so that one could examine the circulation of scope was seen as a divine instrument that enabled blood in the frog’s foot or fish’s tail, which would have one to encounter the lower limits of God’s creation, protruded over the edge of the plate. The discovery of including minute structures and organisms (which the circulation of blood in the early 17th century had often were called “animalcules”). According to Susan created a demand for instruments that could capture Scott Parrish, “Studying biological life on the smallest the movement of internal life processes in real time. scale provided evidence of the carefulness, constan- As George Adams wrote in his 1771 Micrographia Illus- cy, and pervasiveness of God’s handiwork.”56 Peck trata: Or, The Microscope Explained, “The circulation of certainly found God on smaller scales, calling insects blood affords an entertaining sight” and “the smallest that he examined “puny vouchers of omnipotence.”57 creatures are perfect in their kind, and carry about them as strong marks of infinite wisdom and power, as the greatest.”61 According to Savile Bradbury, natural

Fig. 19a (recto) and 19b (verso) philosophers “were no longer solely concerned with William Dandridge Peck, Drawing looking at the surface structure of opaque objects of Ray Accompanying Ichthyology Lecture, c. 1814. Graphite and but were beginning to examine biological material by ink on paper. Ichthyology Lecture transmitted light, a procedure which often yields much Notes, Papers of William Dan- more information.”62 Fish plates often employed a grid- dridge Peck, Harvard University Archives, HUG 1677.53, Box 5. like flattening of the specimen to prevent movement

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while also sustaining the animal’s life. Naturalists thus that Herman Melville would make through the mouth restrained nature through compression in order to of Ishmael in his 1851 novel Moby-Dick. Ishmael paro- understand it. dies the metaphor by classifying whales in the lexicon But like the spectral shells of tubercle-ridden fishes of book printing, cheekily referring to the animals as or the ghostly imprints of leaf rubbings, microscopes folio, octavo, or duodecimo, according to their size—the effected transmutations of nature by exposing what implication being that one does not come to truly know was normally miniscule or invisible, potentially ren- whales from flattened books or as flattened books, but dering it monstrous: in a larger-than-life foldout figure only by entering the ocean to encounter them.63 of a flea in Hooke’s Micrographia, the insect appears As microscopic specimens revealed God’s art to to leap off the page (Fig. 21); another figure, this one naturalists, the flattening of specimens on slides and of a louse, expands to four times the size of the book. projection of magnifications onto the printed page also The volume proved too modest to contain God’s text, introduced distortions or losses that underscored their casting doubt on the metaphor of nature as a book and inability to measure up to the real thing; these creatures the ability of the flattened mode of transcribing nature reached beyond the pages of the book of nature. The to literalize that metaphor. Hooke didn’t necessarily hands-on manner in which naturalists used shagreen intend this meaning—his work is also a commentary reveals that purely visual or rational approaches to or- on the wonders of the microscope, magnification, and ganisms—whether fishes, ferns, or fleas—that treated the book as a form—but his outsized images take on wildlife in flattened, book-like terms were necessarily a life and meaning of their own, standing as omens of incomplete. A full understanding of the natural world the resounding critique of the literal book of nature required its material, tactile reckoning. Beginning in 1820—just two years before Peck’s death—the collections of art, artifacts, specimens, and scientific instruments in the Philosophy Chamber, Uni- Fig. 20a, b–c (accessories) Mat- thew Loft, Culpeper-type Com- versity Museum, and Apparatus Closet were dispersed pound Microscope, 1730 –47. across the campus and to area museums. Meanwhile, Brass, glass, shagreen, vellum, and wood, 43 × 18 × 18 cm (1615/16 the library took over Harvard Hall’s entire second floor, × 71/16 × 71/16 in.); 7 kg (15.4 lbs.). the former home of these collections.64 Peck’s death, Collection of Historical Scientific which his pupil Ralph Waldo Emerson described as the Instruments, Harvard University, 1180. end of “King Peck’s dominion,” thus roughly marks the

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end of a period in which various material objects, some three-dimensional and some flat, dominated Harvard Hall before books came to commandeer the space.65 As even Peck’s objects veered toward bookishness, the library’s eventual takeover signaled the triumph of flattened text in this building, and not only as a metaphor. No longer was Harvard Hall the site for encountering material objects other than books: to “read” any of these objects, one had to travel out across campus and into the world.

Fig. 21 Robert Hooke, The Flea, engraving in Micrographia (1665). Houghton Library, Harvard Uni- Whitney Barlow Robles is a Ph.D. candidate in American Studies at versity, *90W-122F. Harvard University.

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For their help with this project, I rather than live organisms), par- 409–37; and Stanley Finger, “Dr. would like to thank the staff at a ticularly images of plants made Alexander Garden, a Linnaean in number of archives, including the during Enlightenment-era botan- Colonial America, and the Saga Harvard University Archives, the ical expeditions of the Spanish of Five ‘Electric Eels,’” Perspec- Collection of Historical Scientific Empire. See Daniela Bleichmar, tives in Biology and Medicine 53 Instruments, Houghton Library, Visible Empire: Botanical Expe- (3) (2010): 388–406. On connec- the Francis A. Countway Library ditions & Visual Culture in the tions between slavery and natu- of Medicine, the Harvard Univer- Hispanic Enlightenment (Chica- ral history, including the role of sity Herbaria, the Schlesinger Li- go: University of Chicago Press, slave expertise in the discipline, brary on the History of Women 2012), 109. see Christopher P. Iannini, Fatal in America, the American Phil- 5 Revolutions: Natural History, West osophical Society, the Histori- Obituary Notice of Professor Indian Slavery, and the Routes cal Society of Pennsylvania, the Peck, Papers of William Dan- of American Literature (Chapel Academy of Natural Sciences dridge Peck, Harvard University Hill: University of North Caroli- of Drexel University, Harvard’s Archives, HUG 1677.2. na Press, 2012); and Kathleen Museum of Comparative Zool- 6 S. Murphy, “Translating the Ver- ogy (and in particular, Karsten John Frid. Gronovius, “A Method nacular: Indigenous and African E. Hartel), the Linnean Society of Preparing Specimens of Fish, Knowledge in the Eighteenth- of London (especially Lynda by Drying Their Skins, as Prac- Century British Atlantic,” Atlantic Brooks), and the Natural Histo- tised by John Frid. Gronovius, Studies 8 (1) (2011): 29–48. ry Museum, London (especially M. D. at Leyden,” Philosophical 9 James Maclaine). I would also Transactions 42 (463) (1742–43): Other 18th-century collections of like to thank participants and au- 57–58. While Gronovius appears flattened fish half-skins fixed to dience members in a roundtable to have been the first to publish paper include that of Peter Forss- at the Association for the Study this method, he told John Bar- kål, a Swedish naturalist and of Literature and Environment’s tram in a 1751 letter that German student of Linnaeus, and French biennial meeting in June 2015; explorer Johann Ernst Hebenst- naturalist Philibert Commerson; audience members at the Joint reit “invented this methode, but see Amandine Péquignot, “Une Atlantic Seminar for the History he never would communicate the peau entre deux feuilles, l’usage of Biology in April 2016; fellows way to prepare them so; till at de l’‘herbier’ en taxidermie aux and staff of the Consortium for last I found it out a few years ago, XVIIIe et XIXe siècles en France,” History of Science, Technology, and communicate it to our good Revue d’histoire des sciences 59 and Medicine; as well as students friend Mr. Collinson, by whose (1) (2006): 127–36. and faculty in two courses at care it is printed in the philos. 10 Harvard, “From the Philosophy Transact. num. 463”; quoted in One of Linnaeus’s most promi- Chamber: Harvard and the Arts Helen A. Choate, “An Unpub- nent adversaries was French nat- in the Early Republic” and “The lished Letter by Gronovius,” uralist Georges-Louis Leclerc, Environmental Turn in History.” Torreya 16 (5) (May 1916): 118–19. Comte de Buffon, who objected The research presented here was 7 to the artificiality of Linnaeus’s made possible by financial sup- See also Alwyne Wheeler, “The system; see Phillip R. Sloan, “The port in the form of a research fel- Linnaean Fish Collection in the Buffon-Linnaeus Controversy,” lowship from the Consortium for Linnean Society of London,” Zo- Isis 67 (3) (1976): 356–75. History of Science, Technology, ological Journey of the Linnean 11 and Medicine; as well as support Society 84 (1985): 2; and Nan- This story appears in a number of from Harvard’s Graduate School cy Pick, The Rarest of the Rare: discussions of Peck’s biography; of Arts and Sciences and the Stories behind the Treasures at see, for instance, I. Bernard Co- Jens Aubrey Westengard Fund. the Harvard Museum of Natural hen, Some Early Tools of American For their comments on drafts of History (New York: HarperCollins, Science: An Account of the Early this essay, I thank the other au- 2004), 43. Scientific Instruments and Miner- thors in this volume, as well as 8 alogical and Biological Collections Joyce E. Chaplin, Luke Willert, See the letter from Alexander in Harvard University (Cambridge, Carla Cevasco, Zachary Nowak, Garden to Carl Linnaeus, June 20, Mass.: Harvard University Press, John Frederick Bell, participants 1771, in A Selection of the Corre- 1950), 105; and Jeannette E. in Harvard’s American Studies spondence of Linnaeus, and Oth- Graustein, “Harvard’s Only Mas- Workshop, and two anonymous er Naturalists: From the Original sachusetts Professor of Natural reviewers. Manuscripts, vol. 1, ed. James Ed- History,” Harvard Alumni Bulletin 1 ward Smith (London: Longman, (1958): 243. Years after Peck visit- Letter from William Dandridge Hurst, Rees, Orme, and Brown, ed Europe as part of his duties for Peck to Reverend Jeremy Belk- 1821), 331; and “Brief Notices the Massachusetts Professorship nap, March 30, 1790, Papers of of Eminent Persons: Alexander of Natural History, English bota- William Dandridge Peck, Harvard Garden,” The New-York Mirror: A nist William Jackson Hooker said University Archives, HUG 1677.1, Weekly Journal, Devoted to Liter- that Peck relayed this story to Box 1. Note: I have removed the ature and the Fine Arts 10 (1) (July him; see William Jackson Hook- descending s (ſ) throughout this 7, 1832): 325. Although it is cus- er, “On the Botany of America,” essay for readability. Any em- tomary to describe these fishes The Edinburgh Journal of Science phasis in quotations is from the as Garden’s, Peck’s, Gronovius’s, 2 (3) (1825): 118. original unless otherwise noted. or Linnaeus’s, the creation of 12 2 these specimens often involved Letter from William Dandridge Gulf of Maine Research Institute, the work of unnamed actors, such Peck to Eliphalet Pearson, Sep- “Lumpfish Cyclopterus lumpus as the black servant who helped tember 19, 1794, Papers of Wil- Linnaeus 1758,” http://www.gma Garden. For instance, at differ- liam Dandridge Peck, Harvard .org/fogm/Cyclopterus_lumpus ent points in his career, Peck University Archives, HUG 1677.1, .htm (accessed December 11, reported receiving specimens Box 1. 2014). from children and fishermen. 13 3 For more information on Garden, While discussions of internal John Berger, “Why Look at An- see Albert E. Sanders, “Alexan- anatomy do appear in Linnaeus’s imals?” in About Looking (New der Garden (1730–1791), Pioneer work, D. Graham Burnett notes York: Vintage, [1980] 1991), 3–28. Naturalist in Colonial America,” in that it was not until the rise of 4 Collection Building in Ichthyology French naturalist Georges Cuvier In this essay, I primarily examine and Herpetology, ed. Theodore that dissection and internal anat- illustration-like specimens, but W. Pietsch and William Dewey omy became the gold standard Daniela Bleichmar has examined Anderson (Lawrence, Kans.: for classification; see D. Graham specimen-like illustrations (i.e., American Society of Ichthyolo- Burnett, Trying Leviathan: The images that emulate specimens gists and Herpetologists, 1997), Nineteenth-Century New York

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Court Case That Put the Whale American Philosophical Society, likely that Peck’s specimen is ac- of Cambridge: Also an Extensive on Trial and Challenged the Order 2003), 36–38. tually a white sucker (described Collection of Minerals, Coins, and of Nature (Princeton, N.J.: Prince 22 as Catostomus commersonii by Insects, in the Finest Order,” Pa- ton University Press, 2007), 11. George Humphrey, “Directions Bernard Germain de Lacépède pers of William Dandridge Peck, 14 for Collecting and Preserving in 1803, approximately a decade Harvard University Archives, HUG In addition to the number of rays, All Kinds of Natural Curiosities,” after Peck’s publication; another 1677.3, Box 1. qualitative features such as col- 1776, Archives of the Acade- synonym is Catostomus boston- 41 or also accompanied Linnaeus’s my of Natural Sciences, Drexel iensis), since the longnose sucker Staffan Müller-Wille, “Linnaeus’ descriptions of fishes; see Carl University, Collection 371. On is not known to live in the two Herbarium Cabinet: A Piece of Linnaeus, A General System of space-saving study skins, see localities where Peck obtained Furniture and Its Function,” En- Nature: Through the Three Grand Rachel Poliquin, The Breathless his specimens. The two spe- deavour 30 (2) (2006): 61. Linnae- Kingdoms of Animals, Vegeta- Zoo: Taxidermy and the Cultures cies, however, are difficult to us chose not to bind his herbar- bles, and Minerals, Systemati- of Longing (University Park: Penn- distinguish, so Peck’s possible ium because it made re-sorting cally Divided into Their Several sylvania State University Press, confusion is understandable, es- species more difficult; instead, he Classes, Orders, Genera, Species, 2012), 127–28. pecially considering his limited used a large cabinet that allowed and Varieties [...], 13th ed., vol. 1 23 resources. For range maps of the for easy swapping of sheets. (London: Lackington, Allen, and Gronovius also rued the loss of species, see Hartel, Halliwell, and 42 Co., 1802), 726. The sections on color in his half-skins, as when Launer, Inland Fishes of Massa- See also Klaas van Berkel and Arjo fishes also draw from the work he told Bartram: “[T]he great chusetts, 137–40. Vanderjagt, introduction to The of Linnaeus’s late friend Peter misfortune is, that the colour 30 Book of Nature in Early Modern Artedi, often referred to as the perish; else it shows a good way Peck, “Description of Four Re- and Modern History, ed. Klaas van father of ichthyology. to find out their characters ... by markable Fishes,” 55. Berkel and Arjo Vanderjagt (Leu- 15 the nummer [sic] and position of 31 ven, Belgium: Peeters, 2006), ix. See, for example, the letter from the Fins, and the bones in them”; John Reinhold Forster, “An Ac- 43 Garden to Linnaeus, January 2, quoted in Choate, “An Unpub- count of Some Curious Fishes, Carol Armstrong, “Camera- 1760, in Smith, A Selection of lished Letter by Gronovius,” 118. Sent from Hudson’s Bay; By Mr. less: From Natural Illustrations the Correspondence of Linnaeus, 24 John Reinhold Forster, F. R. S. in and Nature Prints to Manual vol. 1, 300. William Dandridge Peck, Ichthy- a Letter to Thomas Pennant, Esq.; and Photogenic Drawings and 16 ology Lecture Notes, Papers of F. R. S.,” Philosophical Transac- Other Botanographs,” in Ocean Ibid. William Dandridge Peck, Har- tions 63 (1773–74): 2; and Bruno Flowers: Impressions from Na- 17 vard University Archives, HUG Latour, “Visualisation and Cogni- ture, ed. Carol Armstrong and Alwyne Wheeler has noted that 1677.53, Box 1. On privileging tion: Drawing Things Together,” Catherine de Zegher (Princeton, some specimens in Gronovius’s sight as a sense to gain access to Knowledge and Society: Studies N.J.: Princeton University Press, collection still bear holes from knowledge, see Ann Blum, Pictur- in the Sociology of Culture Past 2004), 93. the pins. See Alwyne Wheeler, ing Nature: American Nineteenth- and Present 6 (1986): 7. 44 “The Gronovius Fish Collection: Century Zoological Illustration 32 Ibid., 94. A Catalogue and Historical Ac- (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton Uni- Peck, “Description of Four Re- 45 count,” Bulletin of the British versity Press, 1993), 10. markable Fishes,” 55. William Dandridge Peck, Lecture Museum (Natural History) 1 (5) 25 33 Notes: Botany Lecture 11, Papers (1958): 200. For a discussion of “likeness” in On 19th-century fish illustrations of William Dandridge Peck, Har- 18 portraiture, see Marcia Pointon, that depict recently dead rather vard University Archives, HUG Letter from John Bartram to John “Portrait! Portrait!! Portrait!!!” in than living fishes, foregrounding 1677.53, Box 3. Frederick Gronovius, December Art on the Line: The Royal Acade- the process of decay, see Leah 46 6, 1745, in Memorials of John my Exhibitions at Somerset House, Aronowsky, “On Drawing Dead Ibid. See also Cohen, Some Early Bartram and Humphry Marshall: 1780–1836, ed. David H. Solkin Fish,” Environmental History 21 Tools of American Science, 125. With Notices of Their Botanical (New Haven, Conn.: Yale Univer- (3) (2016): 542–51. 47 Contemporaries, ed. William Dar- sity Press, 2001), 105. 34 Quoted in Cohen, Some Early lington (Philadelphia: Lindsay & 26 Sue Ann Prince, introduction to Tools of American Science, 96. Blakiston, 1849), 352. Obituary Notice of Professor Prince, Stuffing Birds, Pressing 48 19 Peck, Papers of William Dan- Plants, Shaping Knowledge, 4. Craigie Horsfield, “World and William Dandridge Peck, “De- dridge Peck, Harvard University 35 Word,” in Armstrong and De Ze- scription of Four Remarkable Archives, HUG 1677.2. Quoted in Obituary Notice of gher, Ocean Flowers, 183. Fishes, Taken near the Pisca- 27 Professor Peck, Papers of Wil- 49 taqua in New Hampshire,” Mem- Benjamin Waterhouse, “Statu- liam Dandridge Peck, Harvard Bleichmar also notes the fragility oirs of the American Academy of ary and Painting No. 4,” Benjamin University Archives, HUG 1677.2. of dried specimens and the pri- Arts and Sciences 2 (2) (1804): Waterhouse Papers, Center for 36 macy of visual media (as opposed 46–57. Peck’s is regarded as the the History of Medicine, Harvard Quoted in Peck, “Alcohol and Ar- to material specimens) in the first scientific article on New En- Medical Library in the Francis A. senic, Pepper and Pitch,” 37–38. Spanish Empire; see Bleichmar, gland’s fishes by an American; Countway Library of Medicine, 37 Visible Empire, 63. see Karsten E. Hartel, David B. Harvard University, H MS c 16.4. Albert C.L.G. Günther, “The Presi- 50 Halliwell, and Alan E. Launer, 28 dent’s Anniversary Address,” Pro- For instance, Peck helped the Inland Fishes of Massachusetts See Alexandra Wachtel, “Rem- ceedings of the Linnean Society of Massachusetts Historical Soci- (Lincoln, Mass.: Massachusetts bert Dodoens,” in Prints and the London 111 (1898–99): 16. ety preserve thousands of dry Audubon Society, 2002), 10. Pursuit of Knowledge in Early 38 plant specimens which, having 20 Modern Europe, ed. Susan Dack- Choate, “An Unpublished Letter been “shipped in a Box with many William Dandridge Peck, Ichthy- erman (Cambridge, Mass.: Har- by Gronovius,” 118. open cracks in it, they contracted ology Lecture Notes, Papers of vard Art Museums, 2011), 192. 39 dampness & were many of them William Dandridge Peck, Har- 29 Letter from Peter Collinson to mouldy of course. As something vard University Archives, HUG Peck (or possibly a helper) col- John Bartram, May 28, 1766, was absolutely necessary to be 1677.53, Box 1. lected the fish that became the Bartram Family Papers, Historical done for their preservation; & as 21 dried and flattened specimen Society of Pennsylvania, Collec- this was an opportunity to ac- William Swainson, Taxidermy, from the Charles River in 1790, tion 36, Box 3. quire a little experience not to be with the Biography of Zoologists and another specimen that be- 40 neglected; I proposed to the So- and Notices of Their Works (Lon- came the model for his drawing “Catalogue of Books to be Sold ciety to put them into my hands. don: Longman, Orme, Brown, near the Piscataqua River (in at Auction on Thursday, the The proposal was acceded to & I Green, and Longmans, 1840), New Hampshire) in 1793. Peck 13th Day of February 1823, at ... wash[ed] every specimen with 52. See also Robert McCrack- identified both specimens as 10 o’clock a.m. in Joy’s Build- Camphorated Spirits in order to en Peck, “Alcohol and Arsenic, Cyprinus catostomus, a name ings, Cornhill Square, Boston, remove the mould & in the hope Pepper and Pitch: Brief Histories given by John Reinhold Forster Containing a Choice Collection of destroying its seeds. Not a of Preservation Techniques,” in (see below). Cyprinus catostomus of Work upon Botany and Natu- moment was to be lost as the Stuffing Birds, Pressing Plants, now goes by the scientific name ral History, and Comprising the time was approaching & is now Shaping Knowledge: Natural His- Catostomus catostomus and is Whole Library of the Late William almost arrived when the ... Her- tory in North America, 1730–1860, commonly referred to as the D. Peck, Professor of Botany and barium pests, are leaving their ed. Sue Ann Prince (Philadelphia: longnose sucker. However, it is Natural History in the University winter retreats.” See the letter

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from William Dandridge Peck to of William Dandridge Peck, Har- Benjamin Smith Barton, March vard University Archives, HUG 12, 1796, Benjamin Smith Barton 1677, Box 2. Peck likely co-opted Papers, Archives of the American this phrase from English poet Philosophical Society, B D284.d. Edward Young. Harvard also asked Peck to sup- 58 ply directions for preserving Natural philosophers embraced specimens well before he be- this language of a new world. came a professor there. See, for In Micrographia, Robert Hooke example, the letter from Peck to wrote: “By the means of Tele- Jeremy Belknap, July 1794, Pa- scopes, there is nothing so far pers of William Dandridge Peck, distant but may be represented Harvard University Archives, HUG to our view; and by the help of 1677.1, Box 1. Microscopes, there is nothing so 51 small, as to escape our inquiry; William Dandridge Peck, “Meth- hence there is a new visible World od of Taking Impressions of Veg- discovered to the understanding. etable Leaves,” in Collections of By this means the Heavens are the Massachusetts Historical So- open’d, and a vast number of new ciety, ser. 2, vol. 1 (Boston: John Stars, and new Motions, and new H. Eastburn, 1838), 24. Productions appear in them, to 52 which all the ancient Astrono- Armstrong, “Cameraless,” 158. mers were utterly Strangers. For more on the indexicality of By this the Earth it self, which nature prints, see Susan Dacker- lyes so neer us, under our feet, man, “Dürer’s Indexical Fantasy: shews quite a new thing to us, The Rhinoceros and Printmak- and in every little particle of its ing,” in Dackerman, Prints and matter; we now behold almost as the Pursuit of Knowledge in Early great a variety of Creatures, as we Modern Europe, 166. were able before to reckon up in 53 the whole Universe it self.” See The Linnaeus and Gronovius Robert Hooke, preface to Micro- collections of flattened half- graphia: Or, Some Physiological skins do contain ray specimens, Descriptions of Minute Bodies but they provide only top-down Made by Magnifying Glasses, with views, and usually preserve only Observations and Inquiries There- the top half of the animal. I dis- upon, rev. ed. (London: Printed for tinguish here between “bony John Martyn, 1667). fishes” (Osteichthyes: flounders, 59 lumpfishes, suckers, etc.) and Savile Bradbury, The Evolution “cartilaginous fishes” (Chon- of the Microscope (Oxford: Per- drichthyes: rays, skates, sharks, gamon, 1967), 108. etc.) to indicate that these are 60 very different groups of animals. Hooke, Micrographia, 208. Most systematists would argue 61 that the generic term “fishes,” George Adams, Micrographia Il- when referring to both bony and lustrata, rev. ed. (London: Print- cartilaginous fishes, is in fact ed for the author, 1771), 17, and an unnatural grouping. See also preface. John Dupré, “Are Whales Fish?” 62 in Folkbiology, ed. Douglas L. Me- Bradbury, Evolution of the Micro- din and Scott Atran (Cambridge, scope, 58. Mass.: MIT Press, 1999), 461–76. 63 Peck covered both bony fishes Herman Melville, Moby-Dick and cartilaginous fishes in his (New York: Penguin Books, 1998), ichthyology lectures. 125–38. See also Parrish, Ameri- 54 can Curiosity, 313; and Christoph Shagreen can also be made of Irmscher, The Poetics of Natural sharkskin. See Christine Guth, History: From John Bartram to “Towards a Global History of William James (New Brunswick, Shagreen,” in The Global Lives N.J.: Rutgers University Press, of Things: The Material Culture of 1999), 70–71. Connections in the Early Modern 64 World, ed. Anne Gerritsen and Possibly during these move- Giorgio Riello (London: Rout- ments of objects, Peck’s fishes ledge, 2015); and Cohen, Some were misplaced for some time Early Tools of American Science, during the 19th century and not appendix II, 148. rediscovered until 1929; see Da- 55 vid P. Wheatland, The Apparatus On the movement of deep-sea of Science at Harvard, 1765–1800 treasures to the curiosity cabinet, (Cambridge, Mass.: Collection of see James Delbourgo, “Divers Historical Scientific Instruments, Things: Collecting the World un- Harvard University, 1968), 190. der Water,” History of Science 49 65 (163) (June 2011): 149–85. Letter from Ralph Waldo Emer- 56 son to John Boynton Hill, Novem- Susan Scott Parrish, American ber 12, 1822, in The Letters of Curiosity: Cultures of Natural His- Ralph Waldo Emerson, ed. Ralph tory in the Colonial British Atlantic L. Rusk (New York: Columbia Uni- World (Chapel Hill: University of versity Press, 1939), 123. North Carolina Press, 2006), 59. 57 Inaugural Address of Professor William Dandridge Peck, Papers

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