Di Bartolo/Visconti, Before and after Humboldt

Before and after Humboldt: Italian travellers, geographers and botanists between the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries1

Alexander DI BARTOLO Università di Pisa

Agnese VISCONTI Università degli studi di Pavia

doi.org/10.26337/2532-7623/BARTOVISCO

Riassunto: Il presente articolo ricostruisce, sulla base di una documentazione parte manoscritta e parte edita, il ruolo di alcuni naturalisti italiani di rilievo che attraverso i loro viaggi concorsero alla definizione e alla crescita della geografia botanica, disciplina fondata dal grande scienziato tedesco Alexander von Humboldt. Esso prende le mosse dalla illustrazione dei viaggi di Ermenegildo Pini che negli ultimi decenni del Settecento perlustrò i monti della Lombardia austriaca, avviando utili considerazioni sui rapporti tra clima e vegetazione. Analizza quindi le opere di Michele Tenore le cui esplorazioni naturalistiche svoltesi nel Regno delle Due Sicilie nella prima metà dell’Ottocento sono ancora in gran parte da studiare, e quelle del botanico siciliano Filippo Parlatore, noto per il suo viaggio nella penisola scandinava e considerato il maggiore seguace di Humboldt. Infine considera le peregrinazioni in Perù del milanese Antonio Raimondi che a tutt’oggi presentano ancora molti punti non studiati. A conclusione emerge il ritardo dei naturalisti italiani rispetto a quelli d’oltralpe, e però nello stesso tempo, la loro intensa curiosità e dedizione alla scienza, destinate a formare una delle basi sulla quale avrebbe in seguito poggiato la botanica italiana.

Abstract: The aim of this article is to delineate the role of some important Italian naturalists who through their travels contributed to the definition and development of botanical geography, a discipline founded by the great German scientist Alexander von Humboldt. The study, using manuscript and published works, is introduced by the illustrations of Ermenegildo Pini's travels who in the last decades of the eighteenth century explored the mountains of Austrian Lombardy, putting forward useful considerations on the relationship between climate and vegetation. The works of Michele Tenore are then analysed whose naturalistic explorations in the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies in the first half of the nineteenth century are still largely to be studied, as well as those of the Sicilian botanist Filippo Parlatore, renowned for his travels to the Scandinavian peninsula and considered to be Humboldt's greatest follower. Lastly, the peregrinations in Peru of the Milanese Antonio Raimondi are taken into consideration, many details of which have not still been investigated. In conclusion it emerges that the Italian naturalists lagged behind with respect to their contemporaries north of the . However, at the same time their intense curiosity and dedication to science is highlighted, destined to form one of the foundations upon which Italian would later be established.

Keywords: Phytogeography – Italian naturalists – Humboldt

Introduction

Before beginning the account of the topic that we wish to present, it seems appropriate to draw the reader's attention to a brief introductory specification with which we would like to point out that the Italian naturalists we will deal with in the following pages, albeit poorly known, especially with respect to their French, German and British contemporaries, nevertheless, provided a panorama of particular

1 This article is the result of a joint study carried out by the authors in close collaboration. Although they are both responsible for the entire content, Alexander Di Bartolo wrote the paragraphs “Introduction”, “The first attempts at a botanical geography in the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies” and “An Italian student of Humboldt’s: Filippo Parlatore”, while Agnese Visconti is the author of the paragraphs “Knowledge of the Lombard mountains: Ermenegildo Pini's travels” and “Antonio Raimondi's Peru”. ABBREVIATIONS FOR ARCHIVE SOURCES USED IN THE TEXT: ASM = The State Archives in Milan (Archivio di Stato di Milano) BCP = Municipal Library (Biblioteca Comunale di Palermo) BMCSNM = Library of the Civic Museum of Natural History in Milan (Biblioteca del Museo Civico di Storia Naturale di Milano) DBI=Dizionario Biografico degli Italiani 229 Di Bartolo/Visconti, Before and after Humboldt importance for the advancement of natural sciences not only within the Italian peninsula, but also in Europe and America in the period ranging from the end of the eighteenth century to the Unification of . A common characteristic of these scientists, among which we have chosen herein the Milanese scholar Ermenegildo Pini (1739-1825), the Neapolitan botanist Michele Tenore (1780-1861), the botanist Filippo Parlatore from Palermo (1816-1877) and the Milanese naturalist Antonio Raimondi (1826-1890), is that their investigations have taken inspiration not so much from the most illustrious explorers who had the aim of discovering new lands, bringing back rare plants and animals to their own country, looking for precious metals or surveying the trend of the coastlines of unknown continents, but rather by travellers-scientists who, starting from the idea that there are links between natural objects and physical phenomena, proposed to discover such links in order to attempt to weave together a logical scheme capable of giving rise to an understanding of the laws of nature. Travellers, therefore, those we have decided to consider herein, that differed profoundly from each other and in various aspects from traditional explorers or navigators, mostly concerned with specific sectors of natural history2. Firstly, because their travels were mainly the result of long years of work spent at their desk, studying the texts of other scientists and formulating hypotheses on the issues these had just raised or left unresolved, the solution of which was sought in the field through observation and collection of new elements to connect with those already known. The aim was to find answers to the original questions and thus to attempt to form an increasingly and thickly interwoven thread, capable of highlighting the relationships and relative sequence of the objects and phenomena observed, and thus be able to establish a starting point from which to advance new assumptions and thus open the path to the discernment of the laws of nature. A second distinctive feature that characterises naturalistic from traditional travellers lies in the numerous and varied scientific instruments that formed their equipment, and which, though these were often imprecise, bulky and easily subject to deterioration or damage, constituted an indispensable element for the possibility of observing and establishing links between natural objects and physical phenomena: microscopes for analysing plants, vascula for collecting and paper for preserving and drying them; boxes and jars for keeping insects and small animals in spirit; tools for dissecting mammals, fish and birds; hammers for sampling rocks; tubes and reagents for mineralogical assays; small chemistry laboratories for water analysis; thermometers, barometers, anemometers, hygrometers and psychrometers for measuring temperature, pressure, wind, air humidity, and the degree of cooling of the latter due to evaporation of water; theodolites to detect trigonometric points; levels to calculate heights and distances, and follow the trend of the reliefs; compasses to verify the itineraries; cyanometers to evaluate the clarity of the sky, and finally books that allowed the initial comparisons between acquired knowledge and new observations. Within these investigations aimed at establishing the laws regulating relations between organised living beings and physical agents, particular importance is given to the study of the relationship between plants and the climate, intending with the latter term the complex of weather conditions (temperature, pressure, humidity) and environmental (altitude and latitude) that characterise a location over a certain period of time. The awareness of the existence of a generic relationship between vegetation and climate is centuries old and mostly dates back to Empedocle (V century BC) and to Democritus (460-370 BC), both prior to Aristotle (384-322 BC). However, it was only with the observations of Pietro Bembo (1470- 1547) on Etna and Francesco Calzolari (1522-1609) on Mount Baldo in Verona that the first observations on the stratification of flora were made according to altitude3. These observations were resumed by the famous physician and botanist (1707-1778) in his Amoenitates Academicae (1749) and in his Philosophia Botanica (1751) and then by the German botanist Johann Georg Gmelin (1709-1755) who between 1733 and 1743 was in Siberia where he studied the relations between the plants of the Siberian plains and those of the high mountains of Europe, including in his Flora sibirica (1747-1769) not only the altitude but also the latitude as the determining factor for the climate and consequently the distribution of vegetation.

2 M. CIARDI, Esplorazioni e viaggi scientifici nel Settecento, Milano, RCS Libri, 2008, p. 419. 3 A. BEGUINOT, Pensieri intorno all’origine, alla storia dello sviluppo e allo stato attuale della Geografia Botanica, in «Bollettino della Società Geografica italiana», serie IV, vol. VII, n. 11 (1906), pp. 1048-1065. 230 Di Bartolo/Visconti, Before and after Humboldt

However, latitudinal surveys were not continued in the immediately following years as they required long and arduous journeys. Those on altitude were instead continued with the observations of Horace- Bénédict de Saussure (1740-1799) in the Alps and Louis Ramond (1755-1827) in the Pyrenees. These researches culminated in the work of the great German naturalist Alexander von Humboldt (1769-1859) who, following his expeditions in the Americas (1799-1804) and Asia (1829), made major advances to previous inquiries with his works Voyage aux régions équinoxiales du Nouveau Continent, fait en 1799-1804 (1814-1834) and Asie Centrale (1843). In fact, he accumulated such a mass of data on natural objects and physical phenomena, that outlined a decisive shift in the scientific investigations of his time and paved the way for new disciplinary fields. Among them, botanical geography that he dealt with in his Essai sur la Géographie des plantes (1805), based on the idea of initiating the study of vegetation distribution not only in relation to altitude, but also in relation to different physical conditions. The starting point of the great German naturalist was systematised as an autonomous discipline by Joakim Frederik Schouw (1789-1852) who participated in a scientific expedition to Norway and then travelled repeatedly to the peninsula of Italy, summarising the results of his travels in the Tableau du climat et de la végétation de l'Italie (1839). August Heinrich Rudolf Grisebach (1814-1879) also travelled to Norway and subsequently travelled to the Balkans, Turkey and Provence, collecting his own observations within the text on phytogeography Die Vegetation der Erde nach ihrer klimatischen Anordnung (1872). However the greatest development of the discipline came about only with Alphonse de Candolle (1806-1893), author of the great work Géographie botanique raisonnée (1855), where Humboldt's intuition on the earlier causes was re-examined and underlined, that is the idea that current causes do not explain by themselves all the facts regarding plant distribution. His studies gave rise to modern phytogeography which has progressed by refining and modernising the research scheme within different directions, combined in three parallel lines of study, one being floristics, another ecology and the third dynamics4. Now taking into consideration the Italian naturalistic travellers who contributed to the construction of the link between living organisms and physical phenomena, it must be borne in mind that they did not easily take part in the European stream that was advancing towards the definition and knowledge of the world and that had reached as observed, results of a very high scientific level. The economic and political situation of the regional States from which they came contrasted in fact with the multiple thrusts for material expansion that had caused the organisation of large expeditions in the countries north of the Alps and consequently forced the scholars of the peninsula, lacking in financial means but even more, lacking important naturalistic centres to which they could refer, to limit their work to the borders of their own states, to travel at their own expense or to offer their services to other States.

Knowledge of the Lombard mountains: Ermenegildo Pini's travels

The scientific activity of the Milanese mathematician and naturalist Ermenegildo Pini, even if extremely interesting and original from the point of view of the construction of the link between natural objects and physical agents, was confined mainly to the Lombard mountains. He was professor of mathematics at the Barnabite College of Sant'Alessandro and a well-known architect. In 1772, he received the unexpected order from his superiors at the request of the court of Vienna to take on the role of chair of natural sciences and take over the direction of the associated museum, both having been established in the College that same year5. In order to carry out this new task - that he had accepted in deference to the will of his brothers, a role for which he was, however, completely unprepared - Pini used as his starting point his mathematical-physical knowledge, proposing to proceed by converging the study of natural history towards these. The latter perspective, which was destined to take form in the writings and reports of the journeys made by him between 1778 and 1781 in Upper Lombardy, in the Canton of Ticino and in Savoy. These travels had the dual purpose of looking for, on behalf of public authorities,

4 R. TOMASELLI, Introduzione allo studio della Fitosociologia, Milano, Industria poligrafica lombarda, 1956, p. 23. 5 Regarding Ermenegildo Pini refer to the bibliography in A. VISCONTI, Fili da intessere: Goethe e le scienze naturali a Milano, in G. LACCHIN (ed.), Johann Wolfgang Goethe. Evoluzione e forma, Seregno, Herrenhaus, 2001, pp. 168-183. 231 Di Bartolo/Visconti, Before and after Humboldt natural resources useful "to the uses of arts and commerce", and for advancing his own physical and naturalistic knowledge6. The first outline of the idea of applying the knowledge of physics to the study of the distribution of plants is found in the manuscript titled Relazione del viaggio mineralogico fatto nell’anno 1779 in diverse parti della Lombardia Austriaca.7 The excursion was made at the request of the Plenipotentiary Minister, Carlo Giuseppe Firmian, with the aim of solving the problem of the poor state of the forests in Lombardy and the consequent shortage of wood required to meet the increased demand for heating, construction and manufacturing, in particular iron and steel works: a matter that had long disturbed the government which in previous years had already sent various experts to visit the woods and to give an account of their situation. All had emphasised in their reports the description of the general decay of the woods, but had failed to propose a concrete solution. This was the reason why the plenipotentiary Minister turned to Pini, whose skills he had made use of in previous years for economic-practical purposes. 8 During his exploration of the Lombardy woods, which took place in the summer of 1779, Pini immediately distinguished himself from the other observers by the new perspective from which he approached the problem. First and foremost, he turned his attention not only to the situation of the existing forests, but also to the possibility of extending the area of Lombard woodland, by planting trees along the uncultivated hillsides of the mountains surveyed. In view of this objective, he did not limit his study to the presumption of the existence of a generic relationship between altitude, climate, and flora, but began, by using a barometer, the laborious task of measuring the heights of the Lombard mountains, beginning with the highest, Mount Legnone, located on the banks of the Lario River. 9 During these operations, destined to stretch into the following year, he realised that height did not constitute a sufficient element to determine the growth of plants, as an agent had to be added capable of influencing the climate, the presence of water.10 This discovery led him to continue his investigations and to refine them with the purpose of carrying out measurements and calculations focused on looking for the physical elements that form the climate. He consequently equipped himself for his next journey with a richer and more complex set of instruments. 11 Four barometers, just as many thermometers, a theodolite supplied with a variety of attachments and a portable level fitted with two sights for observation constituted his equipment for his subsequent excursion (1780), intended for continuing the measurements already begun, as well as for detecting, using a new instrument he had invented himself and called a gonimeter, 12 the position of the mountains with respect to other natural elements (lakes, mountain ranges, valleys, hills, etc.). During the winter followed studies at his desk aimed at finding links between the observations, measurements and calculations made during the trip. As a result of these studies he was able to establish a distinction between «two kinds of climates: geographic and physical» 13, defining by the first term that due to the distance of a place from the equator, that is due to latitude, while the second term defined a climate dependent on conditions that could modify the former. Among these, he identified the relative

6 As Pini wrote in the introduction of his Memoria [...] contenente il piano della descrizione fisica mineralogica della Lombardia Austriaca e dell’opera da pubblicarsi col titolo stesso sent in January of 1778 to the Austrian government, in ASM, Autografi, 180, Pini. 7 ASM, Commercio p. a., 203. 8 With reference to this topic refer to the following works by E. PINI: Introduzione allo studio della Storia Naturale, Milano, Giuseppe Marelli, 1773; Della torba e del carbon fossile, Milano, Giuseppe Galeazzi, 1775; Osservazioni mineralogiche su la miniera di ferro di Rio ed altre parti dell’Isola d’Elba, Milano, Giuseppe Marelli, 1777; and the first volume of the work De venarum metallicarum excoctione, Mediolani, Josephi Marelli, 1779. 9 E. PINI, Relazione del viaggio mineralogico fatto nell’anno 1779 in diverse parti della Lombardia Austriaca (ASM Comm. p.a., 203), §12. 10 Ivi., § 99. 11 Relazione del viaggio mineralogico fatto nella Lombardia Austriaca da Ermenegildo Pini nel 1780, in ASM, Autografi, 180, Pini. 12 Regarding the description of the instrument and the possibility of its utilization see the memoir E. PINI, Della maniera di osservare nei monti la disposizione degli strati con uno stromento comodissimo a tal fine, in «Opuscoli scelti sulle scienze e sulle arti», t. III (1780), pp. 183-195. 13 E. PINI, Dell’elevazione dei principali monti, e di diverse altre parti della Lombardia Austriaca, in «Opuscoli scelti sulle scienze e sulle arti», t. IV (1781), pp. 3-22. 232 Di Bartolo/Visconti, Before and after Humboldt height of a mountain, that is, its height from the underlying ground, which, being equal to absolute height or from the sea, intervened, like water but in the opposite sense, as a factor for lowering temperature. In addition, he hypothesised that the relative height of a mountain could be accompanied, as an additional cooling element, by the absence or even the scarce presence of two properties of the atmosphere, the "degree of heat" and the "amount of humours" both mitigators of the climate but tending not to rise above the ground and therefore to become rarefied with increase of altitude. 14 And finally, he noted, by a comparison of the climate of the peaks in the Savoy area, which he had visited in 1778, 15 with the warmer climate of the Lombard mountains, that the proximity to a mountain of other higher mountains covered with perennial snow or ice, intervenes at the same latitude and relative height, with an even greater cooling of the climate. 16 Through the elaboration of these concepts, Pini became convinced of the need to take into account the participation of various factors in the formation of the climate and consequently the way plants were distributed, but at the same time he was aware of the impossibility of giving value other than "simple conjecture "to his own suppositions, so much so that he reached the conclusion that «the limits of vegetation [should] be very variable»17. In other words, nothing was definitely demonstrated: indeed, the novelty, the amplitude and the singularity of the horizon that had come forward, required further work capable of proving the validity of so many observations and such daring reasoning in order to be able to reduce them to theoretical principles. However, Pini did not have the opportunity, due to his ever more intensive commitments to the government, to carry out more accurate and timely calculations and surveys, which, only during the course of many years of research, would have led him, just for instance, to determine the seasonal temperatures of the places visited and thus have a more precise picture of their climate, even though the result would only have been incomplete. In the face of this impossibility, however, he decided not to surrender completely and to direct himself along a new route, retained, as one seems to read between his lines, perhaps faster. It was with regard to repeating the botanical observations made during the trip of 1779, of which he had written, in addition to the Relazione mentioned above, the Memoria sulle miniere di ferro e sui boschi.18 In the latter, the Milanese barnabite had enumerated the species of plants found, describing how to sow them and analyse the most suitable soils for their growth, with particular reference to the following: beech, birch, fir, alder, larch, maple, ash, chestnut, pine, juniper, oak, durmast oak, lime, willow, elm, hornbeam and poplar. It was a general review of an economic nature that, written in accordance with the demands of the public authorities, was no longer taken into account by Pini and that only at this point in the research could have acquired a meaning other than the productive purpose for which it was drafted. In fact, this report allowed him to realise the possibility of the study being used as a starting point from which to continue the work started. Pini then chose to pursue a course of experimentation and he had «trees planted at different heights on Mount Legnone»19 with the aim of facilitating progress towards understanding the way in which plants are distributed. The experiment thus conceived, of which the Milanese barnabite had vowed «to [take] account in his own time»20 is particularly interesting because it attributes to the vegetation, alongside the role of an object of study, that of a progressive tool, capable of contributing to understanding the ways of plant distribution and thus allow intervention on natural areas not being utilised. The work that he had initiated could not, however, continue. Paradoxically what prevented Pini from carrying out, in the following years, appropriate verifications on the planted trees regarding growth, health conditions, and forms of adaptability, was exactly the Memoria sulle miniere di ferro e sui boschi on which he had based his experiment. The report was in fact fully endorsed by Wenzel Anton Kaunitz, who was responsible in Vienna for foreign policy in Austria, who in 1782 entrusted Pini with the position of delegate for mines with the task of arranging together with the Councillor Cesare Beccaria the

14 Ibidem. 15 Viaggio mineralogico fatto da Ermenegildo Pini nel 1778 Breve relazione, in ASM, Autografi, 180, Pini. 16 PINI, Dell’elevazione dei principali monti, pp. 20-21. 17 Ibidem. 18 ASM, Commercio p.a. 203 e 204. 19 PINI, Dell’elevazione dei principali monti, p. 21. 20 Ibidem. 233 Di Bartolo/Visconti, Before and after Humboldt necessary operations for increasing the steel production in Lombardy. 21 As a consequence of the latter the experiment of the Milanese barnabite, interrupted at its outset, did not lead to any result and therefore remained completely unknown. Instead this was not the case regarding the physical-mathematical observations and the "conjectures" on the variability of vegetation limits. The essay Dell’elevazione dei principali monti was in fact translated and published in in 178522 and commented on in Thuringia in 178623. Hence Pini's observations were compiled in Immanuel Kant's Physische Geographie24, which reported the hypothesis of the Milanese barnabite about the variability of vegetation growth in relation to its relative and absolute height, the geographic and physical climate, and the degree of heat and quantity of vapours. Observations and suppositions that circulated within the European scientific community both prior to and after Humboldt's expedition to the Americas and therefore could not have been unknown to the great German scientist.

The first attempts at a botanical geography in the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies

The activity of the botanist Michele Tenore25 arose from the need to fill a scientific gap that was entirely regional – that is the absence of a specific study on Neapolitan plant soils and in the domains of the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies. Having graduated in medicine at the age of twenty at the University of , he soon decided to leave his father's desire of a career in health care to embrace botany. He was almost self-taught, having as masters Domenico Cirillo and Vincenzo Petagna26: the former, a proponent of Linnean taxonomy at the Neapolitan university and entrusted by the government with the project for the foundation of the botanical garden; the latter, Cirillo's successor to the chair in botany, contributed mainly to pharmacopoeia, and was an entomologist of some renown. Distancing himself from the academic botanists of that time - still limited to the idea of a medicinal botany or, most of all, acting as consultants to the aristocracy for the upkeep of private orchards and gardens - Tenore began collaborating with Petagna and giving, starting from 1802, private teaching on the plant kingdom to the students of the Neapolitan University, from which emerged the three volumes Corso di botaniche lezioni (1806-1823) that were updated and enriched several times. In the three volumes, alongside the treatment of classification methods (with full adherence to the Linnean system as opposed to Tournefort and Jussieu) and the practice of gathering bulbs, live plants and seeds of the various species with the relative preservation techniques, the author gave some guidelines on the importance of «botanical peregrinations, which have contributed prodigiously to the increase in the number of plants identified, and to enriching the botanical gardens»27. Nothing really innovative, as can be seen: the detailed list of botanical instruments was taken from Linnaeus, and conservation and drying techniques had long been known. There is a certain improvement and rather noteworthy innovation with regard to transregional themes, that we can identify in the ever-increasing attention directed towards the study of plants in relation to other physical elements: the soil where a species proliferates, observations at different stages of seasonal growth, close proximity or not to waterways, the stratigraphic layout of the mountains28, within a broad

21 ASM, Agricoltura p.a., 23. 22 E. PINI, De l’élévation des principales montagnes, et de diverses autres parties de la Lombardie Autrichienne, in «Observations sur la Physique, sur l’Histoire Naturelle et sur les Arts par M. l’Abbé Rozier», t. XXVI (1785), part I, pp. 8-25. 23 E. PINI, Über die physische Beschaffenheit der Berge im Vergleich ihrer wechselseitigen Höhen, in «Magazin für das Neueste aus der Physik und Naturgeschichte herausgegeben von dem Legationsrath Lichtenberg», vol. III (1785), fasc. 3, pp. 55-62. 24 I. KANT, Physische Geographie, 3 voll., Mainz – Hamburg, Gottfried Vollmer,1803, vol. II, Teil 2, pp. 20-21. 25 Cfr. V. CESATI, Cenni biografici di Michele Tenore, in «Memorie di Matematica e Fisica della Società italiana delle scienze», serie III, t. III (1879), pp. 73-82; G. RICCARDI, Opere. Prose: lavori biografici, Napoli, Rondinella, 1861, pp. 130-133. 26 Concerning Domenico Cirillo cfr. U. BALDINI, DBI, “ad vocem”, << http://www.treccani.it/enciclopedia/domenico- cirillo>> and B. D’ERRICO, F. PEZZELLA, Domenico Cirillo Botanico, Frattamaggiore, Istituto di studi Atellani, 2012. Concerning Vincenzo Petagna cfr. T. MONTICELLI, Elogio di Vincenzo Petagna, in Opere dell’abate Teodoro Monticelli, 3 voll., Napoli, Stabilimento tipografi dell’Aquila, 1843, vol. II, pp. 57-71. 27 M. TENORE, Corso di botaniche lezioni, 4 voll., Napoli, Stamperia Orsiniana, 1806-1823², t. II, p. 260. 28 Ivi., p. 274. 234 Di Bartolo/Visconti, Before and after Humboldt overview of botany that also contemplates the natural economy. In particular, it is in the chapter dedicated to the physical observation of the globe that Tenore openly declares his debt towards «the famous Mr. Humboldt, [who] increasingly developing this principle [the altitude factor in relation to latitude] and uniting with these the relationship of plant levels, including those regarding their local association, the influence of temperature, soil, cultivation, civilization of men, and the great catastrophes of the globe, has recently established the basis of a new branch of botany that he calls the geografia delle piante»29. On the basis of these words, Tenore convinced himself that Humboldt could be the model to look to for transferring to the temperate regions of Europe the reflections contained in his travel journals related to the equinoxial regions of central and southern America. The Neapolitan botanist, who had not yet developed significant relationships with the international academic environment, also felt to be, through the study of phytogeography, part of a larger project that « [opened] to European naturalists a new and vast field towards the most interesting research»30 and to which he believed he could contribute through two elements: the involvement of other naturalists in the collection of plant specimens and scientific observations on the one hand, and the direct practice of exploratory travels on the other. He thus soon set out upon the Neapolitan territories, combining with the collection of herbs in the outskirts of the capital, aimed at the enrichment of the botanical garden – for whose foundation he had been commissioned by the French government with a formal edict in 1805, being appointed director five years later - longer travels for discovering significant high grounds to study according to the dictates of the discipline inaugurated by Humboldt. The first excursion in this respect took place in the summer of 1807 in the area of Abruzzo, where Tenore had the opportunity to «observe that from the level of the Adriatic sea to the summit of the highest mountains of those provinces, which are Mount amaro in the province of Chieti and Mount cerno otherwise known as the Gran Sasso in the province of Teramo, the different vegetation regions could be distinguished, by the constant relationship that is observed between the different elevations of the ground and the particular plants that are aligned in each of them»31. In particular the Neapolitan scholar identified ten geographical regions on the basis of the altitude limit of vegetation: the region of the plains, the Mediterranean plain region, the hilly region, two different forest regions, the mountain region, three alpine regions (up to 500 meters, over 500 meters and over 600 meters) and the glacial region. Regarding each of these regions Tenore did not restrict himself to cataloguing the proliferating families, genera and species of plants but enriched the text with reference to the quadrupeds, reptiles, birds and "insects congenial" to each plant, thus applying an initial ecological approach to his research. The advancement of the botanical garden, which he zealously organised and directed up until his death, the teaching related to the position as chair of botany and the compilation of the Flora napolitana (1811-1838) did not stop Tenore from continuing his travels: that of 1805 as a physician and secretary of the Prince of Cardito, who went to Upper Italy, followed by the travel around Europe in 182532, the trips to Basilicata and Calabria Citeriore in 1826, those in the area of Abruzzo and the papal states in 1829 and 1831, that in Terra di Lavoro in 1832, and other short excursions to Mount Vesuvius, Mount Vulture and Mount Terminio. Even when he was unable to do so, his students helped him by controlling botanical specimens and physical geographic observations from the various Neapolitan provinces. In this way, Tenore continued his studies establishing the first Italian school of florists and speciographers33, and furthermore he implemented the network of scientists that Humboldt advocated for the advancement of botanical geography34. It is no coincidence that a good part of the final chapters of his Cenno sulla geografia fisica e

29 Ivi., p. 182 (italics are by the author). 30 Ivi., p. 183. 31 Ivi., p. 184 (italics are by the author). 32 Refer to M. TENORE, Viaggio per diverse parti d’Italia, Svizzera, Francia, Inghilterra e Germania, 4 voll., Napoli, Dalla Stamperia francese, 1828. It can be noted in this text, beside the observations on the agricultural landscape and the agricultural methods, numerous references regarding monuments, cultural institutions, habits and customs and to tools. 33 Regarding this topic refer to F. NOTARIANNI, Primo viaggio botanico in Terra di Lavoro: rapporto de’ lavori botanici effettuati dal Signor Francescoantonio Notarjanni, corrispondente al Real Giardino delle piante, durante gli anni 1810 e 1811, Firenze, Il Valico edizioni, 2009 (facsimile reprint). 34 L. D. WALLS, The Passage to Cosmos: Alexander von Humboldt and the shaping of America, New York – Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 2009. 235 Di Bartolo/Visconti, Before and after Humboldt botanica del Regno di Napoli (1827) contains meteorological and naturalistic observations taken by other young men and botanical students over several consecutive years. Thanks to his travels Tenore could also begin to increase not only his knowledge and expand the horizons of his views, but also to establish those necessary relationships of friendship useful for the exchange of seeds and plants for the university botanical garden: his correspondence, for the most part unpublished, an analysis of which would better collocate him within the international context, provides an account of these relationships35. By analysing all these activities - travels, teachings, direction of the Botanical Garden-it is clear that he always kept in mind Humboldt's lesson, as his text Cenno shows, translated in French under the title Essai sur la géographie physique et botanique du Royaume de Naples (1827). At a local level, the Bourbon government asked Tenore not to deal solely with the expansion of the botanical garden, but to consider in depth the economic effects of the insertion of certain crops within the Neapolitan districts in favour of local manufacturing industries. The practical economic direction of his career, which saw the publication of the memoir Sulla varietà dei gelsi (1833), and Memorie sulle diverse specie di cotone coltivate nel Regno d’Italia (1839), shows how the consciousness of this «economic and scientific»36 - as he himself defined it - «disengagement» was directed not only to support the public authorities but also to provide a concrete application of the study of the distribution of plants on the basis of the physical and climatic factors of the vast territories of the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies, which he loved regardless of the "crown", and that he contributed to making known throughout Europe.

An Italian disciple of Humboldt’s: Filippo Parlatore

Among all the botanists of the nineteenth century in Italy, the figure that more than anyone else can be associated with the name of Alexander von Humboldt is undoubtly Filippo Parlatore37. Born in Palermo in 1816, he studied medicine in the Sicilian capital, becoming an assistant and then professor of anatomy at the University from 1837. In 1838, he published a series of studies on plants that contributed to his fame within the scientific environment of that time where, as in other research centres of pre- unitarian Italy, botanists were mostly scholars of local nature, descriptors of spontaneous regional flora collected on their travels or that could be observed in small orchards and gardens38. At the beginning of 1841 Parlatore managed, with some subsidies, to leave the island and to go first to and then to Paris39, the place of the most advanced naturalistic studies thanks to the Jardin botanique and the Muséum d'Histoire Naturelle. In Geneva, he established his first direct relationship with the international scientific world through Augustin Pyrame de Candolle, an author of important geobotanical studies. But it was above all the scientific training undertaken in in the spring of 1841 that was to prove of particular value. In Paris, in fact, the Sicilian scholar first met Humboldt, then on a diplomatic mission in the French capital on behalf of the king of Prussia. Fascinated by the accounts of observations and travels carried out by the German naturalist in South America, Parlatore decided to expand the sphere of his own studies - which up to that point had been focused on systematic botany, organography and plant morphology in general – becoming interested in botanical geography. His sudden curiosity in this discipline also led him to reflect on the possibility of carrying out scientific journeys that could go beyond

35 Regarding this bear in mind the correspondence with Aimé Bonpland, Augustin Pyrame de Candolle, Leopold von Buch and Robert Brown, referred to in the short note by P. CENNAMO, A. GIORGIO, P. DE LUCA (eds.), Un carteggio inedito di Michele Tenore, in «Delpinoa», nn. 50-51 (2008-2009), pp. 93-113. 36 M. TENORE, Memoria sulle diverse specie e varietà di cotone nel Regno di Napoli […] letta al Real Istituto di Incoraggiamento nella tornata de’ 15 novembre 1838, Napoli, Stamperia Tramater, 1839, p. 7. 37 A reasonable biography is found in the "Introduzione" by A. VISCONTI, Filippo Parlatore Mie memorie, edited by eadem, Sellerio, Palermo 1992, pp. 15-30, to which we refer the reader for a full list of sources. 38 Refer to F. PARLATORE, Nova Lathyri species […] orchidearum familia, in «Giornale di scienze, lettere ed arti per la Sicilia», fasc. 184, 185, maggio 1838, pp. 3 e ss.; idem, Rariorum plantarum et haud cognitarum in Sicilia sponte provenientium, fasciculus Ius, Panormi, Diarii Literarii, 1838; idem, Flora panormitana sive plantarum prope Panormum sponte nascentium enumeratio, Panormi, Petri Pensante, 1839. 39 Regarding the importance of this travel for reasons of research refer to the discussion by Parlatore himself in his Monografia delle Fumariée presentata alla sezione botanica del Quarto congresso degli scienziati italiani in Padova nel 1842, Firenze, Società tipografia, 1844, pp. V-X. 236 Di Bartolo/Visconti, Before and after Humboldt the simple excursions in his own homeland and thus allow the collection of data and observations on the flora of distant countries in order to be able to establish comparisons and to draw similarities with regard to the various environmental factors that determine the growth and survival of a species. Faced with such promising interests, Humboldt decided to speak in favour of Parlatore to Leopold II of Tuscany regarding his nomination as Director of the Central Herbarium40 and as professor at the Museum of Physics and Natural History. Having taken up his position in the capital of the Grand Duchy, a city that he would not leave until his death, Parlatore worked, as well as at the enrichment of the collections of the Central , also on the voluminous Flora italiana41 where, when classifying the species, «he included as part of the treatise other analytical tools, such as geographical views and ecological records of the types and families»42 in full harmony with the geognostic method that Humboldt applied to the plants of the equinox regions of Central and South America43. In 1844, he undertook his second educational journey, this time in Prussia, after the failure of some extracontinental exploration projects44. Among the stages of this travel, Parlatore remembers particularly that of Berlin, where

On arrival, my first thoughts were to see Humboldt, greatest star of that luminuous pleiades, to whom, apart from the respect and esteem that the man is due, I profess my immense gratitude more than to any other for having supported my placement at the Museum of Natural History in Florence45.

Following on Humboldt's heels, who by now on became his mentor in botanical geography studies46, Parlatore decided to begin a series of exploratory travels with the precise aim of understanding the distribution of plant species on the basis of climatic and chorographical factors. His first travel carried out in 1849 to the Western Alps and the journey to Scotland and the Highlands the following year have been studied and interpreted in light of this objective. The explorations carried out on the peninsula of Scandinavia in 1851 are regarded as being of greater importance, described in the volume Viaggio per le parti settentrionali di Europa (1854), which should have included, besides the illustrations of the visited places, published in the first volume, a detailed systematic study of the phytogeography of those countries, which was held over to a second volume but unfortunately never realised47. If we now take into consideration the later works by Parlatore after the Viaggio we can see how the terminology of his writings reveals that his commitment is no longer only limited to collecting and describing individual plants, but aspires to record the "variation in physiognomy" of natural landscapes, to accurately measure instrumentally the "upper limit of plants," and to «confirm or increase those facts, already gathered elsewhere by Humboldt [...] and other well-known botanists of plant geography, in order to contribute together with them to the knowledge of this important branch of natural history»48. The choice to devote most of his attention to attempting to make a comparative analysis of the environmental factors that interact with each other, and of all of the determining factors related to the presence of plant species within particular contexts, represents the decisive factor behind the project of a Geografia botanica universale, something that Parlatore had in mind to write since 1851, namely immediately after his

40 F. PARLATORE, Elogio di F. Barker Webb, Firenze, Le Monnier, 1856, pp. 51-58. 41 F. PARLATORE, Flora italiana, ossia descrizione delle piante che crescono spontanee, o vegetano come tali in Italia e nelle isole ad essa aggiacenti, Firenze, Le Monnier, 1848-1869. 42 VISCONTI, “Introduzione”, in EAD., Filippo Parlatore Mie memorie, pp. 13-30. 43 A. DI BARTOLO, Alexander von Humboldt: dai paesaggi naturali alla geobotanica. Con un’appendice sul tentativo di una geobotanica universale in Filippo Parlatore, doctoral thesis, Università degli Studi di Pisa-Firenze-Siena, Pisa, 2010, pp. 44-102. 44 VISCONTI (ed.), Filippo Parlatore Mie memorie, pp. 117-122. 45 Ibidem. 46 F. PARLATORE, Elogio di Alessandro Humboldt, Firenze, Le Monnier, 1860, p. 5. 47 Refer to A. DI BARTOLO, A. VISCONTI, Il viaggio in Scandinavia compiuto nel 1851 dal botanico siciliano Filippo Parlatore, in «Settentrione. Rivista di studi italo-finlandesi», n. 22 (2010), pp. 12-20; A. VISCONTI, “Introduzione”, in F. PARLATORE, Viaggio per le parti settentrionali di Europa fatto nell’anno 1851, a cura di A. DI BARTOLO, Como –Pavia, Ibis, 2012, pp. 11-26; A. DI BARTOLO, Il viaggio del botanico Filippo Parlatore alla catena del Monte Bianco, in «Histoire des Alpes-Storia delle Alpi-Geschichte der Alpen», n. 18 (2013), pp. 219-237. 48 PARLATORE, Elogio di Alessandro Humboldt, p. VII. 237 Di Bartolo/Visconti, Before and after Humboldt second meeting with Humboldt in Berlin49. But these projects were never completed. The first conclusions related to the study of the vegetation of the glacial and periglacial areas of Europe, which were to have been included within the pages of the final volume of Humboldt's Kosmos (1845-1862), were never published because of the destruction of many of the botanical samples taken during the difficult return journey from Oslo50. The fate of the geobotanical reflections on the Italian flora was not any better, especially those regarding a comparison of the alpine flora and the flora of the other glacial regions of Europe, which should have been the subject of a large chapter of the treatise La végétation du globe, d’après sa disposition avec les climats, esquisse d’une géographie des plantes (1877), the French translation of the work by Grisebach Die Vegetation der Erde nach ihrer klimatischen Anordnung (1872). The chapter by Parlatore entitled Géographie botanique de l'Italie (1878) was only published posthumously by his botanist friend Pierre de Tchihatchef51. The reasons for these delays should be sought not only in the private difficulties of the Sicilian botanist on returning to after the tragic events of the travel to the Scandinavian peninsula, but also in the institutional and political changes that took place across Tuscany after the Unity of Italy and that forced Parlatore into a position of secondary importance. And yet the idea of a broader work had not left the mind of the Sicilian botanist: two bound sets of manuscripts preserved in Palermo and entitled Geografia botanica dell’Italia and Geografia botanica universale52 seem to indicate his intention of writing a general organic treatise designed to initiate a comparison between «the flora of Lapland, Finnmark, Sweden and Norway, and that of the regions which in our mountains correspond to those of those climates»53. In both the bound files, we find exhaustive lists of plants collected by Parlatore during his collection of plants or studied in the Central herbarium, subdivided into phytogeographic areas corresponding to climatic bands. In the first manuscript, the lists of plants are intercalated with didactical parts in the French language, while in the second the papers consist only of long lists of taxa. Comparing Parlatore’s books and manuscripts we would have been led to believe that the phytogeographic studies of the Sicilian botanist were inconclusive after his return from the travel of 1851. And this was the case, with the exception of the Prolusioni that he had held annually since 1856 for the inauguration of his university courses at the Museum of Physics and Natural History, to which were added the short notes entitled Studj sulla geografia botanica, which were included in various numbers of the «Annuario dell’I. e R. Museo di Fisica e Storia Naturale» from 1856 to 186654. The project of a universal geobotany had therefore been a failure, nor could it have been otherwise. In fact, in order to realise the project, it would have taken years and years to gather the data and observations from a widespread network of scholars distributed across all parts of the Earth: a situation that neither Humboldt nor Parlatore could have foreseen. Therefore, it is not surprising that the main focus of Parlatore’s scientific production, in the last years of his life, was towards the practical application of botanical research, which was included in the various national and international congresses, and in the increasingly more frequent agricultural exhibitions which took place after the proclamation of the unified State. Parlatore was among the few Italian delegates present at the Universal Exposition in Paris and St. Petersburg, where he distinguished himself for his scientific and practical preparation, so much so as to merit the praise of the other delegates. At the same time, he directed commissions for the cultivation of cotton in Italy, set up following the rise in the price of American cotton due to the War of Secession. Finally, in order to make the agricultural products of the Italian peninsula know and to encourage the cultivation of new plants,

49 th BCP, Fondo Parlatore, filza 529, Q q D – 16 n. 22/III. The letter, dated 12 November 1851, was published by F. RODOLICO, Per la storia della fitogeografia: lettere di Alessandro von Humboldt a Filippo Parlatore, in «Physis», anno X (1969), fasc. 2, pp. 113-118. 50 Regarding this refer to the letter from Humboldt to Parlatore of 17thMay 1851, kept in BCP, Fondo Parlatore, filza 529, D – 16 n. 22/I, in which the German naturalist thus writes, almost in the form of an entreaty: «Je vous demanderais en grâce de me donner pour le Cosmos quelques lignes avant le mois de Septembre sur des problèmes analogues». 51 VISCONTI, “Introduzione”, in EAD., Filippo Parlatore, Viaggio per le parti settentrionali di Europa fatto nell’anno 1851, pp. 11-26. 52 Respectively identified as BCP, Fondo Parlatore, 5 Q q F 30-31 and 5 Q q F 33. 53 VISCONTI (ed.), Filippo Parlatore Mie memorie, p. 189. 54 Regarding this point see his manuscript notes, in BCP, Fondo Parlatore, 5 Q q A 23-30 and 5 Q q F 38-d. 238 Di Bartolo/Visconti, Before and after Humboldt he organized with great results the International Horticulture Exhibition of 1874. In light of the foregoing, we can conclude that, even if the Sicilian scientist is recalled as the only scholar to have successfully followed the teachings of Humboldt55, in reality the full application of the epistemological dictates indicated by the German scientist - consisting of the foundation of a « true geography of the plants, that is, knowledge of the physical and meteorological relationships of each area and each region of the Earth with the flora of the same»56 - does not always fully appear in his writings.

Antonio Raimondi's Peru

The Milanese Antonio Raimondi, an original amateur naturalist whose course in scholastic and academic training is still unknown to this day, carried out all his scientific activities outside the borders of his land of origin. Certainly, we know that he was from a Milanese family and that he was interested since childhood in natural history, gaining remarkable experience through the reading of the leading authors of the time57. He stated himself that he also attended the Brera botanical gardens and the Museum of Natural History of Milan58, and driven by a strong urge for knowledge, visited the main naturalistic museums in Europe, purchased books by explorers and scientists of mostly French and British origin as well as Humboldt's Voyage 59. Perhaps fleeing from the Italian peninsula for political reasons – he had been actively involved in the events of 1848-1849 60- he departed in January 1850 from Genoa for Lima, stimulated, following in Humboldt's footsteps, by the decision to explore a country still for the most part unknown61. On arrival in the Peruvian capital, he was commissioned by the physician and naturalist Cayetano Heredia to classify the geological and mineral collections of the Museum of Physics and Natural History of the Colegio de la Indipendencia and later was appointed professor at the Faculty of Medicine of San Fernando. After a few years he began his perilous travels that took place between 1853 and 1869, which became increasingly longer and more difficult, firstly along the Peruvian coast, then to the Cordilleras and finally within the forest. He decided to walk through the entire Peruvian territory, taking with him high-precision instruments in part sent from Europe and partly constructed by himself and partially modified in order to adapt them to the different climates but especially to that of the humid forest. He explored the territory almost uninterruptedly, often alone, sometimes accompanied by some students or colleagues of medicine, under unspeakable conditions of fatigue and deprivation, with the aim of gathering natural, physical, meteorological and anthropological materials and data as well as drawing and painting the plants collected62. A passionate way of travelling that ended by forcing the Milanese naturalist to postpone the work of conceptual synthesis after each journey as he himself wrote several times to Emilio Cornalia, director of the Museum of Natural History in Milan: «I lack the time to do a serious work and I do nothing except collect material»; «At this moment I'm preparing for another long journey, which will be the last as one must also have the time needed for coordination and

55 G. NEGRI, Commemorazione di F.P. nel cinquantenario della sua morte, in «Nuovo Giornale Botanico Italiano», vol. XXXIV (1928), pp. 972-999. 56 PARLATORE, Elogio di Alessandro Humboldt, p. 25. 57 As stated by Raimondi in his letters to Emilio Cornalia of the Civic Museum of Natural History in Milan, of the 17th December 1849 and 8th November 1851, in BMCSNM, Fondo Cornalia, b. 6, fasc.1. 58 Letter by Raimondi to Cornalia, 17th December 1849, in BMCSNM, Fondo Cornalia, b. 6, fasc.1. 59 Refer to A. RAIMONDI, El Perù, 3 voll., Lima, Imprenta del Estado, 1874-1879, t. I, p. 1. 60 Ibid., p. 6. 61 The French botanist Joseph Dombey (1742-1794) and the Spaniards Hipòlito Ruiz and José Antonio Pavòn visited Peru. Regarding the controversies related to their travel refer to M.-N. BOUGUET, L’esploratore, in L’uomo dell’illuminismo, a cura di M. Vovelle, , Laterza, 1992, pp. 283-351. The Italian Alessandro Malaspina di Mulazzo also went to Peru, the great scientific merits of whom the Spanish government tried to cancel (D. MANFREDI, Italiano in Spagna, Spagnolo in Italia: Alessandro Malaspina (1754-1810) e la più importante spedizione scientifica marittima del Secolo dei Lumi, Torino, Nuova Eri Edizioni Rai, 1992). 62 Regarding Raimondi’s vast interests, that included, apart from natural history, also linguistics, anthropology, linguistics and ethnography refer to L. F. VILLACORTA OSTOLAZA, Antonio Raimondi, Archaeology, and National Discourse: Representations and Meanings of the Past in Nineteenth-Century Peru, in Past presented Archaeological Illustration and the Ancient Americas, edited by J. Pillsbury,Washington, DC : Dumbarton Oaks Research Library and Collection, 2012, pp.173-204. 239 Di Bartolo/Visconti, Before and after Humboldt publication»; and again, May 27th, 1867: «This journey will be the last one I do in the interior as I must hasten to show the result of all my travels»63. Based on these peregrinations in completely unexplored lands, full of danger and unknowns, he published a detailed geographic map64, which corrected many errors in the previous maps, although this was also partially inaccurate on the grounds that, travelling alone – as stated – he encountered many difficulties in performing some of the necessary surveying operations. He also published three volumes of the work El Perù instead of the twenty he had intended to write and which he was not able to conclude due to lack of time and the sudden decrease in 1879, following Peru's participation in the War of the Pacific (1879-1883), of the modest state financial support he had been able to obtain through the sale to the government of the naturalistic materials he collected. Thus, the volume on Botany, which should have been the sixth, was never written, and today it would be impossible to try to realise such a work, since only about seventy of his travel journals remain, those rescued from the fire in the National Library of Peru that in 1943 destroyed the other one hundred and twenty65. These notebooks are extremely difficult to interpret, and are still mostly unpublished, while his watercolours and a tempera of the Peruvian flora, done partly in Lima and partly during his travels, have been published 66. Nevertheless, as testimony of his geobotanical conceptions, we have a valuable document in his Nocionees generales de Geografia botanica o Distribucion geografica de los vegetales en el Perù, part of the more extensive Elementos de Botanica aplicada á la medicina y á la industria (1857) which he published following his first excursions, carried out dating from 185167. This work, which is characterised not only by its extreme clarity but also by the high level of updated knowledge, constituted, as Raimondi himself states68, the foundation for the collection of plants and the recording of meteorological data done during his successive travels. The study also allows recognition of the remarkable progress made in phytogeography in the 1850s. The isothermic lines, just for taking an example, that had been outlined by Humboldt with the aim of providing a visual representation of the temperature distribution, were already given factors in Raimondi’s studies, as was the need to consider for the formation of the climate, in addition to the altitude and latitude, air, water, heat, light, humidity, and dryness of the air. The Milanese traveller openly acknowledged his debt to Humboldt also with regard to his idea of social plants, that is, those plants that live in society with each other69 and cited as an example the Poa michauxii (Distichlis spicata (L.) Greene) which in Peru covers the large plains located at about 1000 m above sea level. He also agreed with Alphonse de Candolle that each plant has a station or locality, and a habitat or native country, intending by the term station the place that brings together all the physical conditions necessary for the existence of the plant, and by habitat the geographic point of the Earth where the plant grows spontaneously. And finally he also arrived at the concept of a botanical region, defining with this term the point of the Earth where plants of the same family predominate70, as is the case of the Cinchonae that form a region between Peru, Bolivia and Nuova Granata (Colombia), called the Cinchonae Region or the Humboldt Region. Based on these general ideas, Raimondi divided Peru into three zones: the Costa (coastal region) along the ocean, arid apart from the valleys where the short rivers of the west side of the Andes render the land fertile; the Sierra (between the Andes region), which rises up to about 3,500m, characterised by an excellent climate and great fertility, where potatoes and corn are grown; the Puna (Andean), that is the

63 As stated by Raimondi in his letter to Cornalia of the 20th August 1866, of the 10th March 1867 and in his of the 27th May 1867, in BMCSNM, Fondo Cornalia b. 6, fasc.1. 64 A. RAIMONDI, Mapa del Perù, Paris, Imprenta Erhardt, 1883. 65 C. ORSINI, L. F. VILLACORTA OSTOLAZA (eds.), Le avventure di un esploratore. Antonio Raimondi e la scoperta del Perù, Milano, Mudec, 2017, p. 29. 66 L. F. VILLACORTA OSTOLAZA, Acuarelas de viaje de Antonio Raimondi 1854-1869, in Flora perpetua: arte y ciencia botánica de Antonio Raimondi, edited by idem, 3 voll, Asociación Educacional Antonio Raimondi, 2010, vol. II, pp. 29- 127. 67 RAIMONDI, El Perù, t. I, p. 141. 68 A. RAIMONDI, Nocionees generales de Geografia botanica o Distribución geografica de los vegetales en el Perù, in Elementos de Botanica aplicada á la medicina y á la industria, Lima, Imprenta del Estado, 1862, pp. 279-290. 69 Ivi., p. 279. 70 Ibidem. 240 Di Bartolo/Visconti, Before and after Humboldt cold region, where some medicinal plants may still be found, and higher still the high frozen peaks; and the forest (Peruvian Amazon), humid and rich in tropical plants71. He then listed the plants of each area on the basis of the physical data related to them in a passionate description of the plants, which were sometimes called elegant, beautiful, full of colour, scented or sad, grey, dark72. Further confirmation of Raimondi's geobotanical knowledge is found by observing the notes pinned on the pages of his herbarium that included more than 20,000 specimens and which, having been sent in order to determine the species to the Botanical Gardens of Berlin-Dahlem, was destroyed during World War II. The surviving collection consisting of 6,330 specimens was returned from Berlin-Dahlem to Peru and is now preserved in the herbarium of the Museum of Natural History of the Universidad Nacional Mayor de San Marcos 73. On reading the annotations contained on the surviving pages, it may be observed how Raimondi scrupulously and accurately recorded, in addition to the name of the species, that of the location where they were found. At the end of this study, one feels regret with regard to the fact that the entire work El Peru was never published and hopes that the Lima Raimondi Museum will soon be able to decipher and arrange the publication of the notebooks of the Milanese naturalist, thus providing us with new and additional informations for understanding his phytogeographic ideas, as well as the profound affection which bound him to Peru, his second homeland.

71 Ivi., p. 279-280. 72 Ivi., p. 289-290. 73 O. TOVAR SERPA, Antonio Raimondi, botánico ilustre, in Flora perpetua: arte y ciencia botánica de Antonio Raimondi, pp.135-155. 241 Di Bartolo/Visconti, Before and after Humboldt

Manuscript Sources

ASM, Autografi, 180, Pini.

ASM, Commercio p. a., 203.

BCP, Fondo Parlatore, filza 529, Q q D – 16 n. 22/III.

BCP, Fondo Parlatore, filza 529, D – 16 n. 22/I.

BMCSNM, Fondo Cornalia, b. 6, fasc.1.

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