Hans Sloane's a Voyage to Jamaica

Home , Johann Amman, Samuel Pepys

Natural history collections and the book <sub-title>Hans Sloane’s A Voyage to Jamaica (1707-1725) and his Jamaican plants <running header> Natural history collections and the book Edwin D. Rose The Jamaican herbarium assembled by Sir <a href="/tags/Hans_Sloane/" rel="tag">Hans Sloane</a> (1660-1753) in 1687 formed a recorded part of his extensive museum collection from the 1730s until its purchase by the British state in 1753. The detailed examination of the organization of the botanical specimens which account for the first seven volumes of the Sloane herbarium illustrates the use of printed books in natural history collecting practices in mid-eighteenth-century Britain. Sloane’s personal copy of his own work, A Voyage to Jamaica (1707-25), played a central role in the cataloguing and classifying this highly organized natural historical collection. The collection was arranged according to a coherent, rational system, composed of a range of printed works, manuscripts and specimen labels which interacted with the physical spaces in which they were kept. IN 1687, Hans Sloane (1660-1753) journeyed to Jamaica as physician for James II’s newly appointed governor, the Duke of Albemarle. Following the wishes of <a href="/tags/John_Ray/" rel="tag">John Ray</a> (1627-1705), who had asked Sloane to ‘search out and examine thoroughly the natural varieties of that island [Jamaica]’,1 he returned to England in 1689 with a huge quantity of natural history specimens. Perhaps the best known of these are his collections of plants, pressed in seven volumes containing nearly 800 new species.2 These formed the basis for his magnum opus: A Voyage to the Islands Madera, Barbados, Nieves, S. Christophers and Jamaica, with the Natural History of the Herbs and Trees, Four-footed Beasts, Fishes, Birds, Insects, Reptiles, &c. of the last of those Islands (1707-25), the main feature of which is a systematic list that names, describes and depicts the plants Sloane collected in Jamaica.3 Following its publication, Sloane’s annotated copy formed a central element of the continuing cataloguing structure for the first seven volumes of his herbarium. The collection was ordered according to Ray’s morphological system of classification, based on the size and physical features of different plants including their flowers, fruits and stalks, a method that dominated British natural history for the first half of the eighteenth century.4 This present article examines Sloane’s Jamaican herbarium from the 1730s to 1753, when his collection was purchased on the behalf of the British nation to form the first public museum. Previous works concentrating on the precise workings of natural historical collections have tended to examine French collections or the working practices of Linnaeus himself.5 This account will shed light on the workings of a privately owned English museum 1 collection, examining the scholarly methods of classification, cataloguing and display imposed on the botanical section of the collection by Sloane and his curators in the immediate prelude to the introduction and establishment of Linnaean systematics during the mid-eighteenth century. This collection of Jamaican plants is a rare survival; it is not only intact in terms of its specimens, but has retained its original cataloguing structures, escaping the fate of many of Sloane’s zoological specimens, for example, many of which met their demise during the <a href="/tags/British_Museum/" rel="tag">British Museum</a>’s ‘periodical bonfires’ initiated by various curators during the early nineteenth century.6 Sloane’s personal collections of plants present a rigorously organized collection, subject to a set of general and specific catalogues by the 1740s, the main purpose of which was to provide a sophisticated and accessible method for locating individual specimens. The examination of the methods of cataloguing and the systems of classification used for Sloane’s Jamaican herbarium at this time will counter the belief that ‘the years between 1725 and 1760 were largely a blank for British natural history’.7 This argument has been in circulation in the history of science since the 1950s, with scholars consistently viewing the mid-eighteenth century as a time of stagnation in research, particularly at the Royal Society,8 a situation attributed to the decline in mathematical and experimental research following <a href="/tags/Isaac_Newton/" rel="tag">Isaac Newton</a>’s death in 1727 and Sloane’s succession to the presidency, a transition ultimately resulting in the demise of the mathematicians’ hegemony.9 Some scholars have attributed this to Sloane’s leadership and his interests in the descriptive practices of natural history, characterizing him as ‘a dilettante collector’ and ‘certainly no philosopher’.10 These arguments focus on the opinions presented by Sloane’s critics, without giving due consideration to the details of his collecting enterprise and its relationship with A Voyage to Jamaica – a highly competent academic publication. Although the dominant view of a decline in mid eighteenth-century natural history was challenged by Roy Porter, who suggested that there was a period of virtually uninterrupted progress in natural historical research across the eighteenth century, Porter’s position has not received the attention it deserves,11 with recent scholarship tending to revert to the earlier view.12 Here we shall examine the developments in natural historical – particularly botanical – collecting practices from the 1730s to the 1750s, presenting evidence showing that rather than a decline, the mid- eighteenth century witnessed a change, concentrating on the cataloguing and classification of collections as opposed to experimentation, a situation that continued after the establishment of the British Museum in 1753. 2 Finally, we shall show the importance of treating natural historical collections not as mere groupings of physical objects, but as logically coherent systems. Such collections comprise printed works, catalogues and specimen labels as well as the objects themselves, all of them interrelating with each other and uniting the collection as a whole.13 In order to fully understand these relationships and the precise workings of these systems of cataloguing and classification, it is essential to understand the spatial distribution of the collection. A prime example is the connection between Sloane’s copy of A Voyage to Jamaica and the herbarium, and how the precise topographical arrangement of these entities affected their relationship with one another.14 An appreciation of these structures is essential for exploring the many connections between different parts of the collection and the whole, examining it in James Secord’s terms as a ‘document of practice’,15 which connects Sloane’s printed work, physical collection and cataloguing systems. Sloane’s use for his personal collections of A Voyage to Jamaica and Ray’s system of classification – which many early eighteenth century naturalists regarded as the most comprehensive system of classification available – shows that Sloane classified his published work and physical collection according to the most widely understood classificatory system in Britain. By outlining the role of printed works in the cataloguing and classification of Sloane’s collection of Jamaican plants, a case will be made here for understanding the precise construction of the collection not merely as an inanimate gathering of specimens but as a flexible repository of knowledge. Spatial arrangement In order to build up an understanding of its precise spatial and topographical arrangement, we may begin by examining the layout of the collection at the time of Sloane’s death in 1753, as described to the new Trustees of the British Museum by Sloane’s final curator, James Empson (d. 1765), who had been employed by Sloane since 1742.16 This analysis will reveal 3 that by the 1740s the collection was rigorously ordered and classified, so smoothing its transition from a privately owned collection to that of a public institution. On 22 January 1754, the Trustees of the British Museum met at the Manor House in Chelsea to inspect the condition of Sloane’s collections.17 The Trustees ordered Empson to provide a synopsis of the state of the catalogues, a total of fifty-four volumes. Among these, Empson listed ‘Sir Hans Sloane’s History of Jamaica, with the Original Drawings and MS. Notes serving as an index to his own collection of Jamaica Plants’.18 By the time of Sloane’s death in 1753, his annotated copy of A Voyage to Jamaica was regularly used as a catalogue and kept in close proximity to the relevant volumes in the herbarium collection. This was a result of the rigorous cataloguing and institutionalization of the collection which took place during the 1740s, reflecting the growing trend for ordering natural history collections to promote academic study.19 The Trustees ‘proceeded to examine some particular cabinets by the respective catalogues and found them exactly answerable’. After inspecting the contents, they ‘found the Hortus Siccus … in a good condition, the rooms in which they are kept being on the first floor, and open to the free air’.20 This allowed curators such as Empson, recently appointed Under Librarian for Natural and Artificial Productions at the British Museum, and Matthew Maty, Under Librarian for Printed Books, to reconstruct the topographical arrangement of Sloane’s natural history collections at the museum, as laid out by Empson in a detailed report to the Trustees in 1756.21 Many of the cases and cabinets that contained the Jamaican plants and Sloane’s other natural history collections were kept in close proximity to the Gallery, a room 110 feet (33.5 m) in length, which Empson confirmed to have contained thirty-three cabinets and a number of bookshelves alternating with these, all of which held natural historical books and specimens.22 This room was a typical sixteenth-century long gallery, a common architectural feature in buildings such as Chelsea Manor.23 The long gallery gave Sloane the opportunity to 4 display all of his natural specimens in close proximity to one another, allowing him, as expressed by one author in 1748, to ‘show us ye great beauty of all parts of creation’.24 This allowed visitors to walk through a repository containing an inventory of living creation, passing between different sections of the natural collection, many of them organized according to the system of classification devised by Ray.25 The precise ordering of the natural collections can be confirmed by method of organization of the collection adopted by Empson in the rooms at Montague House, in which he attempted to reconstruct Sloane’s original systematic arrangement, maintaining that the collections should be arranged ‘in the same manner as they stand now at Chelsea’.26 Empson’s arrangement started in the room labelled C27, in which he planned to place the herbarium, continuing to room C28, in which he planned to place quadrupeds and birds, then passing into room A29, which he reserved for the insects and fossils, then to H36, which he set aside for a number of specimens preserved in spirits, ending in the room labelled 31, which contained the natural history drawings. Empson suggested that this arrangement would be beneficial for any visitors of the museum, allowing them to walk through all of ‘the three general classes’ of natural history, just as they had done in the long gallery of Sloane’s manor house (Fig. 1).27 The cabinets Sloane had constructed for the long gallery at Chelsea were designed by William Hallett (1707-81), one of the most notable cabinet makers of the second quarter of the eighteenth century, whose furniture often sold for high prices. These particular cabinets were ‘made by Sir Hans Sloane’s directions’ and were constructed for his permanent move to Chelsea in 1742, for which Hallett was commissioned to design a range of specimen cabinets and bookcases.28 In comparison with other eighteenth-century natural history cabinets – such as those used by John Woodward (c.1665-1728), which enclose and conceal the collection in a similar manner to a writing desk – the large glass panes fronting Sloane’s cabinets place a 5 far heavier emphasis on display (Fig. 2).29 By 1742, therefore, Sloane was already showing more interest in displaying and consolidating his natural collections than in accumulating more material.30 Hallett's designs conform with a number of accounts left by visitors to the collection at Chelsea: for instance, that of Pehr Kalm, a student of <a href="/tags/Carl_Linnaeus/" rel="tag">Carl Linnaeus</a> who visited Sloane in 1748, noted that ‘a large number of these cabinets had glass doors, so that you could see what was inside’.31 The shape of the book cases indicates that Sloane ordered his books by size, then by subject, with the folio volumes on the lower shelves, moving up to the quartos and octavos (Fig. 3).32 Hallett’s designs reflect Sloane’s desire to use the available space efficiently; for instance, all of the shelves in the book cases are adjustable so that a range of differently shaped books can easily be accommodated. This arrangement is similar to that used by Samuel Pepys, whose collection was meticulously reconstructed at Magdalene College, Cambridge, although (unlike Pepys’s collection) the original bookcases and cabinets were not used to reconstruct Sloane’s collection in the British Museum.33 According to Empson, the physical space required for Sloane’s herbarium was a running length of 23 ft 7 in (7.2 m), a height of 2 ft (0.7 m) and a depth of 1 ft 6 in (0.46 m), the bound volumes for which were placed on bookcases next to the folio natural history books, such as Sloane’s annotated copies of Ray’s Historia Plantarum (a copy printed on large paper) and his own Voyage to Jamaica.34 The glass-fronted cabinets suggest that Sloane took particular care to arrange his collection in Chelsea according to a method that was not only scholarly and systematic but also accessible to more general visitors to the collection, an arrangement Empson attempted to reconstruct at British Museum. Visitors could view objects from all classes of natural history as they were escorted through the manor, whether by removing bound volumes of herbarium specimens from the shelves or by viewing specimens in the glass-fronted cabinets.35 6 Consolidating, cataloguing and classifying From the mid 1730s, Sloane began to order and classify his collection in a rigorous manner, preparing the ground for its establishment as a public institution.36 These ideas evidently reached fruition when, during a bout of ill health on 9 October 1739, Sloane signed and sealed his will, which stated that his collection should remain intact, and be sold for £20,000; his initial desire was that the offer should be placed before King George II.37 This document supports the contention thate Sloane and his curators had, since the mid 1730s, been preparing the collection for posterity, as suggested by the passage in which Sloane states that his executors should take ‘care and trouble in perusing and correcting my catalogues, which have been taken generally in great haste’.38 This implies that some of the catalogues listed by Empson in 1754 had been compiled somewhat hastily, during the late 1730s; it seems likely that even such a hasty survey of the vast collection would have taken several years to complete, indicating that Sloane had been contemplating how the collection might be preserved for posterity for an extended period before he signed his will in 1739.39 The meticulous cataloguing and classification systems to which Sloane subjected his personal collection can be seen clearly through the organization of the first seven volumes of his herbarium, in which are recorded the locations of different specimens in a set of general and specific catalogues. By the late 1730s, these catalogues were incorporated within two main printed works: Sloane’s copies of his own Voyage to Jamaica (1707-25), which contains the copper plate images of the corresponding specimens in the herbarium, and his annotated copy of John Ray’s Historia Plantarum (1686-1704), which relates his collection to the wider botanical world. These works are directly linked with one another through marginalia, printed information, printed and original images, and the specimens themselves, 7 although Sloane’s copy of A Voyage to Jamaica remained at the centre of the structure used for cataloguing and classifying the Jamaican herbarium (Fig. 4). The publication which preceded Sloane’s ambitious and comprehensive Voyage to Jamaica was his Catlaogus Plantarum quae in Insula Jamaica sponte proveniunt (1696), an interleaved copy of which served as a catalogue for the Jamaican plants prior to the publication of the second volume of A Voyage to Jamaica in 1725, when it appears to have fallen out of use.40 Throughout the main text of A Voyage to Jamaica, Sloane consistently cited his earlier work as one of the central reference sources, in which he initially listed and clarified the polynomial names of his Jamaican plants, a work also cited by Ray in Historia Plantarum.41 The close relationship between the Catalogus and Sloane’s copy of the Voyage to Jamaica is apparent through the cuttings of text from the one pasted next to the corresponding entries throughout the botanical sections in each volume of the other. These additional insertions support Sloane’s polynomial descriptions and successfully unite his earlier work with his later and far more ambitious publication. A typical example can be found in the chapter entitled ‘Herbs with Grassie Leaves’ in Sloane’s copy of the Voyage to Jamaica, in which the corresponding inserts from the Catalogus have been placed next to the relevant entry on each different species (Fig. 5). These inserts are linked to one of Sloane’s copies of the Catalogus, which contains annotated references to the specific species descriptions and copper plates in the Voyage to Jamaica and the relevant pages in Ray’s Historia Plantarum, reflecting Sloane’s meticulous cross referencing system.42 Each of the species cited in Sloane’s copy of Voyage to Jamaica contains the relevant clipping which contains the condensed description from the Catalogus. For instance, for the species of grass, Chloris elata Desv., the printed species description in Sloane’s copy of the Voyage to Jamaica is accompanied by a cutting from the corresponding section in the Catalogus (Fig. 5).43 Sloane’s references to the Voyage to Jamaica in his copy of the Catalogus are often 8 accompanied by additional references to the tables depicting the specific specimen which represents this species in his collection, reflecting Sloane’s meticulous cross-referencing system.44 This relationship between the images, specimens and printed text shows that these representations were essential for supplementing the descriptions in the Voyage to Jamaica and the Catalogus – two works which Sloane closely associated with his personal collection by the late 1730s. Sloane’s annotated copy of A Voyage to Jamaica has been annotated throughout with specimen numbers and additional descriptions, which place it at the centre of his data management system. The majority of these annotations are in the hand of Sloane himself, indicating his personal use of this work in ordering his Jamaican collection, although in the wider herbarium collection and in his manuscript catalogues the hands of Sloane’s amanuenses do appear, most notably that of Johann Amman (1707-1741), who was employed by Sloane c.1730-36.45 Unlike other naturalists, Sloane saw the creation of his published work and the organization of his personal collection as an individual enterprise, perhaps suggesting a reason why there was a gap of eighteen years between the first and second volumes of A Voyage to Jamaica. However, Sloane’s intentions were vastly different to those of other private collectors, whose catalogues and annotated books were intended for their personal use or that of a very select group. This cataloguing system for the herbarium was relatively accessible to other scholars, although accounts suggest that they would have been supervised by Sloane or his curatorial staff.46 Users of Sloane’s botanical collections during this period included his successive curators, Cromwell Mortimer (1729-41), Johann Amman (c.1729-36), and James Empson (1741-65), as well as naturalists such as Carl Linnaeus, Gerhard Friedrich Müller and Pehr Kalm.47 Sloane’s personal copy of A Voyage to Jamaica acted as a specific catalogue for his collection of Jamaican plants in the first seven volumes of the herbarium. This is shown by 9 the location numbers which have been annotated next to each printed polynomial name for a botanical specimen in the collection, each of which provides an accurate reference for the location of the physical item described in the main text (Fig. 6).48 For example, Sloane’s reference ‘HS. 1. p. 133. & 134.’, stands for Hortus Siccus, volume one, folios 133 and 134, enabling the user to locate the specific physical specimen and refer to the description in the Voyage to Jamaica.49 Sloane gave each species represented by specimens in his personal collection a descriptive <a href="/tags/Latin/" rel="tag">Latin</a> polynomial name, typical of early eighteenth-century natural historicaly practice. The specimen found on fol. 133 of the first volume of Sloane’s herbarium is Cyathea grevilleana Mart., a type of tree fern, for which Sloane’s heavily abbreviated polynomial, primarily a list of adjectives, describes a ‘Branched tree-fern, spiny, with trunk not divided [and] with pinnules broad, crowded, short, thin finely toothed’.50 In the main text, Sloane cites the engraving of the specimen referred to in his annotation, located at the end of his book, allowing the user to locate the precise specimen, relevant engraving and original drawings made by Everhardus Kickius, a Dutch draughtsman employed by Sloane between 1700 and 1701.51 At this time, it appears that these images were either in a separate folio in close proximity to Sloane’s copy of A Voyage to Jamaica or kept in the same binding as this particular work (Fig. 7). This is apparent from the references to these images as a separate entity to the herbarium when Sloane’s heirs, Lord and Lady Cadogan, claimed that these drawings, along with the copper plates used to print A Voyage to Jamaica, were their personal property, not part of Sloane’s collection. It seems likely, when these claims were made in 1756, that James Empson (who was determined that these drawings should remain with the collection) mounted these opposite the specimens they represent in order to ensure that they would remain with the collection for posterity.52 Sloane’s interest in the relationship between physical specimens, descriptions and images reflects his understanding of Baconian natural history and his belief that images were 10 useful for conveying information.53 ‘Baconian’, when referring to Sloane’s collection, infers the systematic collection of empirical data in the form of textual information, images and physical items, which could be displayed in a gallery, such as Sloane’s 110 foot (33.5 m)t- long gallery, designed to record the world’s knowledge.54 Rather than acting merely as a source of curiosity, as was the case with many aristocratic collections, Sloane applied a systematic methodology to the arrangement of his collection, drawing on Bacon’s ideas expressed in works such as Sylva Sylvarum (1627), one of several works by Bacon contained within Sloane's library.55 Bacon promoted the accumulation and display of objects and knowledge in an accessible repository, believing that the systematic collection of data – often the result of a collaborative effort – would develop natural historical research and lead to new discoveries.56 Sloane’s understanding of Baconian philosophy is further expressed through the way he distributed his collections to scholars on a wide scale through the medium of print. Sloane believed that the most accurate way of conveying the morphology of the physical items was by supplementing his descriptions with high-quality images – witness the 274 expensive copper plates engraved for A Voyage to Jamaica.57 This series of images forms a portable collection, depicting Sloane’s entire holdings at the time of publication, arranged according to Ray’s morphological system of classification. All of the physical specimens depicted in this work could be consulted by visiting Sloane’s museum.58 This connection between the printed image and the physical specimen provides opportunities for the two to be compared: Sloane understood that the image did not present an entirely adequate representation of each specimen’s morphology, and that this could only be fully understood by consulting the physical item. In part, this was due to the reversal of the original drawings during the printing process and that the image did not convey all of the physical qualities of the specimen, such as its colour or texture.59 These images were central to Sloane’s published work and his principal collecting enterprise, for to Sloane – and to 11 some of his contemporaries such as Martin Lister (1639-1712) – text was merely a secondary concern.60 Throughout A Voyage to Jamaica, Sloane used the system of classification devised by Ray, as confirmed by his comments in the preface: ‘I have followed mostly the method of Mr. Ray in his history of plants’.61 Ray’s method is often referred to as one of the most comprehensive late seventeenth-century systems of classification; it dominated English taxonomy until the mid-eighteenth century.62 Sloane’s use of the system to order his printed work and the first seven volumes of his herbarium becomes apparent in the sequential numbers annotated next to each entry in his copy of A Voyage to Jamaica. These usually refer to a series of specimens in the collection, for example, in the chapter on ferns, Sloane’s numbers follow from ‘HS. 1. p. 38’ and run through to ‘HS. 1. p. 168’.63 Each of these numbers reflects the exact order of the specimens in the bound volumes of the herbarium. Ray’s Historia Plantarum is referred to throughout the printed text in Sloane’s Voyage to Jamaica as well as in annotated citations in his personal copy, which acted as a more general catalogue for the entire herbarium.64 Sloane’s copy of Historia Plantarum contains codes which provide the location for most (though not all) individual species in the Sloane herbarium.65 The relationship between Sloane’s copies of A Voyage to Jamaica and Ray’s Historia Plantarum, aside from Sloane’s use of Ray’s system of classification, had been intrinsic since their inception: Sloane lent Ray the manuscript for A Voyage to Jamaica so that he could use the descriptions of different species for Historia Plantarum, it being one of Ray’s primary sources for his descriptions of plants from the Antilles.66 Ray corresponded with Sloane and gave essential advice during the editing process of his work; in return Sloane frequently sent Ray herbarium specimens.67 Ray appears to have benefitted from the extensive descriptions in A Voyage to Jamaica, which he utilized for the descriptions in Historia Plantarum.68 Annotated location codes, identical to those in the Voyage to Jamaica, 12 appear throughout Sloane’s copy of Historia Plantarum next to all the species of Jamaican flora stored in the first seven volumes of the herbarium. These are situated alongside later annotated codes, which allow the user to cross-reference these plants with examples of the same species located in other parts of the herbarium (Fig. 8). The direct relationship between Sloane’s personal copies of these two works, as specific and general catalogues for his West Indian plants, is apparent through a number of annotations which link specific species mentioned in the Voyage to Jamaica to those in Ray’s Historia Plantarum. A typical example of Sloane’s annotated citation of Ray’s work in the Voyage to Jamaica can be found next to his description of the Purple Yam, Dioscorea alata L. (Fig. 9).69 In many cases, Sloane has linked his copy of A Voyage to Jamaica to Ray’s Historia Plantarum when the two works have used different polynomial names for the same species of plant.70 This was a result of their divergent interests in the Purple Yam’s morphology; in his polynomial, Ray concentrated on the ‘smooth, Smilax-like leaves, with winged steams, without a flower’, as opposed to Sloane, who initially described the ‘largest, white or purple, tuberous, edible, starchy root’. Ray, as an erudite scholar, used the work of Andrea Cesalpino (1519-1603), building on his system of classification based on flowers and fruits.71 In comparison, Sloane, as a physician and collector, often emphasized the roots due to his interests in their medical properties.72 The differences between these research interests and polynomials caused Sloane to add an annotated quotation of the polynomial Ray ascribed to this plant next to the specific entry in A Voyage to Jamaica to avoid any confusion between the general and specific catalogues for his collection. This allowed researchers to locate examples of the specific specimen by using the polynomial in either Ray or Sloane’s work.73 Driven by a desire to create an accurate and sophisticated cataloguing system for his personal collections of plants, Sloane clarified any differences between the polynomials used 13 by himself in the Voyage to Jamaica, and those used by Ray in Historia Plantarum. In comparison to commonplace books and cataloguing systems used by naturalists for their personal use, Sloane’s annotations purposefully removed any confusion associated with the name and the location of the specimen, making the collection accessible to other scholars familiar with Ray’s system.74 This sophisticated system for locating specimens within his personal collections was evidently part of Sloane’s attempts to produce catalogues of his collection towards the end of his life in order to ensure that this essential part of his collection remained intact so it could continue to contribute to natural historical research after his death. Herbarium labels The unification of the general and specific catalogues for the first seven volumes of the herbarium is apparent through the labels given by Sloane to each species in his collection. The original labels, all of which are in Sloane’s hand, appear throughout his personal collections and many of them contain a reference to the corresponding pages in his annotated copies of A Voyage to Jamaica and Historia Plantarum.75 The main function of these labels was to identify the specimen accurately, rather than provide supplementary information such as the date of collection and original location of the specimen.76 However, if the user traces the reference to A Voyage to Jamaica, the corresponding entry usually contains a description of the original locality of the plant, which can often be found on Sloane’s copperplate map of Jamaica.77 This is in stark contrast to the often imprecise original locations given in the museum catalogues of seventeenth-century collectors such as Vincencio Lastanosa (1607-1682).78 A typical example of Sloane’s labels can be found accompanying the specimen of False Coffee, Faramea occidentalis L., in which he has recorded the corresponding pages in the general and specific catalogues (Fig. 10).79 The references to the Catalogus Plantarum establish the polynomial name Sloane ascribed to this specimen. The reference to A Voyage 14 to Jamaica cites the pages which characterize the living plant’s morphology, the specimen’s original locality and information on economic and medicinal virtues. The final reference to Sloane’s copy of Ray’s Historia Plantarum allows the user to compare this plant with other specimens in the wider herbarium. These labels, which appear on every specimen in this collection, are essential for understanding the relationship between A Voyage to Jamaica, the more general catalogues, the physical arrangement of the collection and the manner in which Sloane and his curators treated these volumes in relation to the wider herbarium. Cataloguing a growing collection Sloane’s copy of A Voyage to Jamaica acted as an essential repository to which Sloane (and later Empson) could add detailed information about the specimens described in the main text. This is evident from the numerous lengthy annotations accompanying entries such as the printed description of Wild Cassada (Jatropha gossypifolia, L), next to which Sloane wrote: These is to be found in the months of March & April in the Pith or medulla of the inside of the stalk a hard knotty substance of an oval figure or shape of them are as big as a pullets egg some as small as the hazel nut & a chesnutt colour whose use is not known, yet only the Creolian boys will dry & powder or grale [grate] & give it for snuff & it will burn & thickle the nose like vaphor [vapour] fuime & cause great sneesing. Barham.80 This annotation adds to the printed descriptions of the morphology of the plant and its practical uses, using information Sloane received from the Jamaican physician, Henry Barham (c.1670-1726).81 Barham criticised A Voyage to Jamaica on the basis of its academic style, commenting that Sloane ‘doth not tell you the English Name’ of different species, and that fifteen months in Jamaica had not given him sufficient time to gather enough information to create an all-encompassing account of Jamaican flora.82 Sloane, and later Empson, appear to have been copying from Barham and a number of other naturalists’ manuscripts and 15 correspondence, referring to their work in annotations throughout A Voyage to Jamaica, generally improving the content to address these concerns.83 Empson’s additions appear throughout Sloane’s copy of the Voyage to Jamaica, often recording Sloane’s personal observations of different plants during the 1740s and posthumously recording ‘the observations & anecdotes imparted to him by Sir Hans Sloane’, until his death in 1765.84 A typical example can be found next to the long entry on the uses of the Tobacco plant, at the end of which Empson has signed his initials and recorded ‘from Sir. H.S. observations’ (Fig. 11).85 The use of the two different types of ink for this annotation suggests that the main body was written before Empson added the citation, possibly a result of being dictated to by Sloane in the 1740s.86 Empson’s later addition of the provenance could have been made when he was reviewing the information communicated to him by Sloane in the 1750s and early 1760s.87 As Elizabeth Yale has suggested, these annotated additions in printed works reflect the Baconian programme of creating a continually expanding accessible repository of knowledge, encouraging naturalists ‘to approach their work as always unfinished, always under construction’.88 Sloane believed that his personal publication was capable of constantly absorbing new information on the flora of Jamaica, generated through correspondence, new printed works and the acquisition of natural history specimens.89 Empson’s later additions indicate that he believed in continuing Sloane’s Baconian enterprise, as demonstrated by the number of new annotations along with the additions and corrections he made to Sloane’s original marginalia, creating a catalogue capable of continually integrating information on the specimens in the first seven volumes of the herbarium.90 Although originally intended to catalogue and distribute information on the plants Sloane had collected in the 1680s, his copy of A Voyage to Jamaica was capable of assimilating additional information on new specimens. This is apparent in the marginalia, to 16 which Sloane and a number of his curators regularly made additions concerning specimens of plants sent by West Indian correspondents.91 The most frequent references are to the Scottish- born physicians, Walter Tulladeph, who settled in Antigua in 1726, and William Houstoun, who sent Sloane a large assortment of specimens from Jamaica and Veracruz in 1730.92 In many of these cases, Sloane’s annotated additions relate to duplicates of plants he had previously discovered; for example, his annotation next to one printed description states ‘in Carolina, Sent by Mr. Catesby’, referring to a duplicate received from the naturalist Mark Catesby (1682/3-1749), indicating the extent of the geographical range for this species.93 Other longer annotations refer to new species of West Indian flora, mostly acquired from Tulladeph and Houstoun, to which Sloane has ascribed a new polynomial name and written out a detailed description of the morphology and original locality of the plant. These descriptions follow a similar method of construction to those used in the main text of the Voyage to Jamaica, often sourcing information from the original letters sent alongside the specimen. In many cases, the annotations referring to new species contain no descriptions of the specimen in question. This is apparent in the numerous references to specimens sent to Sloane by Houstoun in 1730: these are referred to by annotations in Sloane’s copy of the Voyage to Jamaica and on the specimen labels, alongside the new polynomial for the plant in question (Fig. 12). This helps to identify the specimen, confirming its name and provenance.94 These annotations and specimen labels appear to have been added by Empson’s predecessor, Cromwell Mortimer, who worked on Sloane’s catalogues from 1729 to 1742.95 Mortimer, a prominent physician and some-time secretary of the Royal Society, appears to have been responsible for cataloguing the specimens and information sent by Houstoun in 1730; his hand appears on the specimen labels, in which he cites ‘Houst’, for 17 Houstoun, and in annotations throughout Sloane’s copy of A Voyage to Jamaica in which he cites Houstoun’s name next to the annotations which relate to these particular specimens.96 These additions show that Sloane’s copy of the Voyage to Jamaica was used to catalogue his personal collection of Jamaica plants and specimens of West Indian flora stored elsewhere in his bound herbarium volumes. Sloane gathered multiple examples of every known species of West Indian plant, for which he designed a system capable of continually accumulating information and actively fuelling its production.97 Although his rate of acquiring Jamaican flora had dwindled by the 1740s, Sloane's regular employment of staff and the increasing care involved in cataloguing the collection are signs of first steps being taken towards the institutionalization and consolidation of the collection, a process that started in earnest following his move to Chelsea in 1742. Although Sloane’s use of his copy of A Voyage to Jamaica to catalogue and classify his collection of Jamaican plants can be seen as a fairly atypical subset within his wider collections, these methods of classifying and cataloguing through the use of printed books can be applied to Sloane’s natural historical collections more broadly. A typical example can be found in his copy of Martin Lister’s Historiæ sive Synopsis Methodicæ Conchyliorum quorum Omnium Pictræ, ad vivum delineate, exhibetur Liber Primusqui est de Conchleis Terrestribus (1692-7).98 This contains annotated codes next to the images of shells from Sloane’s collection depicted in the copper plates. All of these relate to the corresponding numbers in Sloane’s manuscript catalogue, in which he has cited each specific figure in this printed work next to the relevant entry, and the numbers inked on to the shells in his collection.99 This, similar to the relationship between Sloane’s copy of A Voyage to Jamaica and the first seven volumes of his herbarium, shows the intricate connections between his natural specimens and printed books which occur throughout his collection, in particular 18 those copies kept in close proximity to the objects themselves, rather than in the space specifically dedicated to the library collection. In comparison to the other branches of Sloane’s natural history collections, the first seven volumes of the herbarium and his annotated copy of A Voyage to Jamaica seem to have received far more attention than the material that Sloane did not personally collect, possibly due to his greater familiarity with his own publication and specimens. This shows that Sloane exerted more authority over the objects he collected in the field, ensuring stringent cataloguing and classification according to Ray’s widely accepted system. These attempts by Sloane and his curatorial staff to catalogue and classify this part of the collection reflects his wish for this section of his personal collection to remain intact after his death and continue to be used for the advancement of knowledge in natural history. In his will, Sloane expressed his desire for this to be the case, even if the British state and the majority of scientific societies in Europe all failed to purchase the collection from his executors, an eventuality that ultimately would have resulted in its sale.100 <H1>Conclusion The relationship between Sloane’s copy of A Voyage to Jamaica and the first seven volumes of his herbarium provides an example of the connections between published works, cataloguing practices and natural history collections. The specific understanding of the precise workings of one of the few complete – and the most important – early eighteenth- century British natural history collections helps to show that these private collections – or, more particularly, the specific aspects of which were personally assembled by their collector – were consciously designed to follow a systematic classification that was fluid enough for them to continually expand as repositories of knowledge. Although not all of Sloane’s contemporaries followed the same systems of classification, it is clear through examining the 19 collections of other naturalists mentioned in this article, such as Lister and Linnaeus, that they all maintained close and consistent relationships between printed books and physical objects in their personal collections. These advanced systems of information-management defined them as competent naturalists rather than mere accumulators of objects. The new cabinets and bookcases Sloane had designed for his move to Chelsea in 1742 suggest that he was already preparing his collection for transfer to a public institution, giving the opportunity for it to be appreciated by scholars and more general ‘curious visitors’. This furniture provides valuable insights into the scholarly manner in which Sloane arranged his collections, an example being the cases with adjustable shelves in which were stored his copies of the Voyage to Jamaica, Ray’s Historia Plantarum and the herbarium volumes. Sloane’s use of the Voyage to Jamaica as a means for cataloguing and classifying his collections provides a significant addition to understanding how books related to working natural history collections. Sloane’s annotated copy of A Voyage to Jamaica, which was kept in close proximity to the collection, provided an accurate and systematic system for the swift location of species in the first seven volumes in his herbarium through reference codes. Additionally, these works played the essential role of classifying the collection according to Ray’s system and establishing the polynomial names Sloane ascribed to each individual species, references to which can be found in the printed text and on the labels attached to the specimens themselves. The practicality of these printed works and their relationship with the physical specimens is perhaps best represented in the engraved images Sloane published in A Voyage to Jamaica, the main purpose of which was to supplement the descriptions and circulate information based on his personal collections throughout the scholarly community of early eighteenth-century Europe. Evidently, Sloane’s copy of the Voyage to Jamaica was essential for linking the different components of this collection, successfully serving as a catalogue for the collection 20 and as a means for classifying the specimens. The flexibility of this work and its ability to be used in classification and cataloguing provided the means for its continual expansion, in the form of descriptions and natural history specimens, gathered through continual scholarly communication. This ability truly reflects Sloane’s Baconian programme of creating a continually expanding and highly organized repository of knowledge, emphasizing the important roles played by often-overlooked curatorial staff in the management of natural history collections. Sloane’s Voyage to Jamaica and its relationship with the first seven volumes of his herbarium demonstrates that this collection formed a logical system organized through a range of printed works, truly showing the intricate, fluid nature of a natural history collection during the 1740s. This ensured that Sloane’s collection continued to be valued throughout the eighteenth century. In the copies of the Voyage to Jamaica and Historia Plantarum owned by <a href="/tags/Joseph_Banks/" rel="tag">Joseph Banks</a> (1743-1820), the annotations from Sloane’s copies have been transcribed and referred to the 1763 edition of Linnaeus’s Species Plantarum, reflecting the continuing value placed on this collection by later naturalists and realizing Sloane’s aim of preserving the collection for natural historical study.101 The present account of the precise workings of this collection and its relationship with its physical space reveals how this collection was used as a scholarly research tool and viewed by the general public, factors that were essential for its transition into the first public collection during the 1750s. Address for correspondence Edwin D. Rose, Department of History and Philosophy of Science, <a href="/tags/University_of_Cambridge/" rel="tag">University of Cambridge</a>, Free School Lane, Cambridge, CB2 3RH. edr24@cam.ac.uk 21 Acknowledgements I would like to thank Nick Jardine, James Secord and Simon Schaffer for reading through numerous drafts of this article. I would also like to thank the two anonymous reviewers for offering extremely detailed and helpful feedback. For access to the various collections, I would like to thank Francesca Hiller and Kim Sloan at the British Museum; Mark Carine, Charlie Jarvis and the Library staff at the Natural History Museum, <a href="/tags/London/" rel="tag">London</a>, and the staff at the British Library. For assistance with the translation of the Latin polynomials, I would like to thank Chris Preston. For generously funding my MPhil. research, I would like to thank the British Society for the History of Science, and for my PhD funding, I would like to thank the AHRC. Notes and references 1 J. Ray to H. Sloane, 1687, British Library, London (hereafter BL), Sloane MS 4036, fols. 28-29. 2 Held by the Natural History Museum, London (hereafter NHM). 3 H. Sloane, A Voyage to the Islands Madera, Barbados, Nieves, S. Christophers and Jamaica, with the Natural History of the Herbs and Trees, Four-footed Beasts, Fishes, Birds, Insects, Reptiles, &c. of the last of those Islands (London, 1707-25), hereafter cited as A Voyage to Jamaica. 4 F. A. Stafleu, Linnaeus and the Linnaeans: The spreading of their ideas in systematic botany, 1735-1739 (Utrecht, 1971), p. 199. 5 See, for example, S. Müller-Wille and I. Charmantier, ‘Natural history and information overload: the case of Linnaeus’, Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical Sciences 43 (2012), pp. 4-15. 6 E. Edwards, Lives of the Founders of the British Museum (London, 1870), p. 576. 7 D. E. Allen, The Naturalist in Britain: A social history (London, 1976), pp. 15-16. 8 See, for example, M. Espinasse, ‘The decline and fall of Restoration science’, Past and Present 14 (1958), pp. 71-89; M. Feingold, ‘Mathematicians and naturalists: Sir Isaac Newton and the Royal Society’, in Issac Newton’s Natural Philosophy, ed. Jed Z. Buchwald and I. Bernard Cohen (Cambridge, 2001), pp. 77-102. 9 Feingold, op. cit. (note 8), p. 96. 22 10 J. L. Heilbron, Physics at the Royal Society during Newton’s Presidency (Los Angeles, 1983), pp. 10-11; J. M. Levine, Dr. Woodward’s Shield: History, science, and satire in Augustan England (London, 1977), p. 88. 11 R. Porter, The Making of Geology: Earth science in Britain 1660-1815 (Cambridge, 1977), pp. 93-94; G. S. Rousseau and R. Porter (eds), The Ferment of Knowledge: Studies in the historiography of eighteenth-century science (Cambridge, 1980). 12 See, for example, J. Gascoigne, Joseph Banks and the English Enlightenment: Useful knowledge and polite culture (Cambridge, 1994), p. 73. 13 E. C. Spary, Utopia’s Garden: French natural history from Old Regime to Revolution (London, 2000), p. 11. 14 Sloane, A Voyage to Jamaica, containing copious annotations and flyleaves in the hands of Hans Sloane, James Empson and Cromwell Mortimer. London, Natural History Museum, Botany Special Collections, Special Books, 581. 9 (79P9. 94) SLO F, p. 95. 15 J. Secord, ‘Knowledge in transit’, Isis 95 (2004), pp. 654-672, at pp. 666-7. 16 BM, Central Archive, Trustees’ Minutes, vol. 1 (hereafter cited as BMCATM), fols. 3-7. 17 M. Caygill, ‘Sloane’s will and the establishment of the British Museum’, in Sir Hans Sloane: Collector, scientist, antiquary, founding father of the British Museum, ed. A. MacGregor (London, 1994), pp. 222-7, pp. 53. ?? 45-68, at p. 53. 18 BMCATM, fol. 4; M. Caygill, ‘Sloane’s catalogues and the arrangement of his collections’ in From Books to Bezoars: Sir Hans Sloane and his collections, ed. A. Walker, A. MacGregor and M. Hunter (London, 2012), pp. 120-36, at p. 121. 19 A. MacGregor, Curiosity and Enlightenment: Collectors and collections from the sixteenth to the nineteenth century (London, 2007), pp. 120-21; A. McClellan, Inventing the Louvre. Art, politics, and the origins of the modern museum in eighteenth-century Paris (Cambridge, 1994), p. 80. 20 BMCATM, fol. 4. Hortus siccus is an alternative term for a herbarium collection. 21 British Museum, Central Archive, Original Papers (henceforth cited as BMCAOP), volume 1[volume needed here] fols. 39-45; A. E. Gunther, ‘Matthew Maty MD, FRS (1718-76) and science at the foundation of the British Museum, 1753-80’, Bulletin of the British Museum (Natural History) 15 (1987), pp. 1-58, at p. 31. 22 Anon, ‘An account of the Prince and Princess of Wales visiting Sir Hans Sloane’, Gentleman’s Magazine and Historical Chronicle 18 (1748), pp. 301-302, at p. 301. 23 23 R. Coope, ‘The ‘long gallery’: its origins, development, use and decoration’, Architectural History 29 (1986), pp. 43-72, at p. 46. 24Anon., op. cit. (note 22), p. 301. 25 K. Whitaker, ‘The culture of curiosity’, in Cultures of Natural History, ed, N. Jardine, J. A. Secord and E. C. Spary (Cambridge, 1996), pp. 75-90, at pp. 88-90. 26 BMCAOP, Volume 1,[volume needed here fols. 39-45. 27 Ibid, Volume 1,[volume needed here fols. 40-44. 28 Ibid, Volume 1,[volume needed here fol. 43. 29 D. Price, ‘John Woodward and a surviving British geological collection from the early eighteenth century’, Journal of the History of Collections 1 (1989), pp. 79-85, at pp. 83-4. 30 BMCA, William Hallett’s Plans of Hans Sloane’s Cabinets and Book Cases (uncatalogued, Fitzroy and Braizer Plans of Montague House), fols. 15-16? W. T. Stearn, The Natural History Museum at South Kensington: A history of the British Museum (Natural History) 1753-1980 (London, 1981), pp. 6-7; M. L. Caygill, ‘From private collection to public museum: the Sloane collection at Chelsea and the British Museum at Montague House’, in Enlightening the British: Knowledge, discovery and the museum in the eighteenth century, ed. R.G.W. Anderson, M. L. Caygill, A. G. MacGregor and L. Syson (London, 2003), pp. 18-28. For the lack of additional entries in Sloane’s library catalogues between 1742 and 1752, see A. Blakeway, ‘The library catalogues of Sir Hans Sloane: their authors, organisation, and functions’, Electronic British Library Journal (2011), pp. 1-49, at p. 44. 31 A. MacGregor, ‘The life, character and career of Sir Hans Sloane’, in Sir Hans Sloane: Collector, scientist, antiquary, founding father of the British Museum, ed. A. MacGregor (London, 1994), p. 34. 32 BMCATM, Volume 1,[volume needed here fols 5, 43. Empson presented Hallett’s designs of Sloane’s cabinets to the Trustees of the British Museum on 9 August 1755. 33 See K. Loveman, Samuel Pepys and his Books: Reading, newsgathering, and sociability, 1660-1703 (Oxford, 2015), pp. 272-4; M.E.J. Hughes, The Pepys Library and the Historic Collections of Magdalene College, Cambridge (London, 2015), p. 42. 34 BMCATM, p. 74. These measurements equate with those described by Empson in the Trustees’ Minutes. 35 A. E. Gunther, The Founders of Science at the British Museum, 1753-1900 (Suffolk, 1981), p. 15. 36 Blakeway, op. cit. (note 30), p. 28. 37 Caygill, op. cit. (note 17), pp. 45-6; H. Sloane, The Will of Hans Sloane, Bart. Deceased (London, 1753), p. 5. 24 38 Sloane, op. cit. (note 37), p. 5. 39 For more on the compilation of catalogues for Sloane’s collection during the late 1730s, see Caygill, op. cit. (note 18), pp. 124-5. 40 H. Sloane, Catalogus Plantarum Quæ in Insula Jamaica sponte proveniunt (London, 1696). The copy of the Catalogus in use by the mid-1730s is held by the British Library and can be found at shelf mark 968.f.15. Sloane had another interleaved copy of the Catalogus which served as an index for his Jamaican herbarium prior to the publication of the second volume of his Voyage to Jamaica in 1725 (BL.c.60.e.10). This is apparent from the most recent annotated references relating to the third volume of William Dampier’s A New Voyage Around the World (*****, 17031697, 1705) and specimens from Leonard Plukenet’s collection which Sloane purchased in 1710. Plukenet’s (BL.968.f.16) and Petiver’s (BL.968.f.18) annotated copies of the Catalogus are also in Sloane’s collection. This work was certainly not in use as a catalogue by the time of Sloane’s death in 1753, as evidenced by James Empson’s report to the Trustees of the British Museum in 1754. See J. Robertson, ‘Knowledgeable readers: Jamaican critiques of Sloane’s botany’, Walker, MacGregor and Hunter, op. cit. (note 18), pp. 80-89, at p. 81, 263n. 41 P. I. Edwards, ‘Sir Hans Sloane and his curious friends’, History in the Service of Systematics (1981), pp. 27-35, p. 33, at pp. 28-29.[?] 42 This copy of Sloane’s Catalogus can be found in the British Library, shelf mark 968.f15.33. 43 Sloane, BL968.f.15: 33, op. cit. (note 40); Sloane, op. cit. (note 14), p. 111. Polynomial name: Gramen dactylon elatius spicis plurimis tomentosis. 44 Sloane, op. cit. (note 14). 45 See, C. G. Thomas, ‘Sir Hans Sloane and the Russian Academy of Sciences’, British Library Journal 14 (1988), pp. 21-37, at p. 24. 46 See R. Yeo, Notebooks, English virtuosi, and early modern science (Chicago, 2014), p. 255; H. J. Jackson, Marginalia: Readers writing in books (London, 2001), pp. 81-83; P. Findlen, ‘The museum: its classical etymology and Renaissance genealogy’, Journal of the History of Collections 1 (1989), pp. 59-78, at p. 60. 47 C. E. Jarvis, M. Spencer and R. Huxley, ‘Sloane’s plant specimens at the Natural History Museum’, in Walker, MacGregor and Hunter, op. cit. (note 18), p. 139; C. E. Raven, John Ray, Naturalist (Cambridge, 1942), p. 301; For Müller’s account of his visit to Sloane, see Thomas, op. cit. (note 45), p. 24. 48 Sloane, op. cit. (note 14), p. 95. 25 49 Dandy, J. E., The Sloane Herbarium: An annotated list of the horti sicci composing it: with biographical accounts of the principal contributors (London, 1958), p. 204. Sloane’s collection of Jamaican plants has been digitised by the Natural History Museum and can be found at: http://www.nhm.ac.uk/research- curation/scientific-resources/collections/botanical-collections/sloane-herbarium/ . 50 Sloane, op. cit. (note 14), p. 95; Sloane’s polynomial: Filix arborea ramosa, spinosa, caudice non diviso, pinnulis latis, densis, brevibus, tenuibus, minutim dentatis. 51 Jarvis, Spencer and Huxley, op. cit. (note 47), p. 139; BMCATM, op. cit. (note 16), fol. 4. For more information on the treatment of these drawings during the 1750s, see BMCATM, op. cit. (note 16), fol. 88. 52 BMCATM, op. cit. (note 16), Volume 1[volume needed here fol. 88. 53 K. Sloan, ‘Sloane’s ‘Pictures and drawings in frames’ and ‘Books of miniature & painting, designs, &c.’, in Walker, MacGregor and Hunter, op. cit. (note 18), p. 169. 54 A. MacGregor, ‘"A magazin of all manner of inventions": museums in the quest for "Salomon’s House" in seventeenth-century England’, Journal of the History of Collections 2 (1989), pp. 207-12, at p. 207. 55 Although Sloane does not explicitly cite Bacon in his publications, it is apparent that he was familiar with Bacon’s works and philosophy from the copies held in his library collections and the fact that he quoted Bacon’s motto from the Great Instauration on the title page of A Voyage to Jamaica. See J. Delbourgo, ‘Sir Hans Sloane’s milk chocolate and the whole history of coco’, Social Text 29 (2011), pp. 71-101, at p. 80. Sloane’s copy of Sylva Sylvarum can be found in the British Library, shelf mark 716.i.7.(2.). Although a full account of Sloane’s use of Francis Bacon’s philosophy would require a study of its own, I have given a brief summary of the use of the term Baconian in this context. 56 P. Findlen, Possessing Nature: Museums, collecting and scientific culture in early modern Italy (Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1994), pp. 3-5; MacGregor, op. cit. (note 54), p. 207. 57 See MacGregor, op. cit. (note 53), p. 139; K. D. Kriz,, ‘Curiosities, commodities, and transplanted bodies in Hans Sloane’s “Natural History of Jamaica”’, William and Mary Quarterly 57 (2000), pp. 35-78, at pp. 37-39. 58 M.J.S. Rudwick, ‘Picturing nature in the Age of Enlightenment’, Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society 149 (2005), pp. 279-303, at p. 283. 59 See S. Kusukawa, ‘Drawings of fossils by <a href="/tags/Robert_Hooke/" rel="tag">Robert Hooke</a> and Richard Waller’, Notes and Records of the Royal Society 67 (2013), pp. 123-38, at pp. 124-30. 26 60 For another printed work which relies on images to convey the morphology of physical objects, see M. Lister, Historiæ sive Synopsis Methodicæ Conchyliorum quorum Omnium Pictræ, ad vivum delineate, exhibetur Liber Primusqui est de Conchleis Terrestribus (London, 1685-92). 61 Sloane, op. cit. (note 14), preface, unpaginated; Sloane’s use of Ray’s system has been previously explored by Dandy, op. cit. (note 49); Raven, op. cit. (note 47); M. Ultee, ‘Sir Hans Sloane, scientist’, British Library Journal 14 (1988), pp. 1-20, at p. 11. 62 P. R. Sloan, ‘The Buffon-Linnaeus Controversy’, Isis 67 (1976), pp. 356-375, at p. 23; Stafleu, op. cit. (note 4), p. 211. 63 Sloane, op. cit. (note 14), pp. 70-102. 64 Dandy, op. cit. (note 48); Jarvis, Spencer and Huxley, op. cit. (note 46). 65 J.F.M. Cannon, ‘Botanical collections’, in MacGregor, op. cit. (note 17), pp. 138-49, at p. 138; Edwards, op. cit. (note 41), p. 33; BMCATM, op. cit. (note 65), p. 4. 66 Raven, op. cit. (note 46), p. 301; J. Ray to H. Sloane, 1704, London, British Library, Sloane MS 4039, fols 311-12. 67 Raven, op. cit. (note 47), pp. 210-11, n. 214; Sloane, op. cit. (note 14), p. preface, unpaginated. 68 Raven, op. cit. (note 47), p. 210-11. 69 Sloane, op. cit. (note 14), p. 139. Sloane’s polynomial: Volubilis nigra, radice alba aut purpurea maxima, tuberosa, esculenta, farinacea, caule membranulis extantibus alato, folio cordato nervosa. Translated as: ‘Black Volubilis with the largest, white or purple, tuberous, edible, starchy root, with the stem winged with little projecting membranes, the leaf cordate, veined.’ 70 J. Ray, Historia Plantarum Species hactenus editas aliasque insuper muitas noviter inventas & descriptas complectens (London: 1686-1704), containing annotations by Hans Sloane and his curators, NHM, Darwin Centre, DC2 HCR 728, vol. 3, p. 134. Ray’s polynomial: Battata sylvestris Indica, foliis Smilacis, lævibus, caulibus alatis, flore vidua, pro fructu glandes tuberosas ad extortum foliorum emittens. Translated as: ‘Indian wild Battata with smooth, Smilax-like leaves, with winged stems, without a flower, with tuberous glands coming forth at the origin of the leaves in place of a fruit.’ 71 See P. R. Sloan, ‘John Locke, John Ray, and the problem of the natural system’, Journal of the History of Biology 5 (1972), pp. 1-53, at p. 8. 72 Ray, op. cit. (note 70), p. 134; Sloane, op. cit. (note 14), p. 139. 27 73 Sloane, op. cit. (note 14), p. 139. This occurs in vol. I, pp. 112, 135, 139, 140, 182, 243 and vol. II, pp. 31, 83, 86. 74 R. Yeo, Notebooks, English virtuosi, and early modern science (Chicago, 2014), pp. 256-7. 75 Dandy, op. cit. (note 49), p. 204; Jarvis, Spencer and Huxley op. cit. (note 47), p. 141. 76 Jarvis, Spencer and Huxley, op. cit. (note 47), p. 143. 77 Sloane, op. cit. (note 14), pp. cliv-1. 78 D. Bleichmar, ‘Seeing the world in a room: looking at exotica in early modern collections’, in Collecting Across Cultures: Material Exchanges in the Early Modern Atlantic World, ed. D. Bleichmar and P. C. Mancall (Philadelphia, 2011), pp. 17-19. 79 Dandy, op. cit. (note 49), p. 204; Sloane’s polynomial name: Jasminum forte, arboreum, foliis laurinis ex adverso nascentibus oblongis acuminatis flore albo. 80 Sloane, op. cit. (note 14), p. 129. 81 A. Marples and V. Pickering, ‘Patron’s review: exploring cultures of collecting in the early modern world’, Archives of Natural History 43 (2016), pp. 1-20, at p. 5. 82 Robertson, op. cit. (note 40), p. 86. 83 Sloane, op. cit. (note 14), pp. 170-71; H. Barham to H. Sloane, 1712, BL, Sloane MS 4043, fols 45-7. 84 BMCAOP, op. cit. (note 21), Volume 1,[volume needed here fol. 178. This report is in Empson’s hand. 85 Sloane, op. cit. (note 14), p. 149. 86 Blakeway, op. cit. (note 30), p. 41; Blakeway believes that Sloane might have had a stroke which hindered his writing ability. 87 Gunther, op. cit. (note 35), p. 39. 88 E. Yale, ‘Marginalia, commonplaces, and correspondence: scribal exchange in early modern science’, Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical Sciences 42 (2010), pp. 193-202, at p. 196; N. Popper,‘Archives and the boundaries of early modern science’, Isis 107 (2016), pp. 86-94, at p. 89; F. Bacon, New Atlantis, in The Moral and Historical Works of Lord Bacon, ed. Joseph Devey (London, 1866), p. 286. 89 Yale, op. cit. (note 87), p. 197; A. M. Blair, Too Much to Know: Managing scholarly information before the modern age (New Haven, 2010), p. 72. 90 Sloane, op. cit. (note 14), p. 124. 91 A. MacGregor, ‘The natural history correspondence of Sir Hans Sloane’, Archives of Natural History 22 (1995), pp. 79-80, at p. 83 28 92 N. A. Zacek, Settler Society in the English Leeward Islands (Cambridge, 2010), pp. 105-7. 93 Sloane, op. cit. (note 14), p. 119. 94 Jarvis, Spencer and Huxley, op. cit. (note 14), p. 141. 95 Blakeway, op. cit. (note 30), pp. 34-45. 96 Dandy, op. cit. (note 49), pp. 221-2. 97 Müller-Wille and Charmantier, op. cit. (note 5), p. 4. 98 M. Lister, Historiæ sive Synopsis Methodicæ Conchyliorum quorum Omnium Pictræ, ad vivum delineate, exhibetur Liber Primusqui est de Conchleis Terrestribus (London, 1692-97), containing numerous annotations by Hans Sloane and his curators. NHM, Zoology special collections, Z 88 f LIS. 99 F. C. Sawyer, ‘A copy of De Conchleis and two copies of the Historia Conchyliorum of Martin Lister (1638-1712)’, Journal for the Bibliography of Natural History 4 (1962), p. 29. 100 Sloane, op. cit. (note 37), p. 33. 101 Sloane, op. cit. (note 14); Ray, op. cit. (note 70); J. Ray, Historia Plantarum Species hactenus editas aliasque insuper muitas noviter inventas & descriptas complectens (London, 1686-1704), Joseph Banks’s copy, containing annotations which transcribe those in Sloane’s copy in the hands of Sigismund Bacstrom and Jonas Dryander along with binomial determinations in the hand of Daniel Solander. NHM, Botany Collections, Special Books; H. Sloane, A Voyage to the Islands Madera, Barbados, Nieves, S. Christophers and Jamaica, with the Natural History of the Herbs and Trees, Four-footed Beasts, Fishes, Birds, Insects, Reptiles, &c. of the last of those Islands (London: Printed for the Author, 1707-1725), containing copious annotations by Daniel Solander and Sir Joseph Banks, who took this copy on the Endeavour (1768-1771). NHM, Botany Special Collections, Darwin Centre, DC2 HCR 728. Captions Fig. 1. A plan showing the movement of Sloane’s natural history collection into rooms labelled C27- H31, in the upper state storey of Montague House. The descriptions in black ink ‘are the present state of the arrangements’ and those in red 'are the assignments entered into the memorial’. Courtesy of the Trustees of the British Museum. Fig. 2. Hallett’s drawings for the cabinets commissioned by Sloane to store his natural historical specimens at Chelsea. Courtesy of the Trustees of the British Museum. 29 Fig. 3. Hallett’s drawings of Sloane’s bookcases for his collection at Chelsea. An inscription on the verso reads ‘Drafts of the Bookcases and Cabinets made for Sir. Hans Sloane’. Courtesy of the Trustees of the British Museum. Fig. 4. Diagram of Sloane’s cataloguing system for the first seven volumes of the herbarium. The arrows represent the printed and manuscript references to the associated work. Fig.5. Page 111 from Sloane’s copy of A Voyage to Jamaica (vol. I, 1707), showing an example of the cuttings from the Catalogus pasted next to the corresponding botanical descriptions. © The Trustees of the Natural History Museum, London. Fig. 6. Sloane’s annotated references giving the location of the associated herbarium specimens appended to the printed species descriptions in A Voyage to Jamaica. © The Trustees of the Natural History Museum, London. Fig 7. (a) An image of the tree fern specimen, Cyathea grevilleana, Mart, from herbarium sheet H. S. 1. 133; (b) Everhardus Kickius’s original drawing c.1700, evidently traced from the physical specimen, now placed on the verso of the preceding page in the herbarium (HS 1. fol.132v.). Less durable plants were illustrated by Revd Garret Moore in Jamaica. © The Trustees of the Natural History Museum, London. (c) The printed version of the species of fern mentioned by Sloane in the A Voyage to Jamaica (1707), engraved by Michael Van der Gucht after drawings made by Kickius in London. © The Trustees of the Natural History Museum, London. Fig. 8. A section from Sloane’s copy of Ray’s Historia Plantarum, in which Ray has cited the Jamaica Catalogue. The annotations in Sloane’s hand, such as ‘HS. 2. p. 30’ (top left), relate to different species of grasses in the second volume of Sloane’s herbarium.101 [no notes allowed in captions] © The Trustees of the Natural History Museum, London. Fig. 9. Sloane’s annotation in his copy of A Voyage to Jamaica (1707) next to the entry for the Purple Yam, Dioscorea alata, L. This entry refers to the corresponding entry in Ray’s Historia Plantarum, vol. III, p. 134 (1704), next to which a corresponding location code can be found. © The Trustees of the Natural History Museum, London. Fig. 10. Sloane’s label from HS 7. fol. 11 names the specimen according to the Jamaica Catalogue and cites the corresponding pages in A Voyage to Jamaica and Ray’s Historia Plantarum. © The Trustees of the Natural History Museum, London. Fig. 11. Empson’s annotation which provides additional information on Sloane’s observations of Tobacco in A Voyage to Jamaica.101 [omit note] © The Trustees of the Natural History Museum, London. Fig. 12. (a) Mortimer’s annotated references to specimens sent by Houston in Sloane’s copy of A Voyage to Jamaica. 101[omit]. (b) A number of specimens sent to Sloane by Houstoun in 1730; volume 292, fol. 2 of the herbarium. Mortimer’s specimen labels correspond with his 30 annotations in the previous figure, in which he cites ‘Houst. From Jamaica’. © The Trustees of the Natural History Museum, London. 31 </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> <script src="https://cdnjs.cloudflare.com/ajax/libs/jquery/3.6.1/jquery.min.js" integrity="sha512-aVKKRRi/Q/YV+4mjoKBsE4x3H+BkegoM/em46NNlCqNTmUYADjBbeNefNxYV7giUp0VxICtqdrbqU7iVaeZNXA==" crossorigin="anonymous" referrerpolicy="no-referrer"></script> <script src="/js/details118.16.js"></script> <script> var sc_project = 11552861; var sc_invisible = 1; var sc_security = "b956b151"; </script> <script src="https://www.statcounter.com/counter/counter.js" async></script> <noscript><div class="statcounter"><a title="Web Analytics" href="http://statcounter.com/" target="_blank"><img class="statcounter" src="//c.statcounter.com/11552861/0/b956b151/1/" alt="Web Analytics"></a></div></noscript> </body> </html>