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Hans Sloane's a Voyage to Jamaica

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Hans Sloane's a Voyage to Jamaica <title>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 Hans Sloane (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 John Ray (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 British Museum’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 Isaac Newton’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
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