The Plantswoman Who Dressed As A

COMMENT BOOKS & ARTS

HISTORY his name in the database of plants held at the National Museum of Natural History in Paris finds 1,735 specimens and their countries of origin: 234 from Madagascar, 144 from Mau- The plantswoman who ritius, 84 from Brazil and so on. Most have on them old, handwritten labels with short descriptions, perhaps jotted in the field. dressed as a boy Ridley maintains, for instance, that Commerson and another member of the The tale of the first female to sail around the world expedition, the Prince de Nassau-Siegen, 2327004 deserves a more accurate telling, says Sandra Knapp. collected no plants during a short stay on A Java. The database differs — 50 specimens

were retrieved, many of them forming the 1/22A2,

n 1737, the great Swedish botanist Carl zoological wonders. basis for new species. To highlight such inac- co

Linnaeus, who established the system by Why else would Baret curacies might seem pedantic, but Ridley’s 980/ l

which we name animals and plants today, have stayed with Com- story revolves around Baret struggling with M , nsw

Iposed in an authentic Sami costume from merson in Mauritius heavy loads of plant presses, vials, nets and . B i Lapland not realizing that it was a woman’s and Madagascar after jars while Commerson swans around. l te A outfit. Another case of eighteenth-century they left the expedi- I, too, collect plants and carry parapherna- t s botanical cross-dressing is related in Glynis tion, only parting lia — heavy work, but great fun. Commer- Y

Ridley’s book. French botanist Jeanne Baret from him at his death son and Baret encountered a huge wealth of rtes U o dressed as a boy to gain passage on explorer in 1773? diversity. Commerson wrote of Madagascar: c Louis-Antoine de Bougainville’s voyage to The Discovery of How Baret con- circumnavigate the globe. Jeanne Baret: A cealed her gender for The intrepid Baret saw more biodiversity Story of Science, so long in the close than the notoriously stay-at-home Linnaeus, the High Seas and confines of the ship is yet she is not well known. In The Discovery the First Woman unclear. She must have of Jeanne Baret, Ridley purports to resurrect to Circumnavigate bound her breasts, and the Globe her name and accomplishments. Sadly, the GlYnis riDleY Ridley’s version has her author does not convincingly deploy the few Crown: 2010. hiding out in Commer- facts available, so the book feels more like 304 pp. $25 son’s cabin. Women fiction than non-fiction, a novel whose char- disguising themselves acters are real people from history. as men was not unknown at the time — in Explorers in the eighteenth century were 1745, Hannah Snell dressed as a man and overwhelmingly male, so the tale of a young enlisted in the British Marines, serving for woman who dressed as a man to see the world five years and completing tours of India; has huge appeal. De Bougainville set off in her book The Female Soldier, published 1766 on the first French circumnavigation in 1750, was hugely popular. of the globe — also the first by any nation to De Bougainville’s official include a professional naturalist to record the accounts of the voyage place plants and animals of new lands. the unmasking of Baret’s gen- The naturalist was Philibert Commerson der in Tahiti, where the expedi- (or Commerçon), a friend of Voltaire and cor- tion stayed in April and May of 1767. respondent of Linnaeus. He was accompanied Ridley, however, consulted previously unused by Baret, a peasant woman from Burgundy journals and official documents and presents who was his housekeeper and lover. Ridley a different tale — predatory, sex-mad sailors weaves a tale of Baret’s early life from wafer- and a lone vulnerable woman left unprotected thin evidence comprising a few official docu- by her partner. The journal kept by the ship’s ments, such as birth certificates, and a book surgeon François Vivès is dripping with sex- of medicinal plants attributed to Commerson, ual innuendo; his account of the discovery of which Ridley speculates was written by Baret. Baret’s true gender is corroborated by other She is portrayed as a ‘herb-woman’ whose diaries. Ridley weaves a story of Baret’s vio- practical knowledge was useful to Commer- lation and subsequent pregnancy from his son — his teacher rather than his assistant. coy references to “concha veneris” (the Venus That Baret had the guts and determina- shell) and to the “Jeanneton” of French folk- tion to overcome gender and class barriers song who loves her attackers. Vivès’ account is without doubt. But Ridley does both Baret puts Baret’s unmasking and violation on the and Commerson a disservice by painting shores of Papua New Guinea in June. the latter as a parasitic ne’er-do-well while This makes compelling reading, but I Baret comes across as a hard-working serv- would be more inclined to take the history ant. I feel that Ridley seriously if Ridley had not got the scientific misrepresents what Nature.com aspects so wrong. It is easy to check how many must have been a truly Tracy Chevalier plants Commerson and Baret collected, and collaborative partner- on Victorian fossil from where. Although Commerson never ship in the discov- hunter Mary Anning: made it back to France before his death in ery of botanical and go.nature.com/42lter Mauritius, the collections did. A search under Botanist Jeanne Baret depicted en travesti.

“I can announce to naturalists that this is the true Promised Land. Here nature cre- ated a special sanctuary where she seems iz/AP Photo iz/AP to have withdrawn to experiment with sA designs different from those used any- A. where else. At every step one finds more remarkable and marvellous forms of life.” Ridley describes how Baret discov- ered Bougainvillea in the forests of Rio de Janeiro using the doctrine of signatures, a medieval method by which herbalists attributed curative powers to plants on the basis of their appearance — a walnut was good for brain trouble, red things for wounds. Commerson had an ulcerating sore on his leg, so Ridley writes of Baret searching frantically for a cure, only to find it in the red bracts of Bougainvillea hold- ing a pea-like pod that reminded her of the red-flowered runner beans from home. The mind’s ability to adapt suggests that it can cope with our wired world — for better or worse. However, Bougainvillea does not have fruits like a pea, nor do the notes on the NEUROSCIENCE specimen mention any medicinal value. In his notes, Commerson honoured high-ranking members of the expedition — its leader is commemorated in Bougain- browsing and the brain villea, Nassau-Siegen in Nassauvia — but he did not publish these names. Bougain- Two books reach opposite verdicts on how the Internet villea was formally described in 1789 by affects us, find Daphne Bavelier and C. Shawn Green. Antoine Laurent de Jussieu, a French botanist who used Commerson’s specimens and notes. Commerson also proposed the henever a new technology reaches The Shallows: What the Internet is Doing to name Baretia for a Malagasy tree. a tipping point of popularity, ques- Our Brains/How the Internet is Changing the Ridley maintains that Commerson was tions soon follow about its effects Way We Think, Read and Remember nicholAs cArr an arrogant man who named things for Won society. The rise of the Internet has pro- W. W. Norton/Atlantic Books: 2010. 276 pp./384 pp. himself. Yet the International Plant Names voked two books probing its impact on the $26.95/£17.99 Index shows 119 species of flowering human brain. The fact that the authors reach plants named in his honour — by others. opposite conclusions, despite relying on the I Live in the Future & Here’s How it Works: Why Your World, Work, and Brain are Being None is noted as ‘commersonii’ on its orig- same scientific evidence, underscores how lit- Creatively Disrupted inal label. Commerson’s Baretia was never tle research has been done on this topic. nick Bilton published, not because someone wanted to Nicholas Carr’s The Shallows laments the Crown: 2010. 304 pp. $25, £16.99 do Baret down, but because it was found, possibility that long-term Internet exposure on the specimen’s return to Paris, that the will sap us of our capacity for contemplation. Such tension is to be expected whenever genus already had a name. At the base of his argument is the fact that new forces enter society. By analogy, Carr After Commerson died, Baret married the human brain is remarkably plastic. Carr discusses historical fears that the written a French officer, Jean Duberna, on Maur- makes this point compellingly using a mix- word would act as a replacement for mem- itius and returned to France in 1774. She ture of historical anecdotes and interviews ory, resulting in humans that were ‘shallower was awarded a state pension from 1785 in with experts in the neuroplasticity field, such thinkers’. Bilton notes early worries that the recognition of her bravery and contribu- as Michael Merzenich and Eric Kandel. freedom of travel offered by the railway would tions. She was not forgotten, although she Having established that brains are result in weakening moral standards. Both never practised botany again. constantly reshaped by experience, Carr books review suspicions that most people Science was as collaborative then as it argues that changes induced by Internet use, would prefer to listen to a book than to read is now, but women’s contributions were such as greater brain activation during web one, leading to concerns that the invention of often overlooked in favour of those of browsing, may not be in our best interests. the phonograph would kill the art of writing. male colleagues — a trend that continues If the brain adapts completely to the frenetic Is the Internet different? Bilton and Carr today. Baret and other neglected contribu- nature of the Internet, he warns, we may lose rely on the same scientific facts to argue tors deserve recognition, but she does not our capacity for absorbing practices such as persuasively for opposite positions. For exam- need to be cast as a victim to be seen as reading a book. He worries that we may lose ple, functional magnetic resonance imaging a success, or her undoubted accomplish- the very essence of what makes us human. studies show that Internet searches activate a ments overinflated. She, and women Nick Bilton’s I Live in the Future is much larger network of brain areas than does sim- scientists in general, deserve better. ■ more optimistic. Humming with enthusi- ple text reading. Web browsing also requires asm for the continuing Internet revolution, additional types of mental processing — Sandra Knapp is a botanist at the he argues that social and cognitive changes evaluating hyperlinks to make navigational Natural History Museum, London are an inevitable consequence of any major decisions and filtering photos, videos and SW7 5BD, UK. technological advance and that our new menus. As a result, brain activation is greater e-mail: [email protected] abilities cannot be put back in the box. during Internet searches in people who are