HUNTIA A Journal of botanical History VolUme 14 NUmber 2 2011 Hunt Institute for botanical Documentation Carnegie mellon University Pittsburgh The Hunt Institute for botanical Documentation, a research division of Carnegie mellon University, specializes in the history of botany and all aspects of plant science and serves the international scientific community through research and documentation. To this end, the Institute acquires and maintains authoritative collections of books, plant images, manuscripts, portraits and data files, and provides publications and other modes of information service. The Institute meets the reference needs of botanists, biologists, historians, conservationists, librarians, bibliographers and the public at large, especially those concerned with any aspect of the North American flora. Huntia publishes articles on all aspects of the history of botany, including exploration, art, literature, biography, iconography and bibliography. 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Hunt Institute for botanical Documentation Carnegie mellon University 5th Floor, Hunt library 4909 Frew Street Pittsburgh, PA 15213-3890 Telephone: 412-268-2434 email: [email protected] Web site: http://huntbot.andrew.cmu.edu/ HIbD/Publications/HI-Pubs/Pub-Huntia.shtml editor and layout Scarlett T. Townsend book reviews and Announcements editor Charlotte A. Tancin Associate editors Donald W. brown Lugene b. bruno T. D. Jacobsen Angela l. Todd Frederick H. Utech Photographer Frank A. reynolds Printed and bound by RR Donnelley, Hoechstetter Plant, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania © 2011 Hunt Institute for botanical Documentation All rights reserved ISSN 0073-4071 Huntia 14(2) 2011 On the establishment of the principal gardens of botany: a bibliographical essay by Jean-Philippe-François Deleuze Roger L. Williams, translator and editor Abstract the botanist J.-P.-F. Deleuze, editor of the Annales intent. the rich private gardens of the italian du Muséum d’Histoire Naturelle in Paris, prof ited Renaissance, a creation of the sixteenth from his access to a great library to document the century, were planted simply for the beauty of establishment of the principal botanic gardens in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, whose purpose flower and foliage, although they could be used was scientific teaching and research. authorized by for acclimating exotic fruits and vegetables secular political authorities, directed by laymen and coming from overseas (Morton 1981, p. 119). attached to universities with medical schools, the new Deleuze revealed indirectly, perhaps botanic gardens were distinct from medieval herbal gardens, which were utilitarian in purpose, attached to without recognizing the historical implications monasteries, and under clerical direction. His document of his evidence, that the new botanic gardens provided a record of botanical authors and their published were sanctioned by secular authorities with works, becoming a bibliographical essay. in the process, laymen put in charge of their direction. he charted the influx of exotic species that inaugurated a public passion to possess them. the only exception was the Vatican garden, but a lay physician was given charge. they were frequently attached to universities with Prologue established medical schools where herbal J.-P.-F. Deleuze [1753–1835, Fig. 1] medications continued to be recognized; understood botanic gardens, as distinguished but the fact that professors of botany usually from the typical herbal gardens of the medieval became the superintendents of the new era associated with convents and monasteries, botanical gardens pointed to the eventual to be collections of living plants for the separation of botany from medicine. the purpose of scientific teaching and research challenge to the efficacy of herbal medications as well as for conservation. Writing at the as empirically unproven would await the outset of the nineteenth century, he saw these beginning of the nineteenth century, and foundations as innovations of the sixteenth then only in medical schools with an attached and seventeenth centuries in Europe, with botanic garden. an infrequent nod to the eighteenth century. the coincidence of the founding of botanic they would be widely copied, to be sure, as gardens in the sixteenth century with the Western cultural and intellectual ideas spread upsurge of sea voyages to asia and america worldwide by the nineteenth and twentieth meant a new opportunity to explore for centuries (Deleuze 1807). unknown exotic species. the more the new the medieval gardens had been entirely gardens became repositories of such exotic utilitarian in their layout, contents, and species, the more their directors were forced to construct shelters for plants from alien 1701 South 17th Street, Laramie, WY 82070 climates; and the more they were motivated u.S.a. to organize their own explorations in the 147 148 Huntia 14(2) 2011 will look in vain for evidence that his article on the history of botanical gardens was even recognized, much less influential, in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. His name does not even appear in such major references as Jackson (1881), Davy de Virville (1954), or Morton (1981); and he is only recognized in the bibliography of Spary (2000) as the author of Histoire et description du Muséum royal d’histoire naturelle, but not in the text. Republishing him two hundred years later will make his citations, after long neglect, useful to historians of the natural sciences. Little reliable information has been published about his early years, except that he was born in 1753 in the village of Valernes, just north of Sisteron in what is now the Département des alpes de Haute-Provence. He seemed initially bent on a military career and saw some military service in the mid-1770s. then there is a blank until 1795 when he entered the Muséum de Figure 1. Jean-Philippe-François Deleuze (1753– l’Histoire naturelle as a naturalist-aide, and 1835), photo reproduction of a lithograph by de Frey after a portrait by Oudart, Hunt institute for Botanical where he would remain in several additional Documentation archives portrait no. 1. capacities until his retirement in 1834. How he acquired the technical competence to qualify quest of species perhaps adaptable to Europe for such employment remained a mystery until for nutritional, medicinal, or ornamental the recent publication of the letters of the abbé benefits. the gradual accumulation of great Dominique Chaix [1730–1799] of Les Baux numbers of domestic and exotic species, to Dr. Dominique Villars of Grenoble (1745– augmented by a vigorous correspondence 1805) (Williams 1997). they reveal that by the between botanists, would culminate before the 1780s, Deleuze was laboring to master botany end of the sixteenth century in efforts to find by undertaking fieldwork in his native region a method of classifying plants that could be with the support of what appears to have been applicable worldwide, not merely to Western a single work by Linnaeus, presumably Species Europe. this search for knowledge overseas, plantarum. From both Chaix’s letters, and from and an eagerness to absorb and benefit from occasional attributions to Deleuze’s collections it, became a characteristic unique to Western in Chaix’s short flora of the region around Civilization. Gap, his collecting range in south Dauphiné although a competent botanist, François was bounded by Valernes, Sigoyer, and Deleuze has long since become an obscure Ventavon. He sought Chaix’s advice on plant figure.t hose interested in the career of andré determinations, visiting Les Baux on several Michaux [1746–1802], his friend and associate, occasions; and we learn that the now obscure will recognize the short biography of Michaux Etienne Danthoine of Manosque was also a he published (Deleuze 1804). Otherwise, one collaborator in botanizing and correspondence Williams: On the establishment of the principal gardens of botany 149 with both Deleuze and Chaix. in Chaix’s magnet over the body was introduced to Paris opinion, Deleuze was a hard worker and good in 1778 by the German physician, Fredrick observer. He called Danthoine very learned anton Mesmer, attracting the enthusiasm of (Chaix 1785). the unsophisticated susceptible to the occult. a after December of 1786, the Deleuze royal commission appointed to investigate the correspondence with Chaix ended without claims of mesmerism condemned it as useless in explanation. not until May of 1788 did 1784. Consequently, when a learned man was Chaix learn that Deleuze was in Paris, in drawn to mesmerism in 1810, something very charge of the children of M. de Primini, a passé, publishing some tracts on the subject, member of the Parlement de Paris. Chaix left he was ridiculed by his colleagues, perhaps no evidence that he knew later that