Exploration in Print:

Books and Botanical Travel from Spain to the

Americas in the Late Eighteenth Century
Daniela Bleichmar

in the spring of 1788, naturalist Antonio Pineda readied to embark on the

circumnavigation led by Alejandro Malaspina.1 The voyage, undertaken between
1789 and 1794, represented the Spanish response to the expeditions of James Cook
and Jean Franois Galaup de La Prouse. In preparation for the trip Malaspina, its pro-
ponent and director, drafted a list of the scientific instruments that had to be procured.
The document enumerates the types of specialized devices that historians have rightly
described as representative of the eighteenth-century concern for standardization and
accurate measurement: thermometers, hygrometers, other types of meteorological in-
struments, and lenses.2 Pinedas own list of the items he considered necessary to fulfill

I am grateful to participants in the conference The Early Modern Travel Narrative: Production and
Consumption, held by the USCHuntington Early Modern Studies Institute in May 2004, and to
members of the Program in the History of Science at Princeton University for their feedback on an early
version of this essay. Peter C. Mancall provided helpful comments on a more recent draft.

1. Among the vast literature on the Malaspina expedition are La expedicin Malaspina, 17891794,
9 vols. (Madrid 198799); Andrew David, ed., The Voyage of Alejandro Malaspina to the Pacific
17891794 (London, 2000); Robin Inglis, ed., Spain and the North Pacific Coast: Essays in Recognition
of the Bicentennial of the Malaspina Expedition, 17911792 (Vancouver, 1992); and Juan Pimentel, La
fsica de la monarqua: Ciencia y poltica en el pensamiento colonial de Alejandro Malaspina
(17541810) (Madrid, 1998). On Pineda, see Andrs Galera Gmez, La ilustracin espaola y el
conocimiento del Nuevo Mundo: Las ciencias naturales en la expedicin Malaspina (17891794): La
labor cientfica de Antonio Pineda (Madrid, 1988), as well as La expedicin Malaspina, vol. 8: Trabajos
zoolgicos, geolgicos, qumicos y fsicos en Guayaquil de Antonio Pineda Ramrez.
2. Antonio Malaspina, Lista de libros e instrumentos, cited in Galera Gmez, La ilustracin es-
paola y el conocimiento del Nuevo Mundo, 23. On instruments in expeditions, see Marie-Nolle Bour-
guet, Christian Licoppe, and H. Otto Sibum, eds., Instruments, Travel, and Science: Itineraries of
Precision from the Seventeenth to the Twentieth Century (New York and London, 2002); and Jordan
Kellman, Discovery and Enlightenment at Sea: Maritime Exploration and Observation in the Eighteenth-
Century French Scientific Community (Ph.D. diss., Princeton University, 1998).

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130 daniela bleichmar

his duties as head naturalist is rather low-tech in comparison: it consists entirely of

books, fifty-seven titles, many of them multivolume folio editions.3 Pineda was not
alone in his bookish approach to travel; other naturalists who participated in the nu-
merous expeditions funded by Spain in the second half of the eighteenth century were
encumbered by comparably ample libraries.4 Hiplito Ruiz and Jos Pavn, directors
of the botanical expedition to Chile and Peru (177788), sailed with twenty-one titles
in thirty-two volumes, while the botanical expedition to New Spain (17871803) led
by Martn de Sess and Mariano Mocio received twenty-seven titles in fifty-eight vol-
umes.5 The majority of these books were heavy leather-bound folios, and many were
costly luxury editions with hand-colored illustrations.6

3. The list is transcribed in Galera Gmez, La ilustracin espaola y el conocimiento del Nuevo
Mundo, Appendix I, pp. 24142. A slightly shorter list, with fifty-four rather than fifty-seven volumes,
appears in Iris H. W. Engstrand, Spanish Scientists in the New World: The Eighteenth-Century Expedi-
tions (Seattle, 1981), Appendix D, pp. 19597. Pinedas list is discussed in Barbara Bedall, Scientific
Books and Instruments for an Eighteenth-Century Voyage around the World: Antonio Pineda and the
Malaspina Expedition, Journal of the Society for the Bibliography of Natural History 95 (1979): 95107.
4. On the eighteenth-century Spanish scientific expeditions, see, among many other studies, Gon-
zalo Anes y Alvarez de Castilln, La corona y la Amrica del siglo de las luces (Madrid, 1994); Marie Ce-
cile Bnassy, Jean-Pierre Clement, Francisco Pelayo, and Miguel Angel Puig-Samper, eds., Nouveau
monde et renouveau de lhistoire naturelle (Paris, 1994); Alejandro Dez Torre et al., eds., La ciencia
espaola en ultramar (Madrid, 1991); Engstrand, Spanish Scientists; Antonio Gonzlez Bueno, ed.,
La Expedicin botnica al Virreinato del Per (17771788) (Madrid, 1988); Antonio Lafuente, En-
lightenment in an Imperial Context: Local Science in the Late-Eighteenth-Century Hispanic World,
in Roy Macleod, ed., Nature and Empire, Osiris 15 (2000): 15573; Antonio Lafuente and Antonio
Mazurcos, Los caballeros del punto fijo, ciencia poltica y aventura en la expedicin geodsica hispano-
francesa al virreinato del Per en el siglo XVII (Barcelona, 1987); Antonio Lafuente and J. Sala Catal,
eds., Ciencia colonial en Amrica (Madrid, 1992); Mauricio Nieto Olarte, Remedios para el imperio:
historia natural y la apropiacin del Nuevo Mundo (Bogot, 2000); Jos Luis Peset, ed., Ciencia, vida y
espacio en Iberoamrica (Madrid, 1989); Juan Pimentel, The Iberian Vision: Science and Empire in
the Framework of a Universal Monarchy, 15001800, in Roy Macleod, ed., Nature and Empire, 1730;
Mara Pilar de San Po Aladrn, ed., El guila y el nopal: La expedicin de Sess y Mozio a Nueva
Espaa (17871803) (Madrid, 2000); Arthur Robert Steele, Flowers for the King: The Expedition
of Ruiz and Pavon and the Flora of Peru (Durham, N.C., 1964); B. Snchez, M.A Puig-Samper, and
J. de la Sota, eds., La Real Expedicin Botnica a Nueva Espaa 17871803 (Madrid, 1987); and the
references in n. 8 below.
5. Casimiro Gmez Ortega, Lista de los Libros que sern ms precisos a los Botnicos que des-
tinare S.M., Madrid, 25 November 1776, Archivo del Museo Nacional de Ciencias Naturales, Madrid
(hereafter AMNCN), item no. 7 in Mara de los ngeles Calatayud Arinero, Catlogo de las expedi-
ciones y viajes cientficos espaoles a Amrica y Filipinas (siglos XVIII y XIX) (Madrid, 1984); and
Casimiro Gmez Ortega, Lista de los Libros que se envian a Mexico en dos Caxones para el uso de la
Expedicion Botanica y de Historia Natural de aquel Reyno, Madrid, 21 June 1788, AMNCN, item
no. 487 in Calatayud Arinero (1984). The second list is transcribed in Engstrand, Spanish Scientists,
Appendix A, 18687.
6. There are almost no studies of the naturalists libraries and use of books among the vast litera-
ture on the eighteenth-century Spanish expeditions; see Bedall, Scientific Books and Instruments;
and the article in Flix Muoz Garmendia, ed., La botnica al servicio de la corona: la expedicin
de Ruiz, Pavn y Dombey al virreinato del Per (Madrid, 2003). In recent years the role of books and
bookish practices in early modern natural history and natural philosophy have been the subject of
insightful studies, most notably: Ann Blair, The Theater of Nature: Jean Bodin and Renaissance Science
(Princeton, N.J.,1997); Marina Frasca-Spada and Nick Jardine, eds., Books and the Sciences in History
 bo oks and botanical travel
131

Scientific travelers devoted great effort to provisioning themselves with books

before setting out on their travels and continued to concern themselves with printed
resources as they voyaged. They frequently wrote letters to institutional and personal
contacts requesting additional volumes, and in their journal entries repeatedly men-
tioned the importance and uses of books.7 If books mattered to travelers, their impor-
tance is demonstrated even more clearly by the large libraries amassed by naturalists
who had the luxury of remaining stationary. The Royal Botanical Expedition to the
New Kingdom of Granada (17831816) functioned more like an institution than a
typical expedition, remaining in the city of Santa Fe de Bogota for most of its dura-
tion. This allowed its director, Jos Celestino Mutis, to build a library of almost nine
thousand books that included all the major illustrated natural-history and travel books
published in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.8 Mutis considered this library a
top priority, and dedicated enormous effort, time, and funds to assembling it. After vis-
iting it in 1802, Alexander von Humboldt described it as comparable only to Joseph
Bankss collection in London.9
Focusing on voyages from Spain to the Americas in the late eighteenth century,
this essay examines books not as the end product of voyages but as a constitutive ele-
ment informing the experience of travel, scientific travel in particular.10 Records of

(Cambridge, 2000); Adrian Johns, The Nature of the Book: Print and Knowledge in the Making (Chi-
cago, 1998); and Brian W. Ogilvie, The Science of Describing: Natural History in Renaissance Europe
(Chicago, 2006).
7. In contrast with the bookishness of naturalists, I have found only a single mention of books
from the expeditions painters. Toms de Sura, who participated in the Malaspina expedition, re-
quested several views of maritime countries [estampas de Pases Marinos] and a copy of Antonio
Palominos Teora y prctica de la pintura (Madrid, 171524). See Justino Fernndez, Toms de Sura y
su viaje con Malaspina (Mexico, D.F., 1939), 3031.
8. Although to my knowledge no inventory of Mutis library exists, there is ample archival material
on its contents and the ways he obtained books. See, for instance, Archivo del Real Jardn Botnico
de Madrid (hereafter ARJBM), III, 1, 2, 20; ARJBM, III, 1, 2, 40; ARJBM, III, 2, 2, 128; ARJBM, III, 11,
3, 1 to 3; ARJBM, III, 11, 3, 5 to 9; and [Jos Celestino Mutis], Diario de observaciones de Jos Celestino
Mutis (17601790), transcription and prologue by Guillermo Hernndez de Alba, 2d ed., 2 vols.
(Bogot, 1983), 1:209. On Mutis, see Jos Antonio Amaya, Bibliografa de la Real Expedicin Botnica
del Nuevo Reino de Granada (Bogot, 1983); Daniela Bleichmar, Painting as Exploration: Visualizing
Nature in Eighteenth-Century Colonial Science, Colonial Latin American Review 15 (June 2006):
81104; Marcelo Fras Nez, Tras El Dorado vegetal: Jose Celestino Mutis y la Real Expedicin Botan-
ica del Nuevo Reino de Granada (17831808) (Sevilla, 1994); A. Federico Gredilla, Biografa de Jos
Celestino Mutis [1911], prologue Guillermo Hernndez de Alba (Bogot, 1982); Enrique Prez Ar-
belez, Jos Celestino Mutis y la Real Expedicin Botnica del Nuevo Reino de Granada (Bogot, 1967;
2d ed., 1983); and Benjamn Villegas., ed., Mutis y la Real Expedicin Botnica del Nuevo Reyno de
Granada, 2 vols. (Madrid, 1992).
9. A translated extract of this letter, which also praised the expeditions images and herbaria, was
sent to Mutis by an unnamed correspondent from Contreras, New Granada; ARJBM III, 9, 1, 57.
10. Among the studies on the ways in which books and texts inform the experience of travel, see
Mary B. Campbell, The Witness and the Other World: Exotic European Travel Writing, 4001600
(Ithaca, N.Y., 1988); idem, Wonder and Science: Worlds in Early Modern Europe Imagining (Ithaca,
N.Y., 1999); Jas Elsner and Joan-Pau Rubis, eds., Voyages and Visions: Towards a Cultural History of
Travel (London, 1999); and Valerie I. J. Flint, The Imaginative Landscape of Christopher Columbus
(Princeton, N.J., 1992).

132 daniela bleichmar

these expeditions often involved corroborating or challenging published statements,

as when Alexander von Humboldt denied the existence of parrots in Tenerife, contra-
dicting Captain Cooks account of the island.11 At other times, being there surpassed
reading about itas with Humboldts reaction to the dragon tree of Tenerife: Even
though we knew about Franquis dragon tree from previous travelers, its enormous
thickness amazed us.12 A significant portion of the experience of travel consisted of
the almost ritual-like re-creation or reassessment of events described in books by pre-
vious travelers. This re-enactment of textual episodes contrasted with travelers claims
to priority and uniqueness, though both might appear in a single publication. Thus,
Humboldt peppered his account both with citations to the voyages of travelers who
had previously visited the very places he described and with assertions that he was the
first person to perform a certain observation or accomplish a feat. While travel narra-
tives served both to prepare for a scientific voyage and later to document it, Pineda and
his colleagues took other types of books with them as they sailed for America: natural-
history books that, though less dramatic than travel narratives, were consulted to
gather and produce facts, in ways that I will outline in this essay. Before and during ex-
peditions, books that seemingly have little to do with travelfor example, primers in
botanical method and taxonomy, regional florasserved to delineate, assess, and
constitute the experience of traveling.

The Naturalists Traveling Library: Books to See With

The expeditions inventories confirm that the books naturalists brought on sea voy-
ages fell into two broad categories: works about system and method, which addressed
both the theoretical and practical aspects of natural history; and compilations that
were either geographical inventories based on an authors travels in a certain region or
thematic inventories organized by subject, such as birds or fishes. The practical texts
most importantly the taxonomical works of Carl Linnaeusattest to the importance
of printed works for establishing procedural standards that were shared by most Euro-
pean naturalists, regardless of where they worked. Since natural-history training was
not institutionalized or professionalized in the way that medicine was, one became a
naturalist by mastering texts and then combining this knowledge with the experience
gained through collecting and examining specimens. Formal lessons could sometimes
be taken in botanical gardens, but even then instruction consisted chiefly of reviewing
principles outlined in publications. This was particularly true after the ascendancy of
the Linnaean system, introduced in 1735; subsequently, volumes containing practical
courses appeared in all the European languages.13 Becoming a naturalist, then,

11. Alexander von Humboldt, Personal Narrative, trans. and introd., Jason Wilson; historical
introd., Malcolm Nicolson (London, 1995), 37.
12. Ibid., 29.
13. On Linnaeus, see Wilfrid Blunt, The Compleat Naturalist: A Life of Linnaeus, introd. William T.
Stearn (1971; reprint ed., 2001); Lisbet Koerner, Linnaeus: Nature and Nation (Cambridge, Mass.,
1999); James L. Larson, Interpreting Nature: The Science of Living Form from Linnaeus to Kant (Balti-
more, 1994); and Frans A. Stafleu, Linnaeus and the Linneans: The Spreading of their Ideas in System-
atic Botany, 17351789 (Utrecht, 1971). On Spanish-American reactions to the Linnaean system, see
Jos Luis Maldonado Polo, Vicente Cervantes y la introduccin de la botnica linnaeana en Mxico,
 bo oks and botanical travel
133

implied gaining familiarity with a rigorously defined series of texts that imparted a
specific methodology, one that prescribed observing and describing in highly struc-
tured ways, as well as using books to connect and compare observations.14 The final
object of natural-history investigation was publication, and practitioners earned pres-
tige within a global community of naturalists by circulating their own experiences and
results through correspondence as well as through publication, feeding new speci-
mens back into the bookish loop.15
The importance of methodological publications to the Spanish expeditions can
be seen in the written instructions that Casimiro Gmez Ortega, director of Madrids
Royal Botanical Garden between 1771 and 1801, prepared for Ruiz and Pavn as they
departed on the Royal Botanical Expedition to Chile and Peru. Gmez Ortega speci-
fied that the naturalists should take with them books that offered guidance on the
practical matters of botanical travel, recommending in particular Marc Antoine
Louis Claret de la Tourette and Franois Roziers Dmonstrations lmentaires de
botanique (Lyon, 1766), a botanical textbook that they could consult as a reference
book. Carl Linnaeus Philosophia botanica (Stockholm and Amsterdam, 1751) would
provide clear directives on the items that traveling botanists should pack in their
bagseverything from books and instruments to clothingand the daily schedule to
be followed, while the third volume of his Amoenitates academicae (Stockholm and
Leipzig, 174969) would prove useful for its instructio musaei, a discussion of the
proper ways to prepare and organize collections that included directions for making
herbaria in order to preserve plants. Should the botanists find it too laborious to read
French and Latin, Gmez Ortega recommended they also take with them Miguel Bar-
nades Principios de botnica, sacados de los mejores escritores, y puestos en lengua
castellana (Madrid, 1767), a Spanish-language compilation of botanical writings, as
well as his own translation of Henri-Louis Duhamel du Monceaus treatise on trees,
published as Tratado de las siembras y planto de rboles (Madrid, 1773).16
All of the Spanish expeditions relied on Linnaeus various works on systematics,
which provided the theoretical framework for assessing American nature as well as the
methodology for doing so. They all traveled with Linnaeus Systema naturae (Leiden,
1735). Using this book implied adhering not only to a certain taxonomymost no-
tably, to a botanical systematics that grouped plants into twenty-four classes depend-
ing on their flowering structure, one of Linnaeus key contributionsbut also to a

Ateneo de Madrid (1991): 15158; and Roberto Moreno, Linneo en Mxico: las controversias sobre el
sistema binario sexual, 17881798 (Mexico, D.F., 1989).
14. A practice showing striking continuity with sixteenth-century natural-history practices, as
described in Ogilvie, Science of Describing.
15. Paula Findlens description of correspondence as a semi-public zone in the sixteenth century is
still largely operative for eighteenth-century naturalists; see The Formation of a Scientific Community:
Natural History in Sixteenth-Century Italy, in Anthony Grafton and Nancy Siraisi, eds., Natural Par-
ticulars: Nature and the Disciplines in Renaissance Europe (Cambridge, Mass., 1999), 369400. See also
Ogilvie, Science of Describing.
16. Casimiro Gmez Ortega, Instruccin a que deberan arreglarse los sugetos destinados por S. M.
para a la Amrica Meridional en Compaia del Mdico Dr. Josef Dombey a fin de reconocer plantas y
yerbas y a hacer observaciones Botnicas en aquellos paises, Madrid, 1776; ARJBM, IV, 7, 1, 2.

134 daniela bleichmar

particular procedure. A chart in the Systema outlined the botanical classes, guiding the
reader through the process of determining a plants classification by posing a standard
series of yes-or-no questions, with each answer eliminating certain choices.17 Thus,
Linnaeus was proposing not only a taxonomy but also a methodology based on obser-
vation, a point that the great botanical illustrator Georg Dyonisius Ehret made even
more clearly a year later when he depicted the twenty-four classes in a pictorial table
(figure 1).18 By eclipsing the interrogation and presenting visually the characters that
would determine a plants class, the table suggested that the Linnaean system provided
immediate access to taxonomy based exclusively on visual inspection. The table trans-
ported theory from off of the page and into the eyes of the naturalist.
Linnaeus Philosophia botanica (Stockholm and Amsterdam, 1751), a collection
of aphorisms on botanical principles and practices, provided definitions of botanical
terms as well as parameters for the naturalists behavior. This work, too, emphasized
the visual as a means to training the botanist as an observer and a classifier. Linnaeus
took a special interest in combining textual with visual instructions. The eleven plates
in the book depict the possible structural variations of each part of the plant, providing
a visual botanical glossary.19 The first plate, for instance (figure 2), presents sixty-two
possible leaf shapes; the accompanying text provides a Latin word for each type. The
other ten plates extend this visual vocabulary, offering templates for describing how
the leaves are aggregated into branches, how the branch is positioned into the stem,
what the roots look like, and so on, ending with a depiction of the type of wooden ar-
moire in which herbarium specimens would be stored (with twenty-four drawers, one
for each Linnaean class; figure 3). Many botanical textbooks of the period copied or
adapted these plates, spreading the Linnaean visual and verbal vocabulary throughout
and beyond Europe.20
Botanical education and botanical practice required training eyes and memo-
ries through laborious exercises in establishing correspondences. An undated manu-

17. In A History of Curiosity: The Theory of Travel 15501800 (Chur, Switzerland, 1995), Justin
Stagl discusses a comparable (and related) concern with the methodical training of the traveler as an
observer and a describer throughout the early modern period. Nathan Chytraeus Variorum in Europa
itinerum deliciae (Herborn, 1594) presented his instructions on travel methodology in the form of a
chart, reproduced by Stagl on p. 61.
18. Ehrets original drawings for the plate are held at the Natural History Museum, London. The
printed plate of 1736 is known to exist in only three copies, including Linnaeus own copy of the first
edition of the Systema naturae (1735), held at the Hagstrmer Medico-Historical Library of the Swedish
Society of Medicine in the Karolinska Institutet, Stockholm, Sweden. See Ove Hagelin, Georg Diony-
sius Ehret and His Plate of the Sexual System of Plants in Linnaeus Own Copy of Systema Naturae
(Stockholm, 2000).
19. Carolus Linnaeus, Philosophia botanica (Stockholm and Amsterdam, 1751), translated by
Stephen Freer (Oxford, 2003). On the epistemological functions of images in early modern scientific
atlases, see the classic article by Lorraine Daston and Peter Galison, The Image of Objectivity, Repre-
sentations 40 (1992): 8112.
20. Versions of these plates appear in, among many other works, Philip Miller, The Gardeners
Dictionary (1st ed. 1724; 8th ed. 1768); Antoine Gouan, Hortus Regius Monspeliensis (Leiden, 1762);
John Miller, An Illustration of the Sexual System of Linnaeus, 2 vols. (London, 1779); Casimiro Gmez
Ortega and Antonio Palau, Curso elemental de botnica, terico y prctico, dispuesto para la enseanza
del Real Jardn Botnico (Madrid, 1785; 2d ed. 1795).
 bo oks and botanical travel
135

figure 1. Georg Dyonisius Ehrets illustration of the twenty-four classes of the Linnaean botanical
system (1736). Courtesy of the Linnean Society of London.

script list in Madrids Royal Botanical Garden documents this process: it lists 124 types
of plant leaves, according to overall shape, characteristics of the edge, texture, and so
on, with each type followed by an example.21 The Linnaean system strongly correlated
vision and language, defining the naturalist as an observer and relating the act of
observation to specialized terms for describing each part and ultimately for classifying
and naming specimens based on this process. Naturalists internalized these taxonomi-
cal skills and deployed them both in their travels and in the study. Rather than books to
read, Systema naturae and Philosophia botanica were books to use.22
Philosophia botanica operated not only within the visual culture of natural his-
tory, which privileged a visual approach to the study of nature, but also within its print
culture, which emphasized the importance of books and bookish learning. These two

21. ARJBM, 5, 1, 6, 7; Madrid?, 180033?

22. I discuss the naturalists visual education and its connections to colonial geography in Train-
ing the Naturalists Eye in the Eighteenth Century: Perfect Global Visions and Local Blind Spots, in
Cristina Grasseni, ed., Skilled Visions: Between Apprenticeship and Standards (New York and Oxford,
2006), 16690.

136 daniela bleichmar

figure 2. From Linnaeus Philosophia botanica (Stockholm and Amsterdam, 1751), following p. 288.
Huntington Library copy.
 bo oks and botanical travel
137

figure 3. From Linnaeus Philosophia botanica, p. 309. Huntington Library copy.


138 daniela bleichmar

concerns were closely connected, as Philosophia botanica illustrates. The books first
chapter, of a total of twelve, is entitled Bibliotheca [The library]. Linnaeus com-
menced botanical instruction, not with plants but with books, which he also classified.
The first aphorism declared: The botanical library contains books about vegetables. It
gives information about discoveries, events, proceedings, locations, and method. The
botanist must know which authors he should consult about the plant that is the subject
of his enquiry.23 The entry goes on to list the twenty-nine most important authors
with which the naturalist should be familiar, classified under seven headings: the first
five according to the regions they studied (European, Alpine, South African, Indian,
North American, South American) and the last two, for writers who were not
geographically specific, according to the function their book served (Libraries, His-
tories). Books were central to the practices and to the very persona of the botanist
the fledgling botanist, Linnaeus prescribed, should make himself familiar with the
literary history of botany; and the authorities on species of plants should be consulted
in the first place.24
Given the pedagogical goals of Philosophia botanica, Linnaeus both empha-
sized the general importance of books for the botanist and provided his readers with a
list of specific titles with which a competent botanist should be familiar. The second
item of the chapter consists of a list of the most celebrated botanical authors, arranged
chronologically and weighted toward the eighteenth century: the catalogue mentions
three classical authors (Theophrastus, Pliny, and Dioscorides), two writers from the
fifteenth century, thirty-eight from the sixteenth, sixty-two from the seventeenth, and
fifty-three from the first half of the eighteenth, for a grand total of 158.25 The growing
number of botanical publications represented a great resource, and helped in no
small measure to create a community of naturalists, however dispersed, defined by
the set of books with which they were all conversant as much as by the subject itself.
On the other hand, the expanding bibliography presented practical obstacles, includ-
ing its greater cost and reduced portability. Staying up-to-date with the latest publi-
cations in order to avoid replicating the work of other authors grew ever more
challenging, but it was essential because only the first printed mention of a plant
counted as a contribution.
After the long list of botanical authors that opens the book, the remainder of
chapter 1 provides a bibliographical taxonomy. Linnaeus classified authors first as
collectors or methodizers, and then further into forty-three nonexclusive ca-
tegories based on a variety of criteria, including their relationship to other authors,

23. Linnaeus, Philosophia botanica, aphorism 5, p. 13.

24. Ibid., Memoranda: the beginner, p. 329. The notion of literary history, both in the sense of a
bibliography and in the sense of the development of a field over time, dates back to the practices of late
northern-humanist erudition. On historia literaria, see, for example, Franoise Waquet, ed., Mapping
the World of Learning: The Polyhistor of Daniel Georg Morhof, Wolfenbtteler Forschungen, Bd. 91
(Wiesbaden, 2000). Many thanks to Anthony Grafton for bringing this topic and literature to my
attention.
25. Linnaeus, Philosophia botanica, aphorism 6, pp. 1315.
 bo oks and botanical travel
139

the plant parts on which they based their classification, the underlying goal of their
studies, and the types of books they produced, among many others. He cites books
and authors throughout the Philosophia, often following up a definition or point with
a discussionoccasionally, a demolitionof related material in the work of other au-
thors. Linnaeus goal of articulating disciplinary ideals in addition to providing a stan-
dard set of practices perhaps sets the agenda for this kind of polemic. It is significant,
after all, that he entitled the work Philosophia botanica, not systema or methodologia. A
reader closes this book with a strong sense that the foundations of botanical expertise
as well as the actual practice of studying plants require thorough familiarity with the
writings of others.
The second category of books carried by the Spanish naturalists, geographical
inventories describing the natural histories of regions and thematic inventories organ-
ized by subject, were the practice-based counterparts to Linnaeus botanical philoso-
phy. These books provided reference points against which the Spanish naturalists
considered the plants and animals they encountered. If a specimen had been previ-
ously described, the naturalist would make a note to the effect that it was also found in
that certain locality, or improve or correct the existing description if he considered it
unsatisfactory. If the specimen did not appear in any text, then the naturalist would
consider himself its discoverer and compose a detailed description (and, whenever
possible, also prepare an illustration), hoping to be the one to introduce the new spec-
imen into the European catalogue of nature, through publication at a later date.
Encyclopedic inventories organized by subject, such as George Edwardss A Natural
History of Uncommon Birds (London, 174351), Martin Listers conchollogy (De re
coquinaria, [Amsterdam, 1709]), or Francis Willoughbys ichthyology (Historia pis-
cium [Oxford, 1686]) allowed naturalists to filter the information they obtained in the
field and to separate their tasks into a to do and an already done list.26 They were of
course particularly interested in texts that described the territories they would them-
selves visit, such as Charles Plumiers Description des plantes de lAmrique (Paris,
1693) and Plantarum Americanarum (edited by Johann Burmann, [Amsterdam,
175560]), Mark Catesbys The Natural History of Carolina, Florida, and the Bahama
Islands (London, 173143), Hans Sloanes A Voyage to the Islands Madera, Barbados,
Nieves, S. Christophers and Jamaica . . . with the Natural History . . . of the last of those Is-
lands (London, 170725), and Nikolaus Jacquins Selectorum stirpium Americanum
Historia (Vienna, 1763).27 Familiarity with these books was a basic requirement for

26. On the connections between eighteenth-century encyclopaedism and the sciences, see Richard
Yeo, Encyclopaedic Visions: Scientific Dictionaries and Enlightenment Culture (Cambridge, 2001).
27. Although geographically specific titles all served the same function for the expeditions natu-
ralists, I am not suggesting that they should be considered as a unified genre, given significant varia-
tions among the books. One important consideration is whether a work discussed botany or zoology
exclusively or also addressed topics such as geography, ethnography, history, or other civil and politi-
cal matters (as, for instance, Patrick Browne did). Another is whether a title was published in Latin or
in the vernacular.

140 daniela bleichmar

the traveling naturalistGmez Ortegas instructions for Ruiz and Pavn recom-
mended that they review Linnaeus list of authors who had written about America.28
The book lists of the expeditions included not only works on American nature
but also studies on the natural history of distant regions, such as Rumphius Ambonese
herbarium (Amsterdam, 174155), Peter Jonas Bergius Descriptiones plantarum ex
Capite Bonae Spei (Stockholm, 1767), or Johan Frederick Gronovius Flora Orientalis
(Leiden, 1755). The presence of these titles underscores the comparative and global
character of natural history at the time: naturalists used books as instruments for
creating global specimens out of local nature. European naturalists were assembling
puzzle pieces from every continent to form a picture of the whole world, so the study
of American nature was of a piece with the study of other regions. Travelers through
the Americas compared the natural specimens they found with those described in
books about other non-European regions, partly out of a concern to avoid duplicating
observations, or mistaking previously described specimens for undescribed ones.
Thus, in the early days of the New Spain expedition, naturalist Martn de Sess asked
that Gmez Ortega provide the expedition with the natural-history publications of
travelers to the Cape of Good Hope, Canada, and Virginia. He desperately needed
these works, he argued, since they contained descriptions of the majority of the plants
that his team had found.29
Such compendia operated within the structures of observation and comparison
outlined by Linnaeus. The ways in which naturalists used these titles can be deduced
by examining a representative book, such as Nikolaus Jacquins Selectorum stirpium
Americanarum Historia (Vienna, 1763)a work that the Spanish naturalists regarded
particularly highly. The book was based on the authors travels in Jamaica, Hispaniola,
Martinique, and the coast of present-day Colombia and Venezuela between 1755 and
1759. It consists of a series of entries describing American plants, arranged according
to Linnaean taxonomy, as reflected in the works full title.30 Besides conveying the au-
thors allegiance to a specific taxonomical camp, this arrangement facilitated the
readers task: the traveling botanist could observe a plant, categorize it according to the
Linnaean system, and then search for it in the appropriate section of Jacquins book
even if he ignored its name. Basing both botanical classification and bibliographical
cross-checking on a plants structure, rather than its name, also promised to rid botany
of replicated information.
The organization of Jacquins book highlights how important taxonomy was for
eighteenth-century naturalists; the plant descriptions themselves show the degree to
which natural history relied on printed sources. Within a botanical class, each entry

28. Casimiro Gmez Ortega, Instruccin; ARJBM, IV, 7, 1, 2.

29. Martn de Sess to Casimiro Gmez Ortega, 27 June 1788; ARJBM, V, 1, 1, 23. I cannot estab-
lish whether this was actually the case, and it is unclear how Sess would have been aware of this over-
lap without having recourse to those books in the first place; but even if Sess overstated the case, it is
telling that he viewed this argument as persuasive.
30. Nikolaus Jacquin, Selectorum stirpium Americanarum historia, in qua ad Linnaeanum Systema
determinatae descriptaeque sistuntur plantae illae, quas in insulis Martinica, Jamaica, Domingo, aliisque,
et in vicinae continentis parte, observavit rariores; adjectis iconibus in solo natali delineatis (Vienna,
1763; 2d ed. 1780; 3d ed. 1788).
 bo oks and botanical travel
141

begins with the plants name, followed immediately by a series of bibliographical refer-
ences: first and foremost, to a Linnaean work (if the specimen had been previously
published in one), and then to descriptions penned by other authorsthe entry on the
Ehretia, for instance, begins with Linnaeus and then mentions Patrick Brownes and
Hans Sloanes natural histories of Jamaica.31 The plants description follows, consisting
of a list of the parts to be examined according to the Linnaean system (calyx, corolla,
stamen, pistil, pericarp, and seed), with each part characterized by a series of adjectives
denoting its physical appearance. Thus, an entry immediately connects textual refer-
ences and visual properties. The vast majority of the text consists of adjectives: Lin-
naean taxonomy was predicated on appearance even in its use of language, relying on
standardized descriptors that aimed to paint a plants portrait with words. Each entry
concludes with a note on the plants overall aspect, including its height and the features
of parts that were relevant to botanists, such as the leaves and rootseven if they were
not characteristic of the plant according to Linnaean taxonomyand a note on where
the plant grows and when it flowers. This textual description works in conjunction
with an illustration of the plantideally, one that provides enough information to
characterize the specimen. Often, however, the practical aspects of botanical travel
intervened. Naturalists might not be able to find every plant in flower during their voy-
ages, to collect samples of all specimens, or to preserve and transport them back to
Europe, where artists could flesh out field sketches into full plates. As a result, the de-
pictions accompanying many newly described species are less than definitive, as is the
case with the Ehretia: its illustration shows a single leaf, not a full figure.
As is evident from the expeditions inventories, naturalists traveled with several
dozen books of this type, and they assessed every collected specimen against each pub-
lication. The work of the naturalist implied a constant back-and-forth between a plant
or an animal in the field and the books he carried with him. He was required to shift
among material objects (live or preserved specimens), textual descriptions (printed or
manuscript), and pictorial representations. Naturalists did not consider pieces of in-
formation in isolation but against one anothera process of cross-referencing that
Jos Celestino Mutis, director of the Royal Botanical Expedition to the New Kingdom
of Granada (17831816), termed confronting [confrontar]. Mutis recorded numer-
ous confrontations between the plants collected, the many books in his library, and
the images produced by the artists in his employment.32 This process of collating evi-
dence of one sort against another represents an extension of philological scholarly tra-
ditions, which suggests that the significance of books for natural history extended
beyond their role as reference material for naturalists. Natural-history methods drew
directly from those of reading and textual study, and confrontar suggests that reading
the various materials against one another could prove a challenging struggle.

31. Jacquin, Selectorum stirpium Americanarum historia, entry for Ehretia, p. 45, and plate 180,
figure 18. References are to Hans Sloane, A Voyage to the Islands Madera, Barbados, Nieves, S. Christo-
phers and Jamaica. . .with the Natural History. . . of the Last of Those Islands, 2 vols. (London, 170725);
and Patrick Browne, The Civil and Natural History of Jamaica (London, 1756).
32. See, for instance, the description of humanist natural history in Ogilvie, Science of Describing,
esp. chap. 2.

142 daniela bleichmar

The close and interlocking relationship between things, images, and words is
also evident from the shipments that naturalists periodically sent back to Europe. A
successful shipment would consist of various crates carefully packed with drawings
and collected and preserved specimens, each identified with a numbered paper tag
correlating the specimen to a manuscript of descriptions. These descriptions adhered
to the conventions established in the works of Jacquin and other European naturalists.
Thus, Sess added to a shipment of sixty preserved birds a numbered list that provided
the Linnaean Latin binomial classification for each specimen and also indicated,
whenever appropriate, a reference to the Histoire naturelle des oiseaux of Georges Louis
Leclerc, Count of Buffon.33 The favored specimens, of course, were not those that had
previously been described in print but those accompanied by the least information,
described only with the abbreviation Sp. N. to indicate a new species awaiting de-
scription and naming.
When a traveler was pressed for time and unable to write full descriptions
which happened quite oftenhe would at the very least compose a list that correlated
the specimens to printed descriptions. Jos Longinos, a naturalist in charge of the
zoological aspects of the New Spain expedition, produced such a list to accompany a
shipment of preserved birds that he sent back to Spain.34 Longinos used the books at
his disposal to establish concordances between the birds he had collected and the
descriptions in publications by a number of authors: Linnaeus, Ray, Willoughby,
Albinus, Edwards, Brisson, Hernndez, and Klein. European naturalists used printed
works both to interpret and capture nature in the raw as well as to communicate this
information in a botanical lingua franca. Through this process, a bird would be
transformed into a natural-history specimen and then into a known species.
Over the course of the eighteenth century, the explosion of knowledge about
non-European nature meant that naturalists needed to be familiar with a large and
growing body of work, and one that continued to expand.35 Charles Plumiers Descrip-
tion des plantes de lAmrique, published in 1693, lists only eleven references used by
the author. By 1756, Patrick Brownes The civil and natural history of Jamaica cited
sixty-one titles. Nine years later, Peter Jonas Bergius Descriptiones plantarum ex Capite
Bonae Spei (Stockholm, 1767) listed eighty-eight titles; Fuse Aublets 1775 Histoire des
plantes de la Guiane Franoise referred to ninety-one.36 Naturalists needed to be con-
versant with the publications relevant to their work not only to avoid adding to the
cumbersome synonimia but also because mastery of this material carried a high sym-

33. Martn de Sess, Catlogo de las aves remitidas en dos cajones al Real Gabinete con Dn.
Cristbal Quintana, Mexico City, n.d. (probably 28 March 1793); ARJBM, V, 1, 4, 13.
34. Jos Longinos to Jos Clavijo (vice-director of Madrids Royal Natural History Cabinet),
Cuernavaca, 22 April 1789; AMNCN, item no. 493 in Calatayud Arinero (1984).
35. On the explosion of publications and information overload in the early modern period, see
the various articles on the subject in the Journal of the History of Ideas 64, no. 1 (January 2003), esp.
Ann Blair, Reading Strategies for Coping with Information Overload, ca. 15501700, 1128, and
Brian Ogilvie, The Many Books of Nature: Renaissance Naturalists and Information Overload, 2940.
36. One would not expect a linear correlation, and Joannes Burmanns Thesaurus Zeylanicus (Am-
sterdam, 1737), for example, used 113 works; I mean to provide a sense of the escalating number of refer-
ences rather than to suggest a strict correlation between a later date and an increasing number of sources.
 bo oks and botanical travel
143

bolic value and was central to the naturalists persona. Natural-history books routinely
included a list of authors cited, and in most cases it appeared at the very beginning of
the book, preceding the text and immediately after the dedication when there was one,
providing prominent testimony to the authors credentials.37 A naturalists com-
petence and prestige could be assessed in terms of his mastery over a large number of
texts and his capacity to integrate this information persuasively into his own. Thus,
Johann Jakob Dillenius inclusion of twelve references in the entry on the Caribbean
cactus Opuntia Indica major in his Hortus Elthamensis (London, 1732) can be read as a
deployment of symbolic ammunition. The citations not only documented the many
publications that had described this plant previously but also asserted Dillenius famil-
iarity with them all.
Not that this sort of range was sufficient by itself: naturalists had to be keen ob-
servers of specimens in order to weigh the material in other publications, and to assess
the relationship between the two. Authors could prove extremely critical of previous
publications, disagreeing with their colleagues and suggesting emendations or clarifi-
cations. Nonetheless, a hefty library was crucial, not only because of the necessity of
covering different regions and kingdoms but also because books could only be read
against one another. It was never enough to have one single opinion on a species or a
region: the naturalist needed to read actively, comparatively, and critically.38

Reading Like a Naturalist: The Book in the Field

Naturalists needed to travel with books because, to a large extent, books established the
work that they had to do. As Mutis traveled through New Granada after he arrived in
America in 1761, he wrote down the names of the plants he saw, naming those that he
considered new (that is, unmentioned in European natural-history publications)
and carefully recording discrepancies between the plants he observed and published
descriptions.39 For instance, he noted a necessary emendation to Patrick Brownes
description of a passion fruit.40 When Hiplito Ruiz outlined instructions for natural-
ist Juan Jos Tafalla and draughtsman Francisco Pulgar, the aggregates that contin-
ued the work of the Chile and Peru expedition when Ruiz and Pavn returned to Spain,
he made only one point specific to natural history: that Tafalla and Pulgar should travel
with Linnaeus Systema vegetabilium and Genera plantarum at all times, as well as with
writing and drawing tools, in order to be prepared to examine and describe any new
plants they might encounter on their path.41 Without books, a naturalist would not be

37. A practice that extended much further back than did natural history and that can be traced to
earlier scholarly traditions.
38. On active, appropriative reading, see Anthony Grafton and Lisa Jardine, Studied for Action:
How Gabriel Harvey Read his Livy, Past and Present, no. 129 (1990): 3078.
39. Mutis and his Spanish and Spanish-American colleagues followed a notebook-based method
in which the movement from compilation of texts to compilation of things was practically seamless.
This practice continues a much older tradition of taking notes and using notebooks, discussed in Ann
Blair, Humanist Methods in Natural Philosophy: The Commonplace Book, Journal of the History of
Ideas 53 (1992): 54151; and Ann Moss, Printed Commonplace-Books and the Structuring of Renais-
sance Thought (New York, 1996).
40. Mutis, Diario de observaciones (1761), 1:70.
41. Hiplito Ruiz, Madrid, 22 July 1793; AMCN, CA 1984, no. 207.

144 daniela bleichmar

able to tell whether a plant was new or not. As Mutis explained to his collaborator
Eloy Valenzuela, it was only by finding in his edition of Plumier the illustration of a
plant that he had seen and considered to be new that he had realized that it had in fact
been previously described.42 Not having the appropriate references at hand could
leave the naturalist disarmed and unable to make sense of the specimens collected. On
one occasion, Sess was unable to analyze a collection of zoophytes, lithophytes, and
minerals, and sent the specimens to Spain undescribed. In a letter, he explained that he
had not dared to touch these items without discredit to the Nation for lack of the
appropriate books with which to examine them.43
At the same time, natural-history publications could be disappointingly lim-
ited, something that Mutis had realized on his transatlantic sea voyage. Having spent
a whole day examining a flying fish caught by the ships crew, Mutis was unable to de-
termine whether it constituted a new genus belonging to an existing class because his
copy of Linnaeus Systema naturae did not allow him to make a precise judgment.44
But if such shortcomings could prove frustrating, they could also present opportuni-
ties for new contributions to natural history. Since my work, Mutis explained, will
not only cover that which is new, but will also serve to illustrate all that has been
imperfectly announced by my botanical predecessors, I need to have all of [their]
works.45 When Sess wrote in October 1788 to Gmez Ortega requesting several
natural-history publications, he explained that he did not intend to carry every single
title on every excursion, but that he would find the books useful to illustrate his own
work, and that he would also review them to search out unclear or dubious material.46
And if Mutis considered Hans Sloanes Voyage a treasure for illustrating my Flora, he
celebrated not only the books strengths but also its weaknesses. Having surveyed its
plates more than four times, he rejoiced, I find many plants that are common to that
region and to this one, and almost all of them require a new plate with the proper illus-
tration.47 Had the book been perfect, there would have been little left for him to ac-
complish. This refurbishing spirit at times edged into unsportsmanlike pride, as when
Mutis collaborator Eloy Valenzuela celebrated the formers concurring with his own

42. Mutis to Eloy Valenzuela, Mariquita, 25 June 1786. [Jos Celestino Mutis], Archivo Epistolar
del Sabio naturalista Don Jos C. Mutis, ed. Guillermo Hernndez de Alba, 2d ed., 4 vols. (Bogot,
1983), 1:309.
43. Martn de Sess to Antonio Porlier, Quertaro, 28 May 1790. AMNCN, item no. 499 in
Calatayud Arinero (1984).
44. Mutis, Diario de observaciones, 1:4950 (1760).
45. Mutis, Noticias extractadas de la correspondencia familiar, 11 May 178318 March 1786;
ARJBM, III, 1, 2, 85.
46. Martn de Sess to Casimiro Gmez Ortega, 27 October 1788; ARJBM, V, 1, 1, 25. The titles re-
quested were Johan Frederick Gronovius, Flora Virginica, 2 parts (Leiden, 173943); Peter Kalm,
Travels into North America, trans. John Reinhold Forster, 3 vols. (177071; Barre, Mass., 1972); Hans
Sloan, A Voyage to the Islands Madera, Barbados, Nieves, S. Christophers and Jamaica. . . with the atural
History. . . of the Last of Those Islands (London, vol. 1; 1707 25); Philip Miller, Gardeners Dictionary
(1st ed. 1724, 8th ed. 1768); Nikolaus Joseph von Jacquin, Selectorum stirpium Americanarum historia.
47. Mutis, Noticias, . . . Mariquita, 18 March 1786; ARJBM, III, 1, 2, 85.
 bo oks and botanical travel
145

analysis of a plant, writing that he was enormously gladdened that you agreed to take
Jacquins Cofea occidentali away from him, and to add it under a new genus.48
Published books also furnished naturalists with models for what their final
product should look like. At the start of the New Granada Botanical Expedition in
1783, Mutis outlined an ambitious publication program. As quickly as possible, he
would produce a preliminary work on the flora of the region consisting of a single folio
volume with descriptions of all of its genera and a catalogue of all of its species. Plants
that had already been identified would be mentioned only briefly, giving their first
and last names in italics, reserving the full treatment exclusively for undescribed
plants. And though it was necessary to include images, time could be saved by present-
ing only the flower, fruit, and seeds of some species, so that it is possible to get the idea
of the new genus. With such simple plates the [time needed to produce the] edition
would be abbreviated.49 After this appeared in print, annual compendia would pre-
sent the expeditions progress. These preliminary publications would establish the ex-
peditions priority as describer of new species until a more definitive work could be
produced: a properly luxurious and detailed Flora de Bogot in multiple volumes, with
a hundred plant descriptions and finished images in each. The Flora would cover
plants that had never been described in natural-history publications, as well as those
that had been improperly identified. All plants would be illustrated with images
colored after the natural. The books were to be printed in folio, with a plants textual
description on the verso of a leaf and its image on the facing recto. At this early stage
of the expedition, Mutis optimistically believed that it would be possible to complete
the first three volumes within that year.50 Mutis based his publication plan on
the works of Nikolaus Joseph von Jacquin, who first published the results of his trip to
the Caribbean and South America in the form of a list, without images, and three
years later as a fully illustrated and detailed work.51 The conventions of European
natural-history publishing had become so standardized that Mutis already had in his
mind the typographical details of his proposed work, specifying in his letter to Gmez
Ortega, for example, that he would like the Linnaean descriptions printed in smaller
type than that used for the genera.
Since publications established what constituted new and interesting work, as
noted above, it was vital for naturalists to remain up-to-date with European publica-
tions. Books and periodicals allowed naturalists to stay abreast of competing projects,

48. Eloy Valenzuela to Mutis, Santa Fe, 15 December 1784; ARJBM, III, 1, 1, 428, reproduced in
Archivo epistolar, 4:239.
49. Mutis to Casimiro Gmez Ortega, Santa Fe, 31 March 1784; ARJBM, III, 1, 2, 32.
50. Jos Celestino Mutis to Antonio Caballero y Gngora, Santa Fe, 3 June 1783; Archivo epistolar,
1:12122.
51. Nikolaus Joseph von Jacquin, Enumeratio systematica plantarum, quas in insulis Caribaeis vici-
naque Americes continente detexit novas, aut jam cognitas emendavit (Leiden, 1760; facsimile 1967);
and Stirpium Americanarum historia. Hans Sloane had followed a similar pattern, publishing first Cat-
alogus Plantarum quae in Insula Jamaica sponte proveniunt,. . . cum carundem synonymis et locis natal-
ibus; adjectis aliis quibusdam quae in Insulis Mader, Barbados,. . . et Sancti Christophori nascuntur
(London, 1696) and later the full-fledged results of his travel, A Voyage to the Islands.

146 daniela bleichmar

to compare their work with that of others, and to come up with ideas for new ventures.
Mutis relied on European and American journals for news of developments in natural
history and medicine.52 In 1788, for example, he copied two articles from Madrids
Gaceta. The first noted that the years import of tea into England had been both larger
and of inferior quality than previously. According to the journal, demand for tea in
Canton had exceeded supply to such a degree that astute Chinese merchants tricked
gullible foreigners by mixing dried leaves of various trees with real tea leaves. The sec-
ond article reported that in that year alone East Company ships had transported over
six million pounds of tea leaves to London. This news led Mutis to rejoice: What an
invaluable opportunity to promote our Bogota [tea] leaf!53 Where the ever-confident
Mutis saw opportunity, Sess found reasons for concern. Writing to Casimiro Gmez
Ortega from Mexico in 1789, Sess fretted after reading in a recent number of Madrids
Gaceta about the inroads that the English and the French were making in East India
and the Carolinas, respectively. He worried that unless urgent orders were given to the
viceroy of New Spain, his own projects would not be able to compete.54 Naturalists
who traveled for extended periods were painfully aware of the challenges of remaining
current and relevant, which provoked no small amount of anxiety.
Naturalists approached the publications they used comparatively and competi-
tively. Their reading practices framed a particular relationship with the text, one in
which its authority was constantly being assessed, challenged, and revised. The Span-
ish naturalists, for example, often found themselves in disagreement with the books
that covered the regions they explored, and in large measure saw their potential contri-
bution to natural history as a revisionist project. Their starting point was at times one
of disbelief: Sess was cheerfully surprised to have his skepticism about Jos Gumillas
El Orinoco ilustrado y defendido (Madrid, 1741) proved wrong when he discovered
that a particular reed (bejuco singenesita or guaco) did actually serve as an antidote
against snake bites, as the author claimed. His lack of trust had been due to the great
exaggeration of Father Gumilla, which made it reasonable to have doubts about this
admirable substance, however he might have advocated its efficacy.55 Sesss positive

52. His papers include manuscript transcriptions of, among other items, a notice extracted from
the Gaceta Real de Jamaica about a doctor in Lisbon who treated smallpox with musk (ARJBM,
III, 5, 18); an article published in Le Moniteur of Paris on 4 Thermidor year 9 (23 July 1801) describing
a memoir by Antoine Pierre Demours on a method for restoring sight through surgery to construct an
artificial pupil (ARJBM, III, 5, 28); articles published in the Gaceta de Madrid and the Parisian
Le Moniteur on smallpox vaccination (ARJBM, III, 5, 29); an article that appeared in the Gaceta
de Madrid on 19 February 1789 about a project to create a mining department in England, imitating
the German model (ARJBM, III, 6, 5); and another published in El Mercurio (Madrid) about the cre-
ation of the cole de Mines in Paris (ARJBM, III, 6, 6); a note that appeared on 1 August 1805 in a Lon-
don periodical whose title was translated as the Almacn Mensual de Londres describing the state of
Humboldts publication (ARJBM, III, 9, 1, 24); and memoirs in the Annales de chimie describing
Mutis own method for fermenting beer using cinchona (vol. 41, p. 330) and reporting experiments
on the preparation of red and grey cinchona with alcohol (vol. 46, p. 23; ARJBM, III, 11, 2, 30).
53. ARJBM, III, 11, 2, 12; articles corresponding to London section of Gaceta de Madrid no. 76
(29 August 1788) and no. 80 (12 September 1788).
54. Mexico, Martn de Sess to Casimiro Gmez Ortega, undated [1789]; ARJBM, V, 1, 1, 29.
55. Martn de Sess to Jos Celestino Mutis, n.d.; ARJBM, III, 1, 1, 406, reproduced in Archivo
epistolar, 4:21920.
 bo oks and botanical travel
147

valuation of the product, interestingly, was based on a report of Mutis experiences

with it, suggesting that the Spanish naturalists valued the knowledge of contemporary
naturalists over that of past authorities, and that of men currently in the field over that
of published authors (even if they had been travelers).
Time and again, Spanish naturalists returned to the trope of their own expertise
and authority, based on their long sojourns in the regionwhich made them particu-
larly scornful of speedier voyagers. Thus, in disagreeing with John Reinhold Forsters
description of the ga-ga plant from the Marianas Islands, Luis Ne questioned not
only the published description in the Nova Genera Plantarum but also Forsters meth-
ods. I doubt, he wrote in 1792, that Forster saw this plant alive. I believe he based his
description on Rumphius, because it seems to me so many details could not remain
hidden from such an exact observer. I dont doubt that he found this plant in his travels,
but perhaps not in such a way as to be able to describe it with exactitude. The appear-
ance of this plant varied so much over time, Ne explained, that he had begun his de-
scription in the Marianas, continued it in the La Laguna province in the Philippines,
and finished it in the botanical garden at Manila. Only this triple examination had
yielded the correct information about the plants characteristics. I believe, Ne con-
cluded, that Forster must have used flowers preserved in wine spirits, that is, if he did
not prepare an extract from Rumphius. See my own description.56
Natural-history publications were often deficient in their coverage of American
nature. Pineda commented at length on the merits and shortcomings of the books he
used. He complained that there were practically no resources for studying the birds of
the Americas, since they were not covered by Linnaeus, Mathurin-Jacques Brisson in
his Ornithologia (Paris, 1760), nor the writers on Brazil, Peru, and other parts of Amer-
ica.57 Pineda found the entries in Georg Marcgraves Historiae naturalis Brasiliae (Am-
sterdam, 1648) defective, the images in Willoughbys ichthyology extremely coarse,
and the descriptions of American specimens in Buffons Histoire naturelle and Bris-
sons Ornithologia good only when an animal came from the French American
colonies, in which case samples were taken to France. Even then, Brissons descrip-
tions often ignored colors and measurements and were short on information in
general; furthermore, the author multiplied the number of species unnecessarily.
Brisson, Pineda noted with some scorn, appeared to have based his descriptions
entirely on preserved specimens he might have seen in a museum.58 Pineda offered
similar criticism of Buffon, noting that both authors were imperfect and uncertain
in their descriptions of New World birds. He also found fault with George Edwardss
A Natural History of Uncommon Birds (London, 174351), Mark Catesbys The Natu-
ral History of Carolina, Florida, and the Bahama Islands (London, 173143), and with
Linnaeus descriptionsbut not with his talents as a systematist, he made sure to note.

56. Luis Ne; ARJBM, VI, 1, 4, 1012, reproduced in [Ne, Luis], Diarios y trabajos botnicos,
pp. 31819. The date 1792 has been assigned by the ARJBM based on the expeditions itinerary.
57. Antonio Pineda, Montevideo, 11 November 1789; AMCN, item no. 562 in Calatayud Arinero
(1984).
58. Antonio Pineda, Descripcin de los peces cogidos en la travesa de realejo a Acapulco, etc., y
algunas aves, cnceres y culebras, AMNCN, item nos. 603 and 604 in Calatayud Arinero (1984).

148 daniela bleichmar

Books posed challenges beyond errors and defects: naturalists constantly en-
countered disagreements and contradictions in their readings. When Pineda exam-
ined a tortoise captured as the expedition sailed along the southern coast of New Spain
toward Acapulco, he consulted several volumes from his library to try to make sense of
it. The animal, Pineda recorded in his journal, presented characteristics that agreed
with an entry in Linnaeus Systema naturae, to which Patrick Browne had added fur-
ther specifications. However, when comparing the plate that illustrated this species in
La Cpdes continuation to Buffons Histoire naturelle, he was forced to conclude that
this tortoise belonged to a species different from that suggested by Linnaeuswhich in
turn led him him to agree with Commerons criticism of Linnaeus approach to the
treatment of animals.59 Observing and reading were active processes of criticism and
analysis that served to constitute the object under study.

The Cabinet and the Field

For eighteenth-century naturalists, books played several critical functions. Books de-
marcated what naturalists needed to do in the fieldnamely, to describe any local pro-
ductions not included within the European printed inventory of global nature, to
rectify any discrepancies, and to resolve incomplete or erroneous descriptions. Books
also standardized approaches to the collection and collation of material and estab-
lished shared guidelines for observing, describing, naming, classifying, and represent-
ing. In this way, books furnished naturalists with the tools of their trade, and offered
them ways of interpreting what they found as they traveled in territories that were
often new to them.60 Diffused through texts, the accumulated body of travel experi-
ence regulated the ways in which naturalists approached new travels. Books also pro-
vided standards against which naturalists could gauge the value of their own work, as
well as models for them to follow or to react against. Finally, books helped to define a
community of reader-practitioners, and arbitrated both the competence and relevance
of its participants.
Historian Dorinda Outram has rightly characterized eighteenth-century natu-
ral history as possessing two diverging tendencies: a sedentary impulse, linked to cabi-
net practices, and a wandering impulse, connected to work in the field.61 In this essay I
have suggested that books mediated between the cabinet and the field, bringing them
into dialogue, and making the cabinet potentially as mobile as the field. If illustrations
transported the South American field back to Europe, then books transported Europe
(and often other regions) to South America. The circulation of materials from the field
to the cabinet to the field came to define much of eighteenth-century natural history in
a global context. Furthermore, the relationship among specimens, textual descrip-

59. Antonio Pineda, journal from Realejo to Acapulco, 24 January 1791; AMCN, item no. 605 in
Calatayud Arinero (1984).
60. On the methodology of travel, and its transformation throughout the early modern period, see
Stagl, A History of Curiosity.
61. Dorinda Outram, New Spaces in Natural History, in Nicholas Jardine, James A. Secord, and
Emma C. Spary, eds., Cultures of Natural History (Cambridge, 1996), 24965.
 bo oks and botanical travel
149

tions, and visual representations was not unidirectional, with the elements arranged
along a temporal and procedural axis that led from the objects to their incarnations in
ink and paper. Rather than belonging to a genealogy reaching from field to cabinet, or
from plant to specimen to textual and visual representation, objects, texts, and visual
representations interacted in ways that served to inform and constitute one another.
This permeability between field and cabinet could have disappointing implica-
tions for traveling naturalists, who at times returned to Europe to discover that others
had already published their findings while they were away. Cabinet naturalists who
published travelers observations at times had to defend their choice, confirming that
the practice provoked unease and controversy. It is a manifest mistake, the Spanish
naturalist Antonio Jos Cavanilles protested, to think that whoever publishes the
plants that others collected but did not examine [in the field] is appropriating their
work, because he leaves them the portion of glory that they deserve for traveling and
pressing plants, and takes for himself only the glory resulting from [the plants] exami-
nation and scientific works. The author is not him who picks up plants and seeds and
ships them without due examination . . . It is not the same to be a traveler and to be a
Botanist, nor to see plants and to be a competent Judge to determine them [botani-
cally].62 This attempt to split botanical labors into two separate activities could send
travelers into a rage. The French botanist Louis de Bougainville sarcastically described
himself as a voyager and a seaman; that is, a liar and a stupid fellow, in the eyes of that
class of indolent haughty writers, who in their closets reason in infinitum on the world
and its inhabitants, and with an air of superiority, confine nature within the limits of
their own invention. La Prouse derided the system makers, who sit down in their
closets, and there draw the figures of lands and islands.63 The various members of the
Spanish natural-history expeditions would have sided with the travelers rather than
with Cavanilles.
The trying experience of actual voyaging stood firmly between cabinet and
field. Jos Celestino Mutis declared himself undaunted by the unspeakable hardships
which the toilsome study of Nature entails, which he went on to describe:

Savants, in their cabinets or in schools, spend their days in great com-

fort, gathering the fruit of their diligence without moving. A traveler
must spend a great part of each night ordering and describing what he

62. Antonio Jos Cavanilles, Coleccin de papeles sobre controversias botnicas [1796], quoted in
Joaqun Fernndez Prez, ed., Anales de Historia Natural, 17991804, facsimile ed., 3 vols. (Madrid,
1993), 2:28. True to this statement, Cavanilles published some of the findings from the Malaspina
expedition: Descripcin de cinco gneros nuevos y de otras plantas, An. Hist. Nat., vol. 1, no. 1,
pp. 3345, tables 15 (Madrid, 1799); De los gneros Goodenia y Scaevola, An. Hist. Nat., vol. 1,
no. 2, pp. 89101 (Madrid, 1799); Observaciones sobre el suelo, naturales y plantas del Puerto Jack-
son y Baha Botnica, An. Hist. Nat., vol.1, no. 3, pp. 181239, (Madrid, 1800). All are reproduced in
Prez, ed., An. Hist. Nat., facsimile ed.
63. Louis de Bougainville, A Voyage Round the World. . . in the Years 1776. . . [to] 1769, trans. John
Forster (London, 1772), xxvi; and Jean-Franois de Galaup de la Prouse, A Voyage Round the World,
ed. M. L. A. Milet-Mureau (London, 1799), 441; both as cited in Sorrenson, The Ship as a Scientific
Instrument; quotations on p. 223.

150 daniela bleichmar

gathered in the field during the day, and this after having suffered the
conditions of that Season; the roughness and pitfalls presented by the
ground he surveys, which tend to be greatly varied; the discomfort of in-
sufferable insects that surround him everywhere; the frights and dangers
of many poisonous and horrible animals that at every step terrify him
about the austerity of a truly austere and insipid life that through heats,
moors, and deserted places breaks down and wears out his body.64

Many other travelers agreed with this rendering of the traveling life. The French phar-
macist Jean Baptiste Christophore Fuse Aublet painted a horrific and heroic picture
in the prologue to his Histoire des plantes de la Guiane Franoise (London, 1775):

Only the person who has entered the forests of Guiana can have an idea
of the extreme difficulty that one experiences in penetrating it, caused
by vines, thorny bushes, and cutting plants that fill up the spaces be-
tween big trees. For, however little one ventures from settlements, one
cannot find trails or openings. It is necessary to carve them with every
step one takes. . .
It is necessary to have penetrated these forests to judge the dangers
that one faces at every instant there, of being hurt, of being maimed, of
being attacked by Black maroons or angry runaways, or by wild animals;
of walking on serpents that will take cruel vengeance; of falling in deep
holes full of water, of roseau or other plants. . . from where a man will
never escape alone. The slaves and Indians who one is forced to take
along as guides and to carry supplies, as well as all the necessary instru-
ments and tools, give cause for almost constant unease. It is necessary to
figure out their designs, their plots, and if possible impose among them
respect, fear, and love, so that they will not abandon you in the forests or
murder you.65

In addition to these dangers, natural and human, Fuse Aublet also complained about
the extreme and asphyxiating heat and the discomforts brought about by a maddening
variety and number of insects. Naturalists repeatedly mentioned the efforts and frus-
trations they faced and overcame during their voyagesor, in the case of Mutis
proposal, even before they embarked on their explorations. The hardships of travel
were a much beloved topos of the genre, and they were part of the process of earning
ones stripes as a budding naturalist. Authors who did not base their publications on
their own travel generally made a point of acknowledging the tribulations faced by

64. Quoted in Gredilla, Biografa, 4243.

65. J. B. C. Fuse Aublet, Histoire des plantes de la Guiane franoise, 4 vols. (London, 1775), preface,
xvixvii. Natalie Zemon Davis provides a vivid picture of Maria Sybilla Merians experiences as a natu-
ralist and an artist in Guyana in Women on the Margins: Three Seventeenth-Century Lives (Cambridge,
Mass., 1995).
 bo oks and botanical travel
151

their correspondents, and the merits accrued as a result of overcoming these trials.
Highlighting the challenges of fieldwork served not only to boost the writers prestige
as survivor but also to imbue his text with greater authority. Thus, in the preface to the
Prodromus of the Flora Peruvianae et Chilensis, Hiplito Ruiz and Jos Pavn ex-
plained that they had withstood heat, fatigue; hunger; thirst; nakedness; want;
storms; earthquakes; plagues of mosquitoes and other insects; continuous danger of
being devoured by jaguars, bears, and other wild beasts; traps of thieves and disloyal
Indians; treason of slaves; falls from precipices and the branches of towering trees;
fording of rivers and torrents; the fire at Macora [in which many of their materials
were burned]; the shipwreck of the San Pedro de Alcntara [with a large portion of
their collection aboard]; the separation from Dombey; the death of the artist Brunete;
[and] the most touching of all, the loss of manuscripts.66 The loss of manuscripts was
the greatest hardship. Putting results in print was the ultimate way of domesticating
naturefor most readers, books would stand in for the field. In the end, publication
represented a triumph over the experience of travel.

university of southern california

abstract
In this article Daniela Bleichmar examines the ways in which botanists traveling in the Spanish
Americas in the late eighteenth century used books: to train themselves as expert observers and
rigorous classifiers, to signal adherence to international communities of practitioners through
their familiarity with specific publications and the methodologies they espoused, to make sense of
the natural world they encountered by means of constant comparison between live specimens and
published entries (textual and visual), and finally to make their own name as naturalists by pub-
lishing their findings, feeding new specimens back into the bookish loop of knowledge, produc-
tion, and circulation. Given the hardships of travel, publication represented a triumph over the
difficult experiences of the field. Keywords: taxonomy of Carl Linnaeus, eighteenth-century natu-
ral history, visual culture of natural history, bibliographical taxonomy, eighteenth-century cabinet
practices

66. Ruiz and Pavn, Flora Peruvianae et Chilensis, Prodromus, xv.