Francis Masson: Collecting Plants for King and Country

Summary. This article gives a biographical sketch of Francis Masson (1741–1805) and his 18th century explorations collecting plants for George III's blossoming botanic garden at Kew.     

Narcosis and nightshade.

Although this year marks the 150th anniversary of the discovery of modern surgical anaesthesia, surgery itself has a much longer history. It is well known that extracts from the opium poppy, Papaver somniferum, were used to dull the pain of surgery during ancient times but less well known that extracts from plants with sedative powers often accompanied them, producing primitive anaesthesia. Most of these sedative plants were members of a large botanical family, the Solanaceae. This paper describes some of them and discusses the ways in which they were administered. It also explains why, during the middle ages, these primitive techniques went out of use but how none the less they provided Shakespeare with the inspiration for some of his greatest plays. When the active principal of the Solanaceae was identified as scopolamine, it came to play a part in 20th century anaesthesia. The combination of omnopon and scopolamine lives on as a premedication, and the presence of poppy heads and mandrake roots on the arms of today''s Association of Anaesthetists serves to remind us of the speciality''s links with its past.     

THE JOHN BRADBY BLAKE DRAWINGS IN THE NATURAL HISTORY MUSEUM,LONDON: JOSEPH BANKS PUTS THEM TO WORK

In the last quarter of the 18th century, Joseph Banks came into possession of a set of botanically accurate, western‐influenced, drawings of Chinese plants, executed in Canton by a Chinese artist and supervised by John Bradby Blake, an East India Company supercargo. Banks realized that these drawings, now in the Natural History Museum, London, would help his collectors in Canton accurately identify the Chinese species he sought as living plants for the Royal Gardens at Kew. Banks commissioned a collector's manual whose illustrations were based on the Blake drawings. In the early 19th century, William Kerr used this manual (now unfortunately lost) to continue the Blake practice – these drawings are at the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew. John Reeves, many of whose drawings are at the Royal Horticultural Society, used Kerr's commissions to produce the next generation of botanical art in Canton.     

Edward Hitchcock’s Pre-Darwinian (1840) “Tree of Life”

The “tree of life” iconography, representing the history of life, dates from at least the latter half of the 18th century, but evolution as the mechanism providing this bifurcating history of life did not appear until the early 19th century. There was also a shift from the straight line, scala naturae view of change in nature to a more bifurcating or tree-like view. Throughout the 19th century authors presented tree-like diagrams, some regarding the Deity as the mechanism of change while others argued for evolution. Straight-line or anagenetic evolution and bifurcating or cladogenetic evolution are known in biology today, but are often misrepresented in popular culture, especially with anagenesis being confounded with scala naturae. Although well known in the mid 19th century, the geologist Edward Hitchcock has been forgotten as an early, if not the first author to publish a paleontologically based “tree of life” beginning in 1840 in the first edition of his popular general geology text Elementary Geology. At least 31 editions were published and those between 1840 and 1859 had this “paleontological chart” showing two trees, one for fossil and living plants and another for animals set within a context of geological time. Although the chart did not vary in later editions, the text explaining the chart did change to reflect newer ideas in paleontology and geology. Whereas Lamarck, Chambers, Bronn, Darwin, and Haeckel saw some form of transmutation as the mechanism that created their “trees of life,” Hitchcock, like his contemporaries Agassiz and Miller, who also produced “trees of life,” saw a deity as the agent of change. Through each edition of his book Hitchcock denounced the newer transmutationist hypotheses of Lamarck, then Chambers, and finally Darwin in an 1860 edition that no longer presented his tree-like “paleontological chart.”     

Travaux d'André Maublanc,mycologue naturaliste français de la première moitié du XXe siècle

The present note introduces the scientific achievements of André Maublanc (1880–1958) through a comprehensive biography, a yet unpublished list of his publications and of taxa he introduced grouped following localities of origin. Over one hundred titles pertaining to the fields of phytopathology and mycology were located. These notes of fundamental research are accompanied by titles of several basic and popular books that have been edited several times. These documents consider diseases of cultivated plants grown in temperate or tropical climates, the taxonomy of their fungal agents and of some other saprotrophs. The significant scientific production of André Maublanc and his marked teaching and popular treatises are behind the long established international status of this French naturalist of the first half of the 20th century.     

Flore du Jurassique basal de la ville de Mende (Lozère) : synthèse des gisements historiques,nouvelles données sédimentologiques,paléontologiques et paléoenvironnementales

During the 20th century, because of urbanization, most palaeontological sites yielding plants (Hettangian–Sinemurian in age) from the city of Mende have disappeared, or they have been forgotten. This article presents a synthesis of sites yielding plants, from their discoveries in the 19th century to recent prospecting. New lithostratigraphic and palaeobotanical data are brought for two historic sites (Ravin del Pouset and Petit Séminaire), as well as two new localities (Causse d’Auge road and Gardès road). This study reveals the diversity of plant-containing lithofacies (dolomudstone, marl, limestone/calcarenite and oo-bioclastic limestone) and the diversity of plant preservations (charcoalified compressions with or without cuticle, isolated cuticle, external casts/impressions). Microfaciological study of plant beds demonstrates the diversity of depositional environments. Protected, restricted and shallow environments with low wave exposure and probable euryhaline conditions are clearly the most favourable to the accumulation and the preservation of fossil plants. These early Liassic palaeofloras, among the southernmost yet reported for Laurasia, are of significance for the plant geography and global paleoecology at that time.     

Built for speed,not for comfort. Darwinian theory and human culture

Darwin believed that his theory of evolution would stand or fall on its ability to account for human behavior. No species could be an exception to his theory without imperiling the whole edifice. The ideas in the Descent of Man were widely discussed by his contemporaries although they were far from being the only evolutionary theories current in the late nineteenth century. Darwin's specific evolutionary ideas and those of his main followers had very little impact on the social sciences as they emerged as separate disciplines in the early Twentieth Century. Not until the late twentieth century were concerted, sophisticated efforts made to apply Darwinian theory to human behavior. Why such a long delay? We argue that Darwin's theory was rather modern in respects that conflicted with Victorian sensibilities and that he and his few close followers failed to influence any of the social sciences. The late Twentieth Century work takes up almost exactly where James Baldwin left off at the turn of the century.     

CHINESE VISITORS TO 18TH CENTURY BRITAIN AND THEIR CONTRIBUTION TO ITS CULTURAL AND INTELLECTUAL LIFE

This essay introduces three 18th century Chinese visitors to Britain, analysing the important role they played in cross‐cultural intellectual and artistic contact between the two countries. Loum Kiqua, a merchant, arrived in London in 1756. He gave the first known performance on a Chinese musical instrument in the West. Chitqua, a portrait modeller who arrived in 1769, exhibited at the newly‐established Royal Academy (becoming the first named Chinese artist to have a work shown in an overseas exhibit). Whang at Tong (Whang Atong, Huang Yadong), was only in his early 20s at the time of his arrival in England in August 1774, but he played a significant role in the transfer of botanical knowledge from China to the West through his connections with John Bradby Blake in Canton and his father John Blake in London.     

Air and the origin of the experimental plant physiology.

It is well known that oxygen and carbon dioxide are two chemicals which enter the plant metabolism as nutrients. The bases of this nowadays obvious statement were placed in the 18th century by means of the works of ingenious naturalists such as Robert Boyle, Stephen Hales, Joseph Priestley, Jam Ingenhousz, Lazzaro Spallanzani and Theodore De Saussure. Till the end of the 17th century, the atmospheric air was considered as an ineffable spirit, the function of which was of physical nature. Boyle was the first naturalist to admit the possibility that respiration were an exchange of vapours occurring in the blood. Stephen Hales realised that air could be fixed by plants under the influence of solar light. Priestley showed that plants could regenerate the bad air making it breathable. Ingenhousz demonstrated that the green parts of plants performed the complete purification of air only under the influence of the light. Spallanzani discovered that plants respire and guessed that the good air (oxygen) originated from the fixed air (carbon dioxide). Finally, Theodore De Saussure showed that plants were able to adsorb carbon dioxide and to release oxygen in a proportional air. All these discoveries benefited of the results coming from investigations of scholars of the so-called "pneumatic chemistry" (Boyle himself, George Ernst Stahl, Joseph Black, Priestley himself, and many more others. But among all the eminent scientists above mentioned stands out the genius of Antoine Laurent Lavoisier, who revolutionised the chemistry of the 18th century ferrying it towards the modern chemistry.     

Observations on the history of Dutch physical stature from the late-Middle Ages to the present

In the late-Middle Ages and at the onset of the early modern period, the Dutch population was taller than in the first half of the 19th century. This inference is partially based on skeletal evidence, mainly collected by the Dutch physical anthropologist George Maat and his co-workers. A spectacular increase in Dutch heights began in the second half of the 19th century and accelerated in the second half of the 20th century. At the end of the 20th century, the Dutch became tallest in the world.     

Charles Manning Child (1869-1954): the past, present, and future of metabolic signaling

Charles Manning Child's work focused on metabolic gradients and their influence on organismal development. Early in the 20th century, his work had considerable currency, but by the second half of the century he had become little more than a historical footnote. Yet today Child's ideas are once again topical. While there were issues of cause and effect that Child and his students were never able to address adequately, in hindsight the extent of his eclipse hardly seems warranted. In fact, the demise of Child's theories may have resulted from larger changes in the nature of biology in the early 20th century. Child frequently studied planarians, hydroids, and other animals that are capable of asexual, agametic reproduction, and his theories most clearly apply to such organisms. In contrast, Thomas Hunt Morgan, initially one of Child's competitors in studies of regeneration, later developed the field of transmission genetics based on fruit flies, which can only reproduce via gametes. Child's theories and model systems were largely casualties of the success of Morgan's mechanistic paradigm. Nevertheless, in modern biology metabolic gradients, recast in terms of redox signaling, have become central to understanding both normal and pathological development.     

Bill Ricker’s Entomological Contributions

Synopsis Bill Ricker was an internationally recognized expert on the stoneflies (Plecoptera). These insects have aquatic larvae that live mostly in cool and clear running water. They are of ecological significance in the breakdown of leaf-litter and the cycling of detritus in aquatic lotic habitats. Since they can account for a significant portion of the diet of some fishes in cold northern waters, they are linked with Ricker’s other work in fisheries. Within 1 year of taking up the study of stoneflies, Ricker was describing species new to science. He continued such activity through most of his life, describing or co-describing some 108 species and 46 genera. Ricker made other outstanding contributions, publishing in 1952 what is regarded as the most important publication dealing with stonefly systematics in the 20th century. Many names he coined in his studies clearly demonstrated his linguistic flair and humour. He made significant contributions to an understanding of the biogeography of stoneflies, and received many honours and citations for his research.     

THE LIFE AND WORK OF JOHN BRADBY BLAKE

John Bradby Blake (1745–1773) first visited Canton as a supercargo for the British East India Company in 1767/68. He returned as a resident supercargo in July 1769. Between then and his untimely death in 1773, in collaboration with one or more Chinese artists, he produced over 150 paintings of Chinese plants, many of which are illustrated in exquisite botanical detail. These paintings and the associated archives in the Oak Spring Garden Library at the Oak Spring Garden Foundation (OSGF) provide a detailed glimpse into an interesting life and a previously little known dimension of the social and scientific interactions between the British and Chinese in the late 18th century.     

The Not-so-Dark Ages: ecology for human growth in medieval and early twentieth century Portugal as inferred from skeletal growth profiles

This study attempts to address the issue of relative living standards in Portuguese medieval and early 20th century periods. Since the growth of children provides a good measure of environmental quality for the overall population, the skeletal growth profiles of medieval Leiria and early 20th century Lisbon were compared. Results show that growth in femur length of medieval children did not differ significantly from that of early 20th century children, but after puberty medieval adolescents seem to have recovered, as they have significantly longer femora as adults. This is suggestive of greater potential for catch-up growth in medieval adolescents. We suggest that this results from distinct child labor practices, which impact differentially on the growth of Leiria and Lisbon adolescents. Work for medieval children and adolescents were related to family activities, and care and attention were provided by family members. Conversely, in early 20th century Lisbon children were more often sent to factories at around 12 years of age as an extra source of family income, where they were exploited for their labor. Since medieval and early 20th century children were stunted at an early age, greater potential for catch-up growth in medieval adolescents results from exhausting work being added to modern adolescent's burdens of disease and poor diet, when they entered the labor market. Although early 20th century Lisbon did not differ in overall unfavorable living conditions from medieval Leiria, after puberty different child labor practices may have placed modern adolescents at greater risk of undernutrition and poor growth.     

Identification Keys,the “Natural Method,” and the Development of Plant Identification Manuals

The origins of field guides and other plant identification manuals have been poorly understood until now because little attention has been paid to 18th century botanical identification guides. Identification manuals came to have the format we continue to use today when botanical instructors in post-Revolutionary France combined identification keys (step-wise analyses focusing on distinctions between plants) with the “natural method” (clustering of similar plants, allowing for identification by gestalt) and alphabetical indexes. Botanical works featuring multiple but linked techniques to enable plant identification became very popular in France by the first decade of the 19th century. British botanists, however, continued to use Linnaeus’s sexual system almost exclusively for another two decades. Their reluctance to use other methods or systems of classification can be attributed to a culture suspicious of innovation, anti-French sentiment and the association of all things Linnaean with English national pride, fostered in particular by the President of the Linnean Society of London, Sir James Edward Smith. The British aversion to using multiple plant identification technologies in one text also helps explain why it took so long for English botanists to adopt the natural method, even after several Englishmen had tried to introduce it to their country. Historians of ornithology emphasize that the popularity of ornithological guides in the 19th and 20th centuries stems from their illustrations, illustrations made possible by printing technologies that improved illustration quality and reduced costs. Though illustrations are the most obvious features of late 19th century and 20th century guides, the organizational principles that make them functional as identification devices come from techniques developed in botanical works in the 18th century.     

Plant use in a city in Northern Italy during the late Mediaeval and Renaissance periods: results of the archaeobotanical investigation of “The Mirror Pit” (14th–15th century a.d.) in Ferrara

Results are presented from archaeobotanical analyses carried out in ‘The Mirror Pit’, a rectangular pit, situated in the city of Ferrara, in Emilia Romagna—Northern Italy. The study is part of wider research focused on the Mediaeval period of this city. The pit belongs to a building which was in use from the second half of 14th to the end of 15th century a.d. The pit itself was filled with domestic rubbish during a few years in the middle of the 15th century. The layers were preserved by waterlogging and are therefore extraordinarily rich in organic remains and artifacts, among which was the beautiful spherical mirror which gave its name to the pit. Approximately 256,000 well-preserved seeds and fruits belonging to 98 species or carpological types were identified in 12 l of sediment from the different layers. Ficus carica, Brassica rapa subsp. rapa/subsp. sylvestris and Vitis vinifera subsp. vinifera prevailed. Many cultivated plants and weeds were present, together with a smaller number of wild plants of wet environments and woodlands. Altogether they provided much new information on the diet (cultivated and wild fruits, cereals and pulses, vegetables, spices and medicinal/fibre/oil plants) of the middle to upper class inhabitants of a city in Northern Italy during the Renaissance period. The records also yielded evidence of domestic activities such as winemaking, oil making, mustard making and other kitchen practices.