1 Introduction
In 1849, the German naturalist Hermann Schlegel (1804–1884), curator of vertebrates at the Rijksmuseum van de Natuurlijke Historie (National Museum for Natural History, or RMNH) in Leiden, published a short book in which he laid out the rules he believed should govern the production of good-quality natural history images. This work, titled Verhandeling over de Vereischten van Natuurkundige Afbeeldingen (Essay on the Requirements of Scientific Images) was Schlegel’s answer to an 1845 prize question by Teylers’ Second Society (a society founded in 1778 with the goal of stimulating progress in the arts and sciences), on the requirements a scientific image should fulfil to satisfy both the naturalist and the artist.1
Because natural history deals with a wide variety of different types of objects, the Verhandeling contains chapters pertaining to requirements that specifically belong to several of the branches of natural history, including one on birds, another on fishes and amphibians, and so on. But in the first chapter Schlegel begins by describing the goal of natural history images in general:
De plaats te vervangen der voorwerpen, die men zelf geene gelegenheid heeft in de natuur te zien of te onderzoeken, hen in die afbeelding te erkennen, en, zoo naauwkeurig mogelijk uit haar te kunnen afleiden, hunne gedaante of ook hunne kleuren, de verhouding hunner deelen en hunne verdere eigenschappen.
To replace objects one does not have the opportunity to investigate or observe in nature, recognize them in the image – their shape and colours, the proportions of their parts and other characteristics.2
The precise way in which this works varies between different groups, however, and even within groups. For example, Schlegel identifies four different types of botanical images: (1) an overview of plants that live in a particular region; (2) an image of the whole plant; (3) an image of plant parts, often cut in half; and (4) microscopic images. It is the second group, which he treats as botanical images proper, to which he gives most of his attention.3 One of Schlegel’s most important general rules (both for botanical and zoological images) is:
De natuurkundige teekenaar moet zoo veel mogelijk vermijden, toevallige onregelmatigheden der voorwerpen te doen uitkomen, en hij dient in de meeste gevallen gehavende of geschondene voorwerpen zoo te teekenen als of zij gaaf en volledig waren; dikwijls moet hij zelfs de individuele eigenschappen van een voorwerp weglaten, omdat de afbeelding van een individu in de wetenschap dikwijls als het ware de geheele soort moet vertegenwoordigen.
The draughtsman must avoid as much as possible to depict accidental irregularities of the objects, and should in most cases draw damaged specimens as if they were whole; often he should even leave out the individual characteristics of a specimen, because in science the image of an individual should often, as it were, represent the entire species.4
This rule appears to touch on an important development in 19th-century natural history, where naturalists moved from a more or less essentialist, typological understanding of species to one in which natural variation played a much larger role, reflected by the growing importance of geographical series of specimens by the mid-19th century.5 Hansjorg Ahrens, for example, in his paper on the production of natural history images at the RMNH, takes issue with this rule, singling it out as noteworthy for its apparent contradiction to Schlegel’s insistence on the importance of collecting geographical series of specimens in order to fully understand species. Ahrens concludes that ‘in 1846 he apparently still used the “old” species concept’.6 However, as I will show below, this contradiction is only apparent.
2 Overview
In this chapter I will restrict myself to a discussion of the role of images in systematic natural history, the branch of natural history that concerns itself primarily with the description and naming of species, and their classification.7 I distinguish three different types of images that were used in this field, which may be called ‘species images’, ‘specimen images’ and ‘preservation images’. I believe that insufficient attention to these different categories of images has led some authors to perceive large theoretical changes where there were none, or to misidentify the cause behind a change in the use of images.
A compounding problem in the literature is the lack of balance between studies focusing on different branches of systematic natural history. If you shake a tree, historical studies on the features of botanical images will fall out by the dozens.8 By contrast, the various branches of zoology fare much worse (with the possible exception of ornithology), and until recently palaeontology and ichthyology were barely mentioned at all.9 The reasons for these discrepancies are unclear, as far as I can tell, though the popularity of botanical images with art historians probably plays a role.10 An important implication of this imbalance, however, is that generalizations about the roles of images in systematic natural history are often drawn based primarily on studies of botanical images. As I will show below, images often played different roles in different branches of natural history, so it is important to draw on a larger variety of examples in order to draw reliable general conclusions.
To this end, I will focus on two of the most neglected branches of natural history when it comes to the study of images: ichthyology and palaeontology. First I will describe and illustrate how species images, specimen images and preservation images were used in these (and other) fields, using Schlegel’s essay as a point of departure. Generally speaking, species images accompanied species descriptions in published species books and mainly served to depict those characteristics of an organism that were relevant for classifying it in the system used by the author. Specimen images, by contrast, depict individual objects with all their ‘accidental’ characteristics, and were used primarily to communicate information about important objects, like type specimens. They rarely figured in published species descriptions, except in palaeontology. Finally, preservation images were almost never published, but played a role in the naturalists’ research process by helping to record those features of an organism that were deemed important for classification, but didn’t survive the process of specimen preservation.
Distinguishing between these three types of images, and keeping in mind what roles they play in the practice of natural history, can throw light on certain historical developments that have been identified in the literature. In particular, I will look at the notion of epistemic virtues, and the claim that an important shift in such virtues took place during the 19th century; and the influence of changing views about species in that same period.
3 SPECIES IMAGES
Species images seem to depict a single specimen, often in a more or less stylized manner, while some features are emphasized, and others ignored. Fishes, for instance, are almost always shown from the side (except in dorsoventrally flattened forms, like rays, which are shown from the top), with fins stretched out and features like fin rays, scales, and operculum drawn very clearly.11 Schlegel compares two images of fishes, one drawn ‘artistically’ [Fig. 25.1a], the other ‘scientifically’ [Fig. 25.1b], and comments:
Daar nu het bijwerk geheel en al vervalt, en de teekenaar dikwijls, om den zamengestelden vorm en ligging hunner, naar evenredigheid, kleine schubben aan te toonen, meestal zeer uitvoerig moet werken, zoo vinden zich de kunstenaars door die soort van voorstelling meestal even weinig aangetrokken, als door die van hagedissen en slangen.
Since the background is left out altogether, and the artist often has to do very detailed work in order to show the composite shape and position of their relatively tiny scales, artists generally feel as little attraction to these kinds of images as to those of lizards and snakes.12
Hermann Schlegel, example of a perch (Perca fluviatilis) drawn too artfully. Lithograph, plate 12 from Verhandeling over de Vereischten van Natuurkundige Afbeeldingen (Haarlem: 1849)
Hermann Schlegel, example of a carp (Tor tambra) drawn scientifically. Lithograph, plate 11 from Verhandeling over de Vereischten van Natuurkundige Afbeeldingen (Haarlem: 1849)
The function of this emphasis on a number of particular details is simple: these images accompany species descriptions and are intended to show those features, shared by the individuals of a species, that are relevant for classification. In this way, naturalists can study an organism’s taxonomy, based on the image.13
This link between images and classification can be illustrated, perhaps somewhat surprisingly, by looking at the work of an ichthyologist who did not use illustrations at all. Swedish naturalist Peter Artedi (1705–1735), like his friend Carl Linnaeus (1707–1778), found images distracting, even harmful, because of their unreliability – after all, two artists drawing the same specimen can produce markedly different images, and published images were often rife with errors.14 Instead, Artedi used only those characteristics of fishes that could be described unambiguously (features like the number and relative position of fins, fin rays, and so on), and easily preserved (and observed) in collected specimens.15 While this approach worked very well for classifying the limited number of fishes known in Artedi’s time, the rapid rise in newly discovered species led to a growing need for additional characteristics that could be used in classification, including those (like colouration) that did not preserve well at all, so Artedi’s image-less approach to ichthyology never caught on. Indeed, the major ichthyological publications of the rest of the 18th and 19th centuries are richly illustrated with species images.16
For the naturalist, species had both “essential” and “accidental” characteristics. In the context of classification, essential characteristics are those that all members of the species possess, and which can therefore be used to define it (and compare it to similar species). Accidental characteristics are possessed only by some members of a species, and are thus usually less valuable for classification purposes.17 Deciding which features of an individual organism counted as essential for the species and which did not, was one of the primary tasks of the systematic naturalist.18 Compare Figs. 25.2a and 25.2b, both from Bleeker’s Atlas Ichthyologique, which represent two very similar species of catfish from the Indonesian archipelago, Hemibagrus nemurus and Hemibagrus wyckii [Figs. 25.2a–2b]. In order to distinguish species that are so alike, the naturalist has to focus on fairly subtle differences. So, for instance, Bleeker writes of H. nemurus that ‘the tail fin is deeply incised with sharp lobes, the upper lobe is longer than the lower lobe, and commonly extends into a thread.’ In H. wyckii, ‘the tail fin is deeply incised, with sharp lobes, the outer rays of which extend into threads, with the upper thread longer than the lower thread.’19 Features like these are very clearly depicted in the image, so the description and image complement and mutually reinforce one another.
L. Speigler – C.W. Mieling, Hemibagrus nemurus Blkr. Chromolithograph, plate LXIX from Bleeker Pieter, Atlas ichthyologique des Indes Orientales Néêrlandaises, publié sous les auspices du Gouvernement Colonial Néêrlandais vol. 2 (Amsterdam: 1862)
Speigler (delin) Mieling (litho), Hemibagrus Wijckii Blkr. Chromolithograph, plate LXXII from Bleeker Pieter, Atlas ichthyologique des Indes Orientales Néêrlandaises, publié sous les auspices du Gouvernement Colonial Néêrlandais vol. 2 (Amsterdam: 1862)
Because of this special feature of species images, where the clear depiction of some details (but not others) is more important than realism or aesthetics, the production of species images demanded a rather intimate knowledge of natural history and the practical requirements of classification. So, Schlegel writes:
Natuurkundige teekeningen moeten derhalve altijd, zoo niet door den geleerde zelven, dan toch onder diens toezigt en leiding gemaakt worden, en hij moet, in de meeste gevallen, den kunstenaar eerst vormen, want er zijn weinigen, die het aangeboren talent hebben, zelven den regten weg te vinden
Scientific drawings should therefore always either be made by the naturalist himself, or under his supervision and direction, and in most cases he must first educate the artist, for few of them are born with the talent to find the right way by themselves.20
Bleeker concurs when he writes (with some frustration) of the production of the images for his Atlas:
Aussi plusieurs centaines d’espèces ont été figurées de nouveau, même jusqu’à huit et dix fois, à fur et à mesure que mes dessinateurs apprenaient à représenter les objets avec plus de fidélité […] je dois à la vérité et à ma responsabilité de ne pas laisser ignorer les extrêmes soucis causés par une coopération qui nécessitait une surveillance et une direction minutieuses et continuelles […] je puis dire que les dessins finissaient par être mon propre ouvrage plutôt que celui du dessinateur, et que leur retouche m’a pris plus de temps que la description des espèces qu’ils représentent.
Hundreds of species have been refigured again and again, even as much as eight to ten times, as my draughtsmen learned to represent the objects with more precision […] I owe it to the sake of truth and my responsibility, not to leave unmentioned the extreme worries caused by a co-operation that necessitated a continuous, scrupulously careful supervision and instruction […] I can say that these drawings in the end were more my own work than that of the artist, and that the retouching has taken more of my time than the description of the species they represent.”21
4 Specimen Images
In most branches of natural history, the great majority of images accompanying species descriptions are species images. An important exception is palaeontology, where most published images represent specimens, not species. This can be illustrated by looking at the Recherches sur les poissons fossiles by the Swiss naturalist Louis Agassiz (1807–1873).22 In this work, Agassiz aims to synthesize all available knowledge of fossil fishes by bringing them together in one system of classification. Looking at Fig. 25.3, however, which is the main image of Lepidotus gigas in the Recherches, it is obvious that Agassiz chose to depict fossil specimens, not species. Indeed, he points this out in his preface where he writes that they ‘represent the fossil fish as I observed them, and as they exist in the collections’.23 This changes the interaction between text and image in a rather striking way. For instance, Agassiz writes:
La caudale, la plus grande de toutes les nageoires, est légèrement échancrée au milieu; son lobe supérieur est un peu plus long, mais aussi plus étroit que son lobe inférieur. Elle est très-distincte dans l’exemplaire de la pl. 29, où seulement l’extrémité de son lobe supérieur est en partie enlevée. Dans plusieurs autres fragmens de la collection de M. Hartmann, on en voit différentes parties très-bien conservées.
The caudal fin, the largest of all the fins, is slightly indented in the middle; its upper lobe is a little longer, but also narrower than the lower lobe. It is very distinct in the specimen in pl. 29 [Fig. 25.3], where only part of the end of its upper lobe is missing. In several other specimens in Mr. Hartmann’s collection, we see other parts very well preserved.24
H. Nicolet, Lepidotus gigas Agass. Engraving, plate 29 from Agassiz Louis, Recherches sur les poissons fossiles (Neuchatel: 1833–1843)
So, by using a specimen rather than a species image, Agassiz has to explain both why he chose this particular one (because, among other things, the tail was very well preserved), and how he knows about the species-defining characteristics that are missing in this specimen (there are other specimens that contain the missing parts).
Schlegel, in his short chapter on fossils (and other stony objects), confirms the importance of specimen images in palaeontology. For rather than with most zoological images, where it is important to ignore any accidental characteristics of particular specimens:
Het komt hier vooral op de hoogst naauwkeurige uitvoering van détails aan […] Het teekenen van fossile voorwerpen wordt intusschen in vele opzigten gemakkelijk door de natuur der voorwerpen; want zij zijn hard, zij hebben een vasten onveranderlijken vorm, en de teekenaar behoeft slechts naauwkeurig weêr te geven, hetgeen hij ziet, en eene gepaste manier van uitvoering te kiezen, ten einde volmaakt te slagen.
here it is primarily about the very precise depiction of details […] The drawing of fossils is made easier by the nature of the objects; for they are hard, have a fixed shape, and the artist merely needs to represent accurately that which he sees, and choose a fitting means of execution, to succeed perfectly.25
In other words, the interpretive steps necessary for making the species images that often strained the relationships between naturalists and the artists they employed, were unnecessary in palaeontology, which dealt primarily in the much more straightforward specimen images that depicted individual fossils.26
The use of specimen images in palaeontology has a long tradition,27 as shown for instance by Fig. 25.4, which is a mid-18th-century engraving by the artist and collector Arthur Pond [Fig. 25.4]. This image was made with the express goal of showing the object as it actually was. Pond writes: ‘I have been particularly careful not to exaggerate or add the smallest trifle, by way of making it seem more complete or perfect than it is’.28 However, in ichthyology (and other branches of zoology) published specimen images are very rare. Exceptions usually occur in reports of specimens (of known species) that are peculiar for some or other reason, for instance if they are exceptionally large, or have an unusual anatomical or physiological feature [Fig. 25.5].29 In addition, the introduction of nomenclatural type specimens halfway through the 19th century produced a new category of objects in natural history that were worth depicting separately as objects, rather than as abstracted representations of entire species.30
Arthur Pond, Fossil fish from Antigua. Engraving, plate IX from Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London 49.1 (London: 1756)
T. Hooiberg & A.J. Wendel, Afbeelding van een hermaphrodieten baars uit de Brugmansche verzameling van het Anatomische kabinet te Leiden. Lithograph, unnumbered plate from Verslagen en Mededeelingen der Koninklijke Akademie van Wetenschappen 16 (1863) facing p. 178
5 Preservation Images
There is, however, a third category of images in systematic natural history that is rarely published at all, but instead serves a function in the process of specimen preservation. These images tend to lack detail and instead focus on one or a small number of features of a specimen that are otherwise difficult to preserve, but are nevertheless useful for classificatory purposes. In the case of fishes, this usually came down to one feature in particular: colour. No matter how brightly coloured a fish is in life, once dead its various hues will start to fade, and when it is stuffed or stored in alcohol, it will gradually but surely take on the bland browns and greys so characteristic of preserved fish collections.31
The importance of colour is emphasized in the many guides to the proper collection and preservation of natural history specimens that were published during the 19th century. For instance, RMNH director C.J. Temminck (1778–1858) writes that ‘[one] should specify on a label which colours the fish had when fresh.’32 Ideally, however, as Agassiz writes in his guide to fish collecting, ‘should any collector be sufficiently familiar with painting to draw colored figures of any of these fishes, or so situated as to have some of them drawn by an artist, it would be an invaluable contribution to Natural History.’33 Fig. 25.6a shows an example of a field sketch by the German naturalist Salomon Müller (1804–1864) [Fig. 25.6a], which is little more than an outline of the animal with its most distinctive coloured patches emphasized in black. A more elaborate, coloured example is shown in Fig. 25.6b, which is by an unknown artist but clearly shows the emphasis on colour – other taxonomically relevant characteristics, like fin rays and scales, are simply shaded in [Fig. 25.6b].34
Salomon Müller, sketch of Oxygaster anomatura. Ink and pencil. Page from field notebook, c.1830. Available at Gassó, E. et al., Natuurkundige Commissie Archives Online (Leiden, Brill: 2020)
Unknown artist, sketch of a type of surgeonfish. Watercolour. Available at Gassó, E. et al., Natuurkundige Commissie Archives Online (Leiden: 2020)
Fig. 25.7 shows a more peculiar type of preservation image [Fig. 25.7]. In 1824, the great French ichthyologist Achille Valenciennes (1794–1865) visited the RMNH to study a collection of Javanese fishes brought together by two young naturalists who had tragically died before they could return to the Netherlands to publish their results.35 Valenciennes spent a number of days at the museum to study the specimens, field notes and drawings, on the basis of which he took his own notes and made his own drawings. However, Valenciennes’ (and/or possibly Sophie Duvaucel’s) drawings are preservation drawings, meant to capture above all the colours of the fishes, whereas the ones he used as examples are species images, quite ready for publication. Valenciennes’ preservation drawings would later aid in the production of the species descriptions and images of his and Cuvier’s multi-volume Histoire naturelle des poissons.36
Achille Valenciennes and/or Sophie Duvaucel, sketch of Labiobarbus leptocheilus. Watercolour. Fig. 25.7 from Roberts T.R., “The Freshwater Fishes of Java, as Observed by Kuhl and van Hasselt in 1820–23”, Zoologische Verhandelingen 285.29 (1993)
6 Epistemological and Metaphysical Transitions
Species images, specimen images, and preservation images. The differences between them seem quite straightforward, as do the reasons for those differences. Species images depict idealized individuals that are supposed to represent species, and are made to accompany species descriptions in works of systematic natural history. Specimen images, by contrast, aim to accurately depict individual specimens, with all their quirks and oddities, and appear whenever an author wishes to discuss a particularly important object. Finally, preservation images are usually sketches of specimens, with a strong emphasis on a small number of characteristics, namely those that are important for the purpose of classification, but do not preserve well. However, while these categories spring from the practical requirements of systematic natural history, it has become popular in the historiographical literature on such images to interpret these differences in a more theoretical way, which I believe has led to some potentially confusing lines of thought. Preservation images are the least problematic in this respect (though this may be mainly due to the fact that not much has been written about them),37 but several authors have attempted to read major theoretical shifts into the differences between species and specimen images. I will briefly discuss two such cases.
First, Lorraine Daston and Peter Galison’s monumental work Objectivity presents a historical account of styles of scientific image-making grounded in particular epistemic virtues. As the rules by which science is done change over time, so do the images that scientists produce, is the idea. Daston & Galison identify three epistemological regimes that succeed one another, but only two are relevant here: truth-to-nature and objectivity, which in the context of natural history (in Daston & Galison’s case, botany) correspond roughly to species images and specimen images, respectively.38 Truth-to-nature has as its goal the discovery of the true nature of things regardless of their particular manifestations in the world. In natural history, this resulted in images representing ideal types: representations of species, not individuals. Objectivity, which was introduced in the 19th century and achieved dominance by the middle of that century, was concerned precisely with individual objects in all their particularity. In natural history, this resulted in images representing individual specimens.39 To be sure, Daston & Galison do not claim that objectivity replaced truth-to-nature in an all-or-nothing fashion: ‘As long as botanists insisted on figures that represented the characteristic form of a species or even genus, photographs and other mechanical images of individual plants in all their particularity would have little appeal.’ However, they continue: ‘Objectivity did make inroads into other areas of botanical practice such as the introduction of the “type method” in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries in order to stabilize nomenclature.’ And so: ‘It is no surprise that the one place where photography gained a firm foothold in botanical illustration was the representation of type specimens, in all their individuality and militant objectivity’.40
It is indeed no surprise, for the introduction of nomenclatural type specimens in botany meant that there was now a category of specimens that were so significant that it made sense to publish images of them. The problem is that nobody in the 18th century wished to picture individual herbarium specimens, because this field dealt in species, not specimens.41 In the 19th century, the individual herbarium specimen became an object of interest, so it got depicted as an object. There is no evidence of a change in underlying epistemic virtues here, just a change in the meaning of a certain class of objects.42 Compare this with palaeontology, which had a much stronger tradition of specimen images than botany. As discussed above, naturalists were reluctant to make species (truth-to-nature) depictions of fossils, instead depicting them with all their particular variations, cracks, missing parts, and so on.43 Intriguingly, however, and quite contrary to Daston & Galison’s case, truth-to-nature images became more prevalent in 19th century palaeontology, because the increasingly popular methods of comparative anatomy allowed for much more confident reconstructions of extinct species.44 Thus, generally speaking, during the 19th century and before, whenever an individual specimen had to be depicted, it was depicted objectively. Whenever a species had to be depicted, it was depicted abstractly, in a fashion resembling what Daston & Galison call truth-to-nature. Rather than a broad development from truth-to-nature to objectivity during the 19th century, we observe a correspondence between what needs to be depicted (specimens or species) and the manner of depicting it (objectively or not). This in turn relates to the particular problems confronting particular branches of natural history, not to more or less universal epistemic virtues.
Another 19th-century transition, one that has undeniable relevance to natural history, is the introduction of evolutionary thinking about species. Most importantly, the malleability of species, and the focus on variability within species in evolution generally moved metaphysical views about species into a less essentialist direction during the 19th century.45 However, the interactions between a naturalist’s theoretical views on the nature of species and their practice of describing them for the purpose of classification are far from straightforward. In this light it is unfortunate that much of the literature on the 18th- and 19th-century natural history of species has a strong focus on the metaphysical side of the equation. For instance, even though there is an extensive literature devoted to every aspect of the scientific works of Charles Darwin (1809–1882), including his thinking about the metaphysics of species, very little has been written about the practical aspects of his approach to delimiting and describing species.46 As I hope to have shown above, there is no clear transition during the 19th century in the essentialism inherent in the abstract species images that grace ichthyological publications.47 Indeed, the primary goals of systematic natural history – the description and classification of species – in a sense requires stable species definitions. By finding out which features of a species don’t vary, it is possible to create an abstract character cluster that lets naturalists recognize a species, both in collections and in nature, and tell it apart from members of other, similar species.48 As Thomas Henry Huxley (1825–1895) puts it:
Animals and plants are divided into groups, which become gradually smaller […] until at length we come to the smallest groups of animals which can be defined one from the other by constant characters, which are not sexual; and these are what naturalists call species in practice, whatever they may do in theory [emphasis added].49
7 Conclusion
Schlegel pulls no punches in his judgements about the images produced by his colleagues. When discussing the famous images from the British Salmonidae by Sir William Jardine,50 he tries to be respectful in his dismissal:
De visschen zijn voorgesteld te liggen op den voorgrond van een landschap. Deze platen zijn zeer schilderachtig behandeld, en getuigen van het talent des schrijvers als kunstenaar. De voorwerpen zijn echter niet zelden in verkorting voorgesteld, de vinnen niet uitgespannen, en de détails meestal opgeofferd aan de schilderachtige uitwerking van het geheel; en het is om deze redenen, dat zijne platen meer den naam van fraaije prenten, dan van wetenschappelijke teekeningen verdienen.
The fishes are depicted lying in the foreground of a landscape. These plates are very artistic, and showcase the author’s talent as an artist. However, the objects often show foreshortening, the fins are not spread, and the details are usually sacrificed for the sake of the artistic effect of the whole; it is for these reasons that his plates are beautiful more than they are scientific.51
In other words, Jardine’s plates may be fine works of art, but they are useless as species images.
The practical requirements of images in systematic natural history depend on what the image is meant to convey, the taxonomic group being treated, and a host of other factors I have no room to go into here. I hope to have shown that it is useful to draw a fairly rigorous distinction between species images, specimen images and preservation images (though they can and do sometimes overlap), as each plays a different role in natural history, and some confusion about these roles exists in the scholarly literature. Moreover, different taxonomic groups also yield different rules for proper conduct in the production of images. For instance, making species images from preserved ichthyological specimens consists for an important part in leaving out ‘accidental’ characteristics and emphasizing ‘essential’ ones, whereas in botany it often consists of combining features from several specimens into one, in order to show several growth stages or season-specific features in a single figure. I have emphasized these subfield-specific rules by focusing my discussion on ichthyology and palaeontology, which have traditionally been understudied. General statements about developments in the rules of image-making in natural history thus need to be supported by examples across the discipline.
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Gassó Miracle M.E., “The Significance of Temminck’s Work on Biogeography: Early Nineteenth Century Natural History in Leiden, the Netherlands”, Journal of the History of Biology 41 (2008) 677–716.
Gassó Miracle M.E., “On whose authority? Temminck’s debates on Zoological Classification and Nomenclature: 1820–1850”, Journal of the History of Biology 44 (2011) 445–481.
Gijzen A., ’s Rijks Museum van Natuurlijke Historie: 1820–1915 (Rotterdam: 1938).
Halbertsma H.J., “Normaal en Abnormal: Hermaphroditismus bij de Visschen”, Verslagen en Mededeelingen der Koninklijke Akademie van Wetenschappen 16 (1863) 165–178.
Hartley F., “Notes on a Specimen of Alepisaurus aesculapius Bean, From the Coast of San Luis Obispo County, California”, Proceedings of the California Academy of Sciences, second series, 5 (1895) 49–50.
Holthuis L.B. – Pietsch T.W., Les planches inédites de poissons et autres animaux marins de l’Indo-Ouest Pacifique d’Isaac Johannes Lamotius (Paris: 2006).
Huxley T.H., Man’s Place in Nature and Other Essays (London: 1906).
Jardine William, British Salmonidae (Edinburgh: 1839–1842).
Kendig C. – Witteveen J. 2020. “The history and philosophy of taxonomy as an information science”, History & Philosophy of Life Sciences 42.3 (2020) 40.
Klaver C., Inseparable Friends in Life and Death: The Life and Work of Heinrich Kuhl (1797–1821) and Johan Conrad van Hasselt (1797–1823), students of prof. Theodorus van Swinderen (Groningen: 2007).
Lacépède Bernard Germain de, Histoire naturelle des poissons, 12 vols (Paris, Plassant: 1798–1803).
Lack H.W., “The Botanical Illustrations of Franz Scheidl (fl. 1770–1795)”, Archives of Natural History 47.1 (2020) 51–62.
Lederer R.J., The Art of the Bird: The History of Ornithological Art through Forty Artists (Chicago IL: 2019).
Lidth de Jeude T.W. van, “On a Large Specimen of Orthtragoriscus on the Dutch Coast”, Notes from the Leyden Museum XII (1890) 189–195.
Müller-Wille S., “Collection and Collation: Theory and Practice of Linnaean Botany”, Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical Sciences 38 (2007) 541–562.
Neste A. van, “Practising Taxonomy: Joel Asaph Allen and Species-Making (W.T. Stearn Prize 2017)”, Archives of Natural History 45.2 (2018) 197–212.
Nickelsen K., “Draughtsmen, Botanists and Nature: Constructing Eighteenth-Century Botanical Illustrations”, Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical Sciences 37 (2006) 1–25.
Oijen M.J.P. van, “Data on the Genesis of the Atlas Ichthyologique From a Little Known French Paper by P. Bleeker”, The Raffles Bulletin of Zoology, Supplement no. 13 (2005) 3–8.
Owen R., A History of British Fossil Reptiles, 4 vols (London: 1849–1884).
Pond Arthur., “A Letter to the Right Honourable George Earl of Macclesfield, President of the Royal Society, Concerning the Stones Mentioned in the Preceding Article”, Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London 49.1 (1756) 297–298.
Prince S.A. (ed.), Of Elephants and Roses: French Natural History 1790–1830 (Philadelphia PA: 2013).
Richards R.A., The Species Problem: A Philosophical Analysis (Cambridge: 2010).
Rijks M. – Smith P.J. – Egmond F., (eds.), Fish & Fiction: Aquatic Animals between Science and Imagination (1500–1900) (Leiden: 2018).
Roberts T.R., “The Freshwater Fishes of Java, as Observed by Kuhl and van Hasselt in 1820–23”, Zoologische Verhandelingen 285.29 (1993) 1–94.
Rudwick M., The Meaning of Fossils: Episodes in the History of Palaeontology (Chicago – London: 1976).
Rudwick M., “Georges Cuvier’s Paper Museum of Fossil Bones”, Archives of Natural History 27.1 (2000) 51–68.
Schlegel Hermann, Verhandeling over de Vereischten van Natuurkundige Afbeeldingen (Haarlem: 1849).
Scudder S.H., “Look at your fish”, Every Saturday: A Journal of Choice Reading (1874).
Secord A., “Pressed into Service: Specimens, Space, and Seeing in Botanical Practice”, in Livingstone D.N. – Withers C.W.J. (eds.), Geographies of Nineteenth-Century Science. (Chicago – London: 2011) 283–310.
Stamos D.N., “Pre-Darwinian Taxonomy and Essentialism – A Reply to Mary Winsor”, Biology & Philosophy 20 (2005) 79–96.
Stamos D.N., Darwin and the Nature of Species (Albany NY: 2007).
Stamos D.N., “Darwin’s Species Concept Revisited”, in Pavlinov I.Y. (ed.), The Species Problem: Ongoing Issues (Rijeka: 2013) 251–280.
Starr Jordan D. – Warren Evermann B., The Fishes of North and Middle America: A Descriptive Catalogue, part 4 (Washington: 1900).
Temminck Coenraad Jacob, Voorschrift Hoedanig te Handelen met Voorwerpen van Natuurlijke Historie, ten Einde Dezelve Behoorlijk te Verzenden en voor Bederf te Bewaren (Leiden: 1825).
Trijp D. van, Captured on Paper. Fish Books, Natural History and Questions of Demarcation in Eighteenth-Century Europa (ca. 1680–1820) (Ph.D. Dissertation, Leiden University: 2021).
Velden F. van der, “De Prijsvragen en Verhandelingen van Teylers Tweede Genootschap 1781–1866 (VI): Tekenkunde.” Teylers Museum Magazijn 13.1 (1995) 11–15.
Veth H.J., Overzicht van Hetgeen, in het Bijzonder door Nederland, Gedaan is voor de Kennis der Fauna van Nederlandsch Indië (Leiden: 1879).
Weber A., “Collecting Colonial Nature. European Naturalists and the Netherlands Indies in the Early Nineteenth Century”, BMGN – Low Countries Historical Review 134.3 (2019) 72–95.
Weber M., Siboga Expeditie vol. 57: Die Fische der Siboga-Expedition (Leiden: 1913).
Wilkins J.S., Species: A History of the Idea (Berkeley – Los Angeles – London: 2009).
Witteveen J., “Suppressing Synonymy With a Homonym: The Emergence of the Nomenclatural Type Concept in Nineteenth Century Natural History”, Journal of the History of Biology 49 (2016) 135–189.
Witteveen J., “Objectivity, Historicity, Taxonomy”, Erkenntnis 83.3 (2018) 445–463.
Wyville Thomson C., Report on the Scientific Results of the Challenger Expedition. Zoology, vol. 1 (London: 1880).
Schlegel H., Verhandeling over de Vereischten van Natuurkundige Afbeeldingen (Haarlem: 1849); Van der Velden F., “De Prijsvragen en Verhandelingen van Teylers Tweede Genootschap 1781–1866”, Teylers Museum Magazijn 13.1 (1995) 11–15.
Schlegel, Verhandeling 3. All translations from Dutch are mine.
Schlegel, Verhandeling 56, 58.
Schlegel, Verhandeling 6–7. Translated by the author.
See, for instance, Daston L. – Galison P., Objectivity (Cambridge MA – London: 2007), ch. 2; Farber P.L., The Emergence of Ornithology as a Scientific Discipline: 1760–1850 (Dordrecht: 1982), ch. 7; Stamos D.N., “Pre-Darwinian Taxonomy and Essentialism – A Reply to Mary Winsor”, Biology & Philosophy 20 (2005) 79–96. Indeed, the first two directors of the RMNH, C.J. Temminck (1778–1858) and Schlegel, are generally held to represent both sides of this development, with Temminck viewing species primarily in terms of their typical, essential characteristics, and Schlegel being much more interested in variability. See Gassó Miracle M.E., “The Significance of Temminck’s Work on Biogeography: Early Nineteenth Century Natural History in Leiden, the Netherlands”, Journal of the History of Biology 41 (2008) 695–700; Gijzen A., ’s Rijks Museum van Natuurlijke Historie: 1820–1915 (Rotterdam: 1938) 43–63.
‘In 1846 leunde hij kennelijk nog op het “oude” soortbegrip’. Ahrens H., “De Natuur Stilzetten op Papier. Wetenschappelijk Illustratoren van Naturalis Leggen de Dierenwereld Vast”, Tijdschrift voor Mediageschiedenis 12 (2009) 233–274, here 240–241.
See Farber P.L., Finding Order in Nature: The Naturalist Tradition from Linnaeus to E.O. Wilson (Baltimore, MD: 2000); Gassó Miracle M.E., “On Whose Authority? Temminck’s Debates on Zoological Classification and Nomenclature: 1820–1850”, Journal of the History of Biology 44 (2011) 445–481.
For a small sample, see Bleichmar D., Visible Empire: Botanical Expeditions and Visual Culture in the Hispanic Enlightenment (Chicago: 2012); Fischer H. – Remmert V.R. – Wolschke-Bulmahn J. (eds.), Gardens, Knowledge and the Sciences in the Early Modern Period (Cham: 2016); Lack H.W., “The Botanical Illustrations of Franz Scheidl (fl. 1770–1795)”, Archives of Natural History 47.1 (2020) 51–62; Nickelsen K., “Draughtsmen, Botanists and Nature: Constructing Eighteenth-Century Botanical Illustrations”, Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical Sciences 37 (2006) 1–25; Secord A., “Pressed into Service: Specimens, Space, and Seeing in Botanical Practice”, in Livingstone D.N. – Withers C.W.J. (eds.), Geographies of Nineteenth-Century Science (Chicago – London: 2011) 283–310.
For examples from ornithology, see Cooper J.A., “Edward Neale (1833–1904): Bird Illustrator”, Archives of Natural History 46.2 (2019) 283–297; Lederer R.J., The Art of the Bird: The History of Ornithological Art through Forty Artists (Chicago IL: 2019). For palaeontology: Davidson J.P., A History of Paleontology Illustration (Bloomington IN: 2008); Dawson G., Show me the Bone: Reconstructing Prehistoric Monsters in Nineteenth-Century Britain and America (Chicago – London 2016). For ichthyology: Aronowksy L., “On Drawing Dead Fish”, Environmental History 21 (2016) 542–551; Holthuis L.B. – Pietsch T.W. Les planches inédites de poissons et autres animaux marins de l’Indo-Ouest Pacifique d’Isaac Johannes Lamotius (Paris: 2006); Rijks M. – Smith P.J. – Egmond F. (eds.), Fish & Fiction: Aquatic Animals between Science and Imagination (1500–1900) (Leiden: 2018).
As discussed in Prince S.A. (ed.), Of Elephants and Roses: French Natural History 1790–1830 (Philadelphia, PA: 2013).
Indeed, these stylistic norms are so pervasive in 19th-century systematic natural history that even relatively subtle departures are quite noticeable. For instance, William Anderson notes of a number of ichthyological plates belonging to the American herpetologist John Edwards Holbrook, that ‘the artist, whoever he/she may have been, may have had little or no previous experience in illustrating fishes. This supposition is supported by the fact that on each of the twelve fishes illustrated both pelvic fins are fully or almost fully erect, each being clearly visible, whereas the usual way of illustrating these is to display one fin only, frequently only partially erect or lying against the body.’ Anderson W.D., “John Edwards Holbrook’s Senckenberg Plates and the Fishes they Portray”, Archives of Natural History 30.1 (2003) 1–12, quotation on page 10.
Schlegel, Verhandeling 43.
Schlegel, Verhandeling 5–7; Ahrens, “De Natuur Stilzetten” 235, 240.
On examples of errors in natural history images, see Allmon W.D., “The Evolution of Accuracy in Natural History Illustration: Reversal of Printed Illustrations of Snails and Crabs in Pre-Linnaean Works Suggests Indifference to Morphological Detail”, Archives of Natural History 34.1 (2007) 174–191; Anderson, “John Edwards Holbrook’s Senckenberg Plates”. Indeed, Schlegel devotes a section of most chapters of his Verhandeling to criticizing inaccurate images in other works.
Artedi P., Ichthyologia, sive opera omnia de piscibus (Leiden, Conradus Wishoff: 1738). See Van Trijp D., Captured on Paper. Fish Books, Natural History and Questions of Demarcation in Eighteenth-Century Europa (ca. 1680–1820) (Ph.D. Dissertation, Leiden University: 2021) 149–159.
Some of the most important are Bloch M.E., Allgemeine Naturgeschichte der Fische, 12 vols. (Berlin, Realschule, J. Morino: 1782–1795); Lacépède B.G., Histoire naturelle des poissons, 12 vols (Paris, Plassan: 1798–1803); Cuvier G. – Valenciennes A., Histoire naturelle des poissons, 22 vols (Paris – Strasbourg: 1828–1849); Bleeker P., Atlas ichthyologique des Indes Orientales Néêrlandaises, publié sous les auspices du Gouvernement Colonial Néêrlandais, 9 vols. (Amsterdam: 1862–1878).
Exceptions include sexually dimorphic characters, which were commonly used in bird classification. See Lederer, Art of the Bird.
See Van Neste A., “Practising Taxonomy: Joel Asaph Allen and Species-Making (W.T. Stearn Prize 2017)”, Archives of Natural History 45.2 (2018) 197–212; Scudder S.H., “Look at your fish”, Every Saturday: A Journal of Choice Reading (1874).
‘caudali profunde incisa lobis acutis, lobo superiore quam lobo inferiore longiore vulgo in filum producta’; ‘caudali profunde incisa lobis acutis radio externo in filum producto, filo superior filo inferior longiore’. Translated by the author from Bleeker, Atlas Ichthyologique vol. 2, 55, 57.
Schlegel, Verhandeling 11.
Bleeker P., “Notice sur l’Atlas Ichthyologique des Indes Orientales Néerlandaises”, Jaarboek van de Koninklijke Nederlandse Akademie van Wetenschappen 1877 (1878) 133–144, quotation on pages 136–137. Translation taken from Van Oijen M.J.P., “Data on the Genesis of the Atlas Ichthyologique from a Little Known French Paper by P. Bleeker”, The Raffles Bulletin of Zoology, Supplement no. 13 (2005) 3–8, quotation on page 5.
Agassiz L., Recherches sur les poissons fossiles, 5 vols. (Neuchatel: 1833–1843).
‘… représentent les poissons fossiles tels que je les ai observés et tels qu’ils existent dans les collections’, in Agassiz, Recherches vol. 1, xiv. Agassiz distinguishes these specimen images from two other categories of images in his work: idealized anatomical studies of living fishes (for comparison), and line drawings representing genera of extinct fishes, extracted from the general characteristics of the species he has described. This last category deserves an article onto itself, but for the purposes of the current one it can be seen as closely related to species images, for these genus images behave the same and have a similar function to species images, just one taxonomic level higher. See Ibidem, xiv–xv.
Agassiz, Recherches sur les poissons fossiles, vol. 2, p. 238.
Schlegel, Verhandeling 62–63.
For other examples of 19th-century fossil species books with specimen images, see Cuvier G., Recherches sur les ossemens fossiles des quadrupèdes, où l’on rétablit les caractères de plusieurs espèces d’animaux que les révolutions du globe paroissent avoir détruites, 4 vols. (Paris: 1812); Owen R., A History of British Fossil Reptiles, 4 vols. (London: 1849–1884).
Going back to the 16th century. See Rudwick M., The Meaning of Fossils: Episodes in the History of Palaeontology (Chicago – London: 1976), chapters 1 and 2.
Pond A., “A Letter to the Right Honourable George Earl of Macclesfield, President of the Royal Society, Concerning the Stones Mentioned in the Preceding Article”, Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London 49.1 (1756) 297–298, quotation on page 298.
For other examples of specimen images in ichthyology, see Van Lidth de Jeude T.W., “On a Large Specimen of Orthtragoriscus on the Dutch Coast”, Notes from the Leyden Museum XII (1890) 189–195 (an exceptionally large sunfish specimen); Hartley F., “Notes on a Specimen of Alepisaurus aesculapius Bean, From the Coast of San Luis Obispo County, California”, Proceedings of the California Academy of Sciences, second series, 5 (1895) 49–50 (a new specimen of a very rare lancetfish).
See Secord, “Pressed into Service”; Witteveen J., “Objectivity, Historicity, Taxonomy”, Erkenntnis 83.3 (2018) 445–463.
See Aronowky, “Drawing Dead Fish”. Indeed, Schlegel (Verhandeling 44) points out that images of fishes (and amphibians) are often published on uncoloured plates, if the animals had not been observed alive but had to be drawn based only on preserved specimens.
“[men] duidde op de Etiquette daarenboven de kleuren aan, welke den visch, versch zijnde, eigen was,” in Temminck C.J., Voorschrift Hoedanig te Handelen met Voorwerpen van Natuurlijke Historie, ten Einde Dezelve Behoorlijk te Verzenden en voor Bederf te Bewaren (Leiden: 1825) 16.
Agassiz L., Directions for Collecting Fishes and Other Objects of Natural History (Cambridge, MA: 1853) 2.
Both images are from the archive of the Natuurkundige Commissie, a commission tasked with exploring the Dutch East Indies during the period 1820–1850. The call number of Fig. 25.6A is NNM001001132_006, that of Fig. 25.6B is NNM001000530_001. For more on the Natuurkundige Commissie, see Veth H.J., Overzicht van Hetgeen, in het Bijzonder door Nederland, Gedaan is voor de Kennis der Fauna van Nederlandsch Indië (Leiden: 1879) 20–123; Weber A., “Collecting Colonial Nature. European Naturalists and the Netherlands Indies in the Early Nineteenth Century”, BMGN – Low Countries Historical Review 134.3 (2019) 72–95.
The naturalists are Heinrich Kuhl (1797–1821) and Johan Conrad van Hasselt (1797–1823). See Klaver C., Inseparable Friends in Life and Death: The Life and Work of Heinrich Kuhl (1797–1821) and Johan Conrad van Hasselt (1797–1823), students of prof. Theodorus van Swinderen (Groningen: 2007).
Cuvier – Valenciennes, Histoire naturelle; Roberts T.R., “The Freshwater Fishes of Java, as Observed by Kuhl and van Hasselt in 1820–23”, Zoologische Verhandelingen 285.29 (1993) 1–94.
The topic of the function and history of preservation images deserves a treatment of its own. The main problem with the small literature on these images is that they are not always explicitly recognized as tools for preservation. So, when Aronowsky asks, in her paper on a collection of preservation images by the artist Joseph Drayton, ‘Why did Drayton choose to portray these animals in a state he knew to be transitory?’ (Aronowksy, “Drawing Dead Fish” 548–549). The answer is, presumably, because the colours he thus preserved were deemed relevant for classifying the fishes.
Daston – Galison, Objectivity 42–50.
Ibidem 63–68; 105–113.
Ibidem 109; 111. See Secord, “Pressed into Service”, for a more detailed treatment of illustrations and types in botanical practice. The type method involved the identification of a single specimen (or a few) as the undisputed namebearer(s) of a species. That is, any disputes about what a particular plant or animal should be called could be solved unambiguously by reference to this particular object, the type specimen, stored safely in a collection. See Farber P.L., “The Type-Concept in Zoology During the First Half of the Nineteenth Century”, Journal of the History of Biology 9.1 (1976) 93–119; Daston L., “Type Specimens and Scientific Memory”, Critical Inquiry 31 (2004) 153–182; Witteveen J., “Suppressing Synonymy With a Homonym: The Emergence of the Nomenclatural Type Concept in Nineteenth Century Natural History” Journal of the History of Biology 49 (2016) 135–189.
Müller-Wille S., “Collection and Collation: Theory and Practice of Linnaean Botany”, Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical Sciences 38 (2007) 541–562; Secord, “Pressed into Service”.
See Witteveen, “Objectivity, Historicity, Taxonomy” for a related critique of Daston & Galison’s treatment of type specimens.
Because of their uniqueness, fossils were often quite valuable (especially those of large vertebrates), and specimen images thus played an important role in making these singular objects available by proxy to other naturalists. See Rudwick M., “Georges Cuvier’s Paper Museum of Fossil Bones”, Archives of Natural History 27.1 (2000) 51–68.
Dawson, Show me the Bone 198–207.
Richards R.A., The Species Problem: A Philosophical Analysis (Cambridge: 2010); Wilkins J.S., Species: A History of the Idea (Berkeley – Los Angeles – London: 2009).
David Stamos is one of the few authors writing on Darwin’s species concepts who pays an appreciable amount of attention to the barnacle monograph, Darwin’s primary taxonomic work, in Stamos D.N., Darwin and the Nature of Species (Albany NY: 2007); Stamos D.N., “Darwin’s Species Concept Revisited”, in Pavlinov I.Y. (ed.), The Species Problem: Ongoing Issues (Rijeka: 2013) 251–280. He writes: ‘[I] go beyond Darwin’s definitions of “species” in his writings and pay careful attention to his use. In the famous words of Wittgenstein which I here paraphrase, when it comes to what a word means in a language community don’t ask for the meaning, ask for the use’. Stamos, “Darwin’s Species Concept” 253.
Indeed, by the turn of the century ichthyological species books still use species images. See, for instance, Starr Jordan D. – Warren Evermann B., The Fishes of North and Middle America: A Descriptive Catalogue, part 4 (Washington: 1900); Weber M., Siboga Expeditie vol. 57: Die Fische der Siboga-Expedition (Leiden: 1913); Wyville Thomson C., Report on the Scientific Results of the Challenger Expedition. Zoology, vol. 1 (London: 1880).
There is a growing literature on the practical aspects of the production of species accounts in systematic natural history. See, for instance, Charmantier I. – Müller-Wille S., “Carl Linnaeus’s Botanical Paper Slips”, Intellectual History Review 24.2 (2014) 215–238; Van Neste, “Practising Taxonomy”. As Kendig and Witteveen write: ‘Attending to taxonomic practices allows one to discover implicit norms in taxonomic information processing activities that remain hidden from the more abstract theoretical or metaphysical treatments.’ Kendig C. – Witteveen J. 2020. “The History and Philosophy of Taxonomy as an Information Science”, History & Philosophy of Life Sciences 42.3 (2020) 40, quotation on page 3.
Huxley T.H., Man’s Place in Nature and Other Essays (London: 1906) 226. He continues: ‘If in a state of nature you find any two groups of living beings, which are separated one from the other by some constantly-recurring characteristic, I don’t care how slight or trivial, so long as it is defined and constant, and does not depend on sexual peculiarities, then all naturalists agree in calling them two species; that is what is meant by the word species – that is to say, it is, for the practical naturalist, a mere question of structural differences.’
Jardine W., British Salmonidae (Edinburgh: 1839–1842).
Schlegel, Verhandeling 44.