“Objects are distinguished and known” · Carl Linnaeus, Systema Naturae (First Edition) (Leyden: 1735).
“The true and only science” · Jacques Roger, Buffon: A Life in Natural History (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1997), 83.
“a luster rarely accorded” · Jacques Roger, Buffon: A Life in Natural History (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1997), 433.
First came a crier and six bailiffs · Charles Coulston Gillispie, Science and Polity in France at the End of the Old Regime (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1980), 144.
“You remember, gentlemen” · Henri Nadault de Buffon, Correspondance Inédite de Buffon (Paris: Hachette, 1860), 615.
“four bright lamps” · Otis E. Fellows and Stephen F. Milliken, Buffon (New York: Twayne Publishers, 1972), 16.
“the last to vanish” · Charles Augustin Saint-Beuve, Causeries du Lundi (London: George Routledge & Sons, 1909), 32.
“The history of science presents” · John Herbert Eddy, “Buffon, Organic Change, and the Races of Man,” diss., The University of Oklahoma, 1977, 20.
“Monsieur Buffon has never spoken” · Fellows and Milliken, Buffon, 65.
“the whole extent of Nature” · John Lyon and Phillip R. Sloan, From Natural History to the History of Nature: Readings from Buffon and His Critics (Notre Dame, Ind.: University of Notre Dame Press, 1981), 307.
“Good writing is good thinking” · John Galsworthy, “The New Spirit in the Drama,” The Living Age, 1913, 264.
the most popular nonfiction author in French history · Roger (Buffon, 184) calls Histoire Naturelle “the most widespread work of the eighteenth century, beating…even the better-known works of Voltaire and Rousseau.” Fellows, tallies 52 complete editions of the work published in France alone, and more than 325 full or partial editions published in translation. In a survey of French private libraries conducted in the nineteenth century, Histoire Naturelle was the second-most common item found on shelves, exceeded only by a French-language encyclopedia. See Otis Fellows, From Voltaire to la Nouvelle Critique: Problems and Personalities (Geneva: Librairie Droz, 1970), 16.
“God himself has guided him” · Carl Linnaeus, Vita Carolia Linnaei (1760), trans. Ann-Mari Jönsson, 146.
“The greatest obstacles to the advancement” · Samuel Butler, Evolution, Old and New (London: Hardwicke and Bogue, 1879), 138.
“Nature, displayed in its full extent” · Georges-Louis Leclerc le Comte de Buffon, Histoire Naturelle des Oiseaux (Paris, 1770), vol. 1, trans. Phillip R. Sloan, 394.
“Flowers became Carl’s first and choicest” · Theodor Magnus Fries and Benjamin Daydon Jackson, Linnaeus: The Story of His Life (London: H.F. & G. Witherby, 1923), 7.
“The Bible is the Book” · “Sketch of the Life of Carl von Linne,” Edward L. Morris, The Bicentenary of the Birth of Carolus Linnaeus, Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences, 47.
“The guests seated themselves” · Richard Pulteney, A General View of the Writings of Linnaeus (London: J. Mawman, 1805), 512.
“preferring stripes and punishments” · Ibid., 513.
“Flora seems to have lavished all her beauties” · Ibid., 511.
“hoping to hear from the preceptors” · Ibid., 514.
“What are you examining?” · Linnaeus recounted each exchange of this conversation, although he did not cast it as dialogue. Ibid., 517.
“His eyes were full of plants” · John Muir, “Linnaeus,” in The World’s Best Literature, ed. John W. Cunliffe and Ashley Thorndike (New York: The Knickerbocker Press, 1917), 9078.
“He loved me not as a student” · Heinz Goerke, Linnaeus (New York: Scribner, 1973), 17.
“the thickness of a human hair” · John Wright, The Naming of the Shrew: A Curious History of Latin Names (London: Bloomsbury, 2014), 29.
“obliged to trust to chance” · Pulteney, A General View of the Writings of Linnaeus, 517.
“One can cite of his childhood” · Fellows and Milliken, Buffon, 40.
“As for me, I shall do whatever lies” · Ibid., 46.
“showed from the beginning a great disposition” · Saint-Beuve, Causeries du Lundi, 32.
“any gentleman who struck another” · John Gideon Millingen, The History of Duelling (London: Samuel Bentley, 1841), 189.
“We immediately started talking” · Wilfrid Blunt, Linnaeus: The Compleat Naturalist (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2001), 31.
“tall, slow and serious” · Gunnar Broberg, “Brown-Eyed, Nimble, Hasty, Did Everything Promptly”: Carl Linnaeus 1708–1778 (Uppsala: Uppsala University, 1990), 9.
“the legs of the Birde hanging out” · John Gerard, The Herbal, or Generall Historie of Plantes (London: Adam Islip, 1636), 1587.
“fruit whereof is a wool exceeding in beauty” · Herodotus and George Rawllinson, The History: A New English Version (New York: D. Appleton, 1889), 410.
“This is the highest pitch of humane reason” · Arthur O. Lovejoy, The Great Chain of Being: A Study of the History of an Idea (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1976), 232.
“To know a flighty Latin word” · Lisbet Koerner, Linnaeus: Nature and Nation (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2009), 34.
could all discuss the same tree · Unfortunately, Theophrastus himself could not have joined in the conversation. Being Greek, he would likely have used the word asvéstis.
“I am no poet” · Blunt, Linnaeus: The Compleat Naturalist, 32.
“See how every bird” · Ibid.
he still planned to kill Rosén · Dietrich Heinrich Stoever, The Life of Sir Charles Linnaeus (London: E. Hobson, 1794), 41.
“The Duke of Kingston has hitherto” · Roger, Buffon: A Life in Natural History, 9.
“According to the law of custom” · Edward Gibbon, The Miscellaneous Works of Edward Gibbon, Esq. (London: B. Blake, 1837), 71.
“He is an extremely likable man whose intelligence” · Catherine Ostler, The Duchess Countess (New York: Atria Books, 2022), 132.
“Rome is at this hour in all its glory” · Fellows and Milliken, Buffon, 43.
approximately thirty million dollars today · Translating past amounts into contemporary values is notoriously subjective, as prices of different items change at different rates. I have pegged this estimate to the cost of hiring laborers at the time, as that quickly became Buffon’s chief expenditure.
“If you were to cover my gardens” · Roger, Buffon: A Life in Natural History, 24.
“Through these keen, reasoned and sustained experiments” · Lee Alan Dugatkin, Mr. Jefferson and the Giant Moose: Natural History in Early America (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2019), 15.
“Buffon’s originality here is considerable” · Roger, Buffon: A Life in Natural History, 40.
“Genius,” he quipped · Ibid., 4.
“I sigh for the tranquility” · Ibid., 30.
“I have long been predicting” · Stephen F. Milliken, Buffon and the British (New York: Columbia University Press, 1965), 56.
“neither passion nor weakness” · Voltaire, A Philosophical Dictionary (London: John and Henry L. Hunt, 1824), 109.
“Give me some linen” · Henri Nadault de Buffon, Correspondance Inédite de Buffon (Paris: Hachette, 1860), 7.
“There, in a bare room” · Saint-Beuve, Causeries du Lundi, 37.
“He walked around thinking” · Nadault de Buffon, Correspondance Inédite de Buffon, 628.
“I burn everything” · Lyon and Sloan, From Natural History to the History of Nature: Readings from Buffon and His Critics, 362.
“was my whole pleasure” · Ibid., 371.
“Never have I known a worse road” · Blunt, Linnaeus: The Compleat Naturalist, 45.
“the whole land laughs and sings” · Ibid., 41.
“All the elements were against me” · Daniel C. Carr, Linnæus and Jussieu (West Strand, U.K.: John W. Parker, 1844), 87.
“the gnats kept inflicting their stings” · Carl Linnaeus, Lachesis Lapponica, or, a Tour in Lapland (London: White and Cochrane, 1811), 142.
“like all people addicted to fishing” · Carl Linnaeus, Travels (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1979), 23.
“lowly, insignificant, disregarded” · Londa Schiebinger, Plants and Empire: Colonial Bioprospecting in the Atlantic World (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2004b), 202.
“abundantly sufficient for all the animals” · Society of Gentlemen in Scotland, Encyclopaedia Britannica (1771), 425.
“Close to the road” · Linnaeus, Lachesis Lapponica, 191.
“Oh, how many weary steps we took” · Blunt, Linnaeus: The Compleat Naturalist, 67.
“I said good-bye to Uppsala Academy” · Fries and Jackson, Linnaeus: The Story of His Life, 129.
“All that this skillful man thinks” · Carl Linnaeus, Musa Cliffortiana (Vienna: A.R.G. Ganter Verlag K. G., 2007), 16.
“Many people said it was the only one” · Blunt, Linnaeus: The Compleat Naturalist, 89.
“a natural truth” · Peter Dance, Animal Fakes and Frauds (Berkshire, U.K.: Sampson Low, 1976), 35.
“in no way a work of art” · Paula Findlen, “Inventing Nature: Commerce, Art, and Science in the Early Modern Cabinet of Curiosities,” in Merchants and Marvels: Commerce, Science and Art in Early Modern Europe, ed. Pamela H. Smith and Paul Findlen (New York: Routledge, 2002), 319.
“O Great God” · Norah Gourlie, The Prince of Botanists: Carl Linnaeus (London: H.F. & G. Witherby, 1953), 119.
“Linnaeus must hasten his departure” · Ibid.
“bloaters, bilberries, and degrees” · Blunt, Linnaeus: The Compleat Naturalist, 94.
“in order to frequent the famous” · Ibid., 96.
“Our tears showed what joy we felt” · Ibid., 98.
the equivalent of $8,000 · The less extravagant among them rented pineapples by the evening, to display as prestige objects during dinner parties.
“such a wealth of plants” · Goerke, Linnaeus, 29.
“I happen to have two copies” · Blunt, Linnaeus: The Compleat Naturalist, 101.
“When I saw the lifeless” · Donald Culross Peattie, Green Laurels: The Lives and Achievements of the Great Naturalists (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1936), 109.
“The first step in wisdom” (and subsequent quotes) · Linnaeus, Systema Naturae (First Edition).
“showed the first signs of flowering” · Linnaeus, Musa Cliffortiana, 70.
“Nature has never granted” · Ibid., 89.
no small amount of praise for himself · The work begins with a verse. (“O Banana, more beautiful than your beautiful name…the credit, which is due to LINNAEUS alone, must be remembered by posterity.”)
“that goddess of the ancients” · Ibid., 109.
“one has found the means” · E. C. Spaary, Utopia’s Garden: French Natural History from Old Regime to Revolution (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2000), 24.
“Facies Americana.” · Roger, Buffon: A Life in Natural History, 51.
“Behold Charles Linnaeus, the prince of botany” · Stoever, The Life of Sir Charles Linnaeus, 132.
“the man who has thrown all botany into confusion” · Blunt, Linnaeus: The Compleat Naturalist, 113.
“I have never pretended” · Stoever, The Life of Sir Charles Linnaeus, 111.
“become a Frenchman” · Pulteney, A General View of the Writings of Linnaeus, 534.
“I am the lost child” · Roger, Buffon: A Life in Natural History, 32.
“received me as a stranger” · Blunt, Linnaeus: The Compleat Naturalist, 130.
“loathsome harlotry” · Ibid., 121.
“What a fool have I been” · James Edward Smith, A Selection of the Correspondence of Linnaeus and Other Naturalists, from the Original Manuscripts (London: Longman, Hurst, Rees, Orme and Brown, 1821), 320.
“Aha! said I, Esculapius” · Ibid., 335.
“A night with Venus” · Blunt, Linnaeus: The Compleat Naturalist, 131.
“My adverse fate” · Smith, A Selection of the Correspondence of Linnaeus and Other Naturalists, from the Original Manuscripts, 335.
“alas, almost all the young men” · Goerke, Linnaeus, 36.
“I have succeeded in obtaining quickly” · Frans A. Stafleu, Linnaeus and Linnaeans: The Spreading of Their Ideas in Systematic Botany, 1735–1789 (Utrecht, The Netherlands: A. Oosthoek’s Uitgeversmaataschappij, N.V. First edition, 1971), 17.
“All the medical world” · Roger, Buffon: A Life in Natural History, 46.
“The Intendancy of the Jardin du Roi” · Ibid., 45.
“I now grew fond again of plants” · Stoever, The Life of Sir Charles Linnaeus, 145.
“Botany is very difficult” · Linnaeus, Musa Cliffortiana, 27.
“I was obliged to publish” (and subsequent quotes) · Carl Linnaeus, Systema Naturae (Second Edition) (Stockholm: 1740).
“beautiful in body” · Michael Keevak, Becoming Yellow: A Short History of Racial Thinking (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2011), 24.
“white like us” · Ibid., 27.
“the color of Africans” · Ibid., 29.
“they of the most inward provinces” · Ibid., 33.
“more yealow…like unto the Almans” · Ibid., 32.
“Rosén, who cannot even recognize a nettle” · Goerke, Linnaeus, 39.
“By God’s Grace I am now released” · Mary Gribbin and John Gribbin, Flower Hunters (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008), 49.
“You may now devote yourself entirely to the service of Flora” · James Edward Smith, Memoir and Correspondence (London: Longman, Rees, Orme, Brown, Green and Longman, 1832), 425.
“more like an owl’s nest” · Goerke, Linnaeus, 41.
“gives honey without bees” · Eva Crane, The World History of Beekeeping and Honey Hunting (New York: Routledge, 1999), 493.
“He carries himself marvelously” · Roger, Buffon: A Life in Natural History, 32.
“His manner to public men” · Alpheus Spring Packard, Lamarck, the Founder of Evolution (New York: Longmans, Green, 1901), 22.
he hired a woman · By some accounts Basseporte was already painting in the Jardin (in an unofficial capacity), but Buffon made the position official.
“Nature gives plants their existence” · Uncredited, “Necrologe des Artistes et des Curieux,” Revue universelle des arts 13 (1861), 142.
“The king’s cabinet is not rich” · Mary Terall, Catching Nature in the Act: Réaumur and the Practice of Natural History in the Eighteenth Century (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2014), 193.
“subsist (in the nature of things)” · Ralph M. McInerny, A History of Western Philosophy (Notre Dame, Ind.: University of Notre Dame Press, 1963), 357.
“The abstract does not exist” · Roger, Buffon: A Life in Natural History, 133.
“If there are no cleavages in nature” · Lovejoy, The Great Chain of Being: A Study of the History of an Idea, 231.
“Linnaeus’ method is of all the least sensible” · Eddy, “Buffon, Organic Change, and the Races of Man,” 30.
“The study of nature supposes two qualities” · Lyon and Sloan, From Natural History to the History of Nature: Readings from Buffon and His Critics, 98.
“It is not in such terms” · Roger, Buffon: A Life in Natural History, 211.
“all the objects presented to us” · Fellows and Milliken, Buffon, 83.
“The [first three] parts” · Lyon and Sloan, From Natural History to the History of Nature: Readings from Buffon and His Critics, 307.
“I look forward to the subsequent” · Letter of Linnaeus to Jussieu, archived as L1352, Box 510, Linnaean correspondence, Uppsala University Library. Latin trans. by the author.
“He came to Uppsala quite young” · Fries and Jackson, Linnaeus: The Story of His Life, 232.
The ill-fated American bear · Linnaeus wept at the loss, and for the rest of his life kept a portrait of Sjupp on prominent display in his household.
“officers of Flora” · Koerner, Linnaeus: Nature and Nation, 49.
a trumpet was sounded · The field troops of these herbaciones were not just volunteers. They paid Linnaeus for the privilege, considering it money well spent for specimens to add to their private collections.
“I decided to take him into” · IK Foundation & Company, The Linnaeus Apostles: Global Science and Adventure (London: IK Foundation & Company, 2008), 1013.
“He lived with me” · Ibid.
“I have botanically described the most beautiful plant” · Julien d’Offray de la Mettrie, L’Homme Plante (Potsdam, Germany: Chretien Frederic Voss, 1748), 16.
“a public malice without cause” · Letter of Linnaeus to Count Sten Carl Bielke, dated April 24, 1745.
“You gratify your enemies” · Smith, A Selection of the Correspondence of Linnaeus and Other Naturalists, from the Original Manuscripts, 381.
“I have ever loved you” · Ibid., 393.
“I had rather been without his apology” · Stoever, The Life of Sir Charles Linnaeus, xiii.
“We that admire you are much concerned” · Ann-Mari Jonsson, “Linnaeus’ International Correspondence. The Spread of a Revolution,” in Languages of Science in the Eighteenth Century, ed. Britt-Louise Gunnarsson (Berlin: De Gruyter Mouton, 2011), 183.
“To acquire a tea bush” · IK Foundation & Company, The Linnaeus Apostles: Global Science and Adventure (London: IK Foundation & Company, 2010), 164.
“wrapped up in leaves or paper” · Ibid., 361.
“You would scarcely believe how many” · Smith, A Selection of the Correspondence of Linnaeus and Other Naturalists, from the Original Manuscripts, 315.
“Now is the time” · Koerner, Linnaeus: Nature and Nation, 115.
“a sort of hexagonal mirror” · John Scott, “On the Burning Mirrors of Archimedes, and on the Concentration of Light Produced by Reflectors,” Proceedings of the Royal Society of Edinburgh 6 (1869), 233.
“extremely large, or more likely mythical” · Roger, Buffon: A Life in Natural History, 52.
Frederick the Great of Prussia · Fellows and Milliken, Buffon, 57.
“Buffon! There is nothing” · Roger, Buffon: A Life in Natural History, 53.
“Without any previous knowledge” · Gibbon, The Miscellaneous Works of Edward Gibbon, Esq., 243.
Resurrecting Archimedes’s mirror · In the process of tinkering with focused light, Buffon designed a new kind of concave lens with stepped degrees of thickness, the better to concentrate a beam’s power. He never built the lens—the mirror did not need it—but he did publish his notes. In 1819, when Augustin-Jean Fresnel debuted the improved lens still in use in lighthouses today, he was shocked to find that Buffon had anticipated him by seven decades. He apologized for having “broken through an open door.”
“do not displease the Divine teacher” · Phillip R. Sloan, “The Buffon-Linnaeus Controversy,” Isis 67, no. 3 (1976).
Buffonia · Additionally, Linnaeus could take comfort in the fact that Bufo was already in use as a genus name for “toad.”
“very slender pretensions to botanical honor” · The Naturalist (London: Whittaker and Co., 1838), 394.
an opening salvo · This was an expansion of his essay On the Manner of Studying and Considering Natural History, delivered to the Académie des Sciences six years earlier.
“established on undoubted testimony” · Georges-Louis Leclerc le Comte de Buffon, The Natural History of Animals, Vegetables, and Minerals (Histoire Naturelle), trans. W. Kenrick and J. Murdoch (London: T. Bell, 1775).
“celebrated for their beauty” · Georges-Louis Leclerc le Comte de Buffon, Buffon’s Natural History (Barr’s Buffon), trans. J. S. Barr (London: J. S. Barr, 1792), 256.
“their complexions beautiful” · Ibid., 220.
“of all mankind, perhaps the most miserable” · Ibid., 232.
“Black or brown hair begins” · Georges-Louis Leclerc le Comte de Buffon, Natural History, General and Particular (Histoire Naturelle), trans. William Smellie (London: W. Strahan and T. Cadell, 1785), 127.
“If blackness was the effect” · Georges-Louis Leclerc le Comte de Buffon, Buffon’s Natural History (Barr’s Buffon), trans. J. S. Barr (London: J. S. Barr, 1792), 307.
“I am inclined to believe, therefore” · Ibid., 338.
“ought to be considered as accidental” · Ibid., 306.
“This attack is directed straight” · Lyon and Sloan, From Natural History to the History of Nature: Readings from Buffon and His Critics, 217.
“Everyone knows that spirit” · Ibid., 220.
“which heat necessarily underwent” · Georges-Louis Leclerc le Comte de Buffon, Buffon’s Natural History (Barr’s Buffon), trans. J. S. Barr (London: J. S. Barr, 1792), 94.
“a book whose venom” · Lyon and Sloan, From Natural History to the History of Nature: Readings from Buffon and His Critics, 237.
“I think of acting differently” · Saint-Beuve, Causeries du Lundi, 36.
“because it contained principles and maxims” · Roger, Buffon: A Life in Natural History, 187.
“I abandon whatever in my book” · Fellows and Milliken, Buffon, 82.
“I have extricated myself” · Ibid.
“It is better to be humble” · Roger, Buffon: A Life in Natural History, 188.
“charming, gentle, pretty rather than beautiful” · Ibid., 205.
“I will worry even less about criticisms” · Ibid., 206.
“The Ariadne’s thread of botany is system” · Carl Linnaeus, Philosophia Botanica (Oxford, U.K.: Oxford University Press, 2005), 113.
“instruction of a uniform and a new” · Koerner, Linnaeus: Nature and Nation, 43.
“incapacitated my mind and spirit” · Linnaeus, Philosophia Botanica, 6.
“the digest of the Science of Botany” · Ibid.
“The calyx is the bedroom” · Ibid., 105.
“We reckon the number of species” · Ibid., 113.
“the species are very constant” · Ibid., 115.
“have established all the classes” · Ibid., 23.
“have determined the truly proper names” · Ibid., 26.
“If you do not know the names of things” · Ibid., 169.
“words one and a half feet long” · Ibid., 214.
“Without the concept of a genus” · Ibid., 44.
“are to be banished from the Commonwealth of Botany” · Ibid., 172.
“the specific name ought to be derived” · Ibid., 221.
“mostly variable and rarely constant” · Ibid.
“zeal for subtleties” · Ibid.
“generic names should not be misused” · Ibid., 182.
“private individuals have applied absurd names” · Ibid., 169.
“No sane person introduces primitive generic names” · Ibid., 172.
“As I am now occupied” · Ibid., 6.
“The starting-point must be to marvel” · Ibid., 332.
“The case will be the same” · Lyon and Sloan, From Natural History to the History of Nature: Readings from Buffon and His Critics, 112.
“We believe we have had sufficient reason” · Ibid., 114.
“whose natural qualities have been matured” · Buffon, Natural History, General and Particular (Histoire Naturelle), 307.
“Buffon had first dazzled as a poet” · Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire, 1838, Biographical Fragments (Fragments Biographiques): Previous Studies on the Life, Works and Doctrines of Buffon (Paris: F. D. Pillot, 1838), 8.
“noble, dignified, with a magnificent appositeness” · Saint-Beuve, Causeries du Lundi, 42.
“I will say nothing against a method” · Terall, Catching Nature in the Act, 194.
“Well-written works are the only ones” · François Pierre Guillaume Guizot, The Nations of the World: France (New York: Peter Fenelon Collier, 1898), 223.
“I am every day learning to write” · Ibid.
“skull of a monstrous calf” · Georges-Louis Leclerc le Comte de Buffon, Histoire Naturelle (Paris: L’Imprimerie Royale, 1753), 543.
“all the labour of our country depends upon him” · Ibid., 336.
“Young man, you have studied enough” · Uncredited, 1844, Linnæus and Jussieu, 59.
“Senegal is of all white settlements” · Adanson I (Pittsburgh: The Hunt Botanical Library, 1963), 14.
“He was…robust and healthy.” · Ibid., 36.
“the blood oftentimes opened itself” · John Pinkerton, A General Collection of the Best and Most Interesting Voyages and Travels in All Parts of the World (Longman, 1814), 663.
“Nay, they went so far” · Ibid., 659.
“I leave you the freedom” · Letter of February 20, 1752. Xavier Carteret, “Michel Adanson in Senegal (1749–1754): A Great Naturalistic and Anthropological Journey of the Enlightenment,” Revue d’Histoire des Sciences 65 (January–June 2012), xiii.
“As soon as we leave our temperate countries” · Letter of February 20, 1752. Ibid.
“an instructive and natural method” · Eddy, “Buffon, Organic Change, and the Races of Man,” 35.
“one sees clearly” · Lyon and Sloan, From Natural History to the History of Nature: Readings from Buffon and His Critics, 102.
“I have found a manner of describing” · Carteret, “Michel Adanson in Senegal (1749–1754): A Great Naturalistic and Anthropological Journey of the Enlightenment,” v.
“precious assemblage…worthy to be acquired” · Adanson I, 50.
“Let us multiply observations” · Ibid., 39.
“Some modern botanists call barbarians” · Michel Adanson, Familles des Plantes (New York: J. Kramer-Lehre, 1966), 142.
“This is what made Monsieur de Buffon” · Ibid.
“I saw the natural method” · Adanson I, 50.
“He spoils and destroys” · Ibid., 51.
“I found that I was now” · Pehr Kalm, Travels into North America (Warrington, U.K.: William Eyres, 1770), 31.
“I invited him to lodge at my house” · Letter from Benjamin Franklin to James Logan, October 20, 1748.
“It came from New England” · Peter Kalm (sic), Peter Kalm’s Travels in North America (New York: Wilson-Erickson, 1937), 643.
“It is the most rapid water” · Paula Robbins, The Travels of Peter Kalm: Finnish-Swedish Naturalist Through Colonial North America, 1748–1751 (Fleischmanns, N.Y.: Purple Mountain Press, 2007), 119.
“five times worse than the Lapland” · Ibid., 107.
“are false and treacherous” · IK Foundation & Company, The Linnaeus Apostles: Global Science and Adventure (London: IK Foundation & Company, 2008), 780.
“Our friend Mr. Kalm, goes home” · Robbins, The Travels of Peter Kalm: Finnish-Swedish Naturalist Through Colonial North America, 1748–1751, 152.
“Take burning firebrands and throw them” · Koerner, Linnaeus: Nature and Nation, 152.
“beautiful and ripe fruit” · Nancy Pick, “Linnaeus Canadensis,” The Walrus, November 12, 2007, https://thewalrus.ca/2007-11-science.
“peculiar friendship and kindness” · Ibid.
“like a lamp whose oil is consumed” · Fries and Jackson, Linnaeus: The Story of His Life, 230.
“a double death” · Koerner, Linnaeus: Nature and Nation, 147.
“It was a matter of complete indifference” · Blunt, Linnaeus: The Compleat Naturalist, 191.
“colic and pains throughout my body” · Jorge M. Gonzalez, “Pehr Löfling: Un Apóstol de Linné en Tierras de Venezuela,” Ciencia y Tecnologia (2018), https://www.meer.com/es/36201-pehr-lofling.
“The great Vulture is dead” · Blunt, Linnaeus: The Compleat Naturalist, 192.
“I went to visit the forest” · IK Foundation & Company, The Linnaeus Apostles: Global Science and Adventure, 1518.
in a fragile mental state · Stephanie Pain, “The Forgotten Apostle,” New Scientist 195, no. 2615 (2007).
“might prolong human life” · Johan Beckmann, Schwedische Reise: 1765—1766 (Uppsala: Almqvist & Wiksells, 1911), 110.
“The death of many whom I have induced” · Fries and Jackson, Linnaeus: The Story of His Life, 285.
“a work which for a knowledge of nature” · Gourlie, The Prince of Botanists: Carl Linnaeus, 238.
“My hand is too weary” · Gribbin and Gribbin, Flower Hunters, 61.
“Monsieur Linnaeus made it first a badger” · Roger, Buffon: A Life in Natural History, 324.
“A general character” · Londa Schiebinger, Nature’s Body: Gender in the Making of Modern Science (New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press, 2004a), 46.
“some small relationship between the number” · Ibid.
“Man is a reasonable being” · Roger, Buffon: A Life in Natural History, 240.
Homo sapiens americanus, etc. · Carl Linnaeus, Systema Naturae (Tenth Edition) (Stockholm: 1758).
epilepsy was caused by washing · Koerner, Cultures of Natural History, 158.
aquavit to a puppy’s fur · Sten Lindroth, “The Two Faces of Linnaeus,” in Linnaeus: The Man and His Work, ed. Tore Frangsmyr (Sagamore Beach, Mass.: Science History Publications/USA, 1994), 39.
swallows slept through winter · Ibid., 38.
“care must be taken” · Lyon and Sloan, From Natural History to the History of Nature: Readings from Buffon and His Critics, 111.
“It is neither the number” · Adanson, Familles des Plantes, 132.
“a female wolf I kept” · Fellows and Milliken, Buffon, 160.
nine hybrid offspring · Buffon, 1776, III, Supplément à l’Histoire Naturelle, 3.
“The dissimilarities are merely external” · Georges-Louis Leclerc le Comte de Buffon, Natural History, General and Particular (Histoire Naturelle), trans. William Smellie (London: W. Strahan and T. Cadell, 1785), 394.
“blanc appears to be the primitive color” · Buffon, 1749, III, Histoire Naturelle, 502.
the earliest humans were dark-skinned Africans · Georges-Louis Leclerc le Comte de Buffon, Supplément à l’Histoire Naturelle (Paris: L’Imprimerie Royale, 1775), 564.
“the most temperate climate” · Stephen Jay Gould, The Mismeasure of Man (New York: W. W. Norton, 1996), 71.
“the ancient continent” · Buffon, Buffon’s Natural History (Barr’s Buffon), 213.
“Their sufferings demand a tear” · Ibid., 292.
“to betoken nature which is continued” · Gourlie, The Prince of Botanists: Carl Linnaeus, 246.
“If we observe God’s works” · Linnaeus, Systema Naturae (First Edition).
mammalian eggs · The Dutch savant Regnier de Graaf, examining the reproductive tracts of rabbits in 1672, described ovarian follicles (which are roundish), but actual mammalian eggs would not be observed until 1827.
“it is exclusively the male semen that forms” · Matthew Cobb, Generation (New York: Bloomsbury, 2008), 205.
“that which suppose the thing already done” · Lyon and Sloan, From Natural History to the History of Nature: Readings from Buffon and His Critics, 227.
“If we do not succeed in explaining” · Fellows and Milliken, Buffon, 91.
not female sperm · The most likely explanation is that they were witnessing cells detached from the follicular epithelium.
“There is in Nature” · Roger, Buffon: A Life in Natural History, 297.
internal matrix · Georges-Louis Leclerc le Comte de Buffon, The Epochs of Nature (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2018), ix.
“If a physician were to attempt today” · Fellows and Milliken, Buffon, 98.
“One day he escaped and descended” · Ibid., 160.
Linnaeus semi-retired · He continued to lecture privately, as a separate source of income.
“never helped me in botany” · Fries and Jackson, Linnaeus: The Story of His Life, 344.
“inquiring less after Flora” · Blunt, Linnaeus: The Compleat Naturalist, 177.
“Under those disadvantages” · Stoever, The Life of Sir Charles Linnaeus, 279.
“your eldest daughter” · Blunt, Linnaeus: The Compleat Naturalist, 193.
“at fifty he began to shuffle” · Fries and Jackson, Linnaeus: The Story of His Life, 301.
“Even when I was with him” · Blunt, Linnaeus: The Compleat Naturalist, 172.
“I owe Joseph three or four volumes” · Nadault de Buffon, Correspondance Inédite de Buffon, 7.
“How miserably Monsieur Buffon falls foul of him” · James Edward Smith, A Selection of the Correspondence of Linnaeus and Other Naturalists, from the Original Manuscripts (London: Longman, Hurst, Rees, Orme and Brown, 1821), 546.
“the whole sum of the species” · Koerner, Linnaeus: Nature and Nation, 45.
“who has created everything” · Ibid.
“we shall find, through all of Nature” · Georges-Louis Leclerc le Comte de Buffon, Buffon’s Natural History (Barr’s Buffon), trans. J. S. Barr (London: J. S. Barr, 1792), 220.
“The prodigious mammoth no longer exists anywhere” · Antonello Gerbi, The Dispute of the New World: The History of a Polemic, 1750–1900 (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2010), 16.
“One can slip ideas into” · Ibid., 53.
“hidden resemblance” · Butler, Evolution, Old and New, 88.
“If we consider each species” · Ibid., 103.
later English translations · Ibid., 91.
“not intending the modern sense” · Gould, The Mismeasure of Man, 407.
“These changes are only made slowly” · Packard, Lamarck, the Founder of Evolution, 205.
“there are bred certain minute creatures” · George Rosen, A History of Public Health (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1993), 19.
“We will find a great number of indeterminate species” · Buffon, 1749, I, Histoire Naturelle, 13.
“We are led to conclude that there exists” · Georges-Louis Leclerc le Comte de Buffon, Natural History, General and Particular (Histoire Naturelle), trans. William Smellie (London: W. Strahan and T. Cadell, 1785), 18.
variations on Edenic originals · Koerner, Linnaeus: Nature and Nation, 44.
“First earth little” · James Lee Larson, “Reason and Experience: An Inquiry into Systematic Description in the Work of Carl Von Linné,” diss., University of California, 1965, 132.
“if Holy Scripture would allow” · Blunt, Linnaeus: The Compleat Naturalist, 182.
“But this cold season” · Knut Hagberg, Carl Linnaeus (New York: Cape, 1952), 244.
“Many things have happened” · Blunt, Linnaeus: The Compleat Naturalist, 23.
“the treachery of the Chinese” · Koerner, Linnaeus: Nature and Nation, 137.
“Is it possible?” · Ibid., 138.
“tea was first seen away from China” · Ibid.
“notwithstanding the great extent” · Stoever, The Life of Sir Charles Linnaeus, 283.
“Linnaeus himself was very sensible” · Ibid., 284.
“Diseases are CURED by diseases” · Carl Linnaeus, Clavis Medicinae Duplex (Stockholm: Lars Salvius, 1766), 5.
“our learned and industrious author” · Carl Linnaeus, Clavis Medicinae Duplex: The Two Keys of Medicine (London: IK Foundation & Company, 2012), 15.
“This life? This world?” · Carl Linnaeus, Nemesis Divina, trans. Eric Miller (Lanham, Md.: University Press of America, 2002), 37.
“Daily we die” · Ibid.
“I must kneel for his majesty” · Koerner, Linnaeus: Nature and Nation, 167.
“somewhat aged, not large man” · Ibid., 16.
“Buffon, the antagonist of Linnaeus” · Ibid., 29.
“without pretty figures” · Ibid., 28.
“Buffon did not extend the boundaries of science” · Charles Augustin Saint-Beuve, Portraits of the Eighteenth Century, Historic and Literary (New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1905), 264.
“Aha! Is it you sitting there, Carl?” · Gunnar Broberg, Linnaeus: Progress and Prospects in Linnaean Research (Uppsala: Almqvist & Wiksell International, 1980), 110.
“Linné limps, can hardly walk” · Fries and Jackson, Linnaeus: The Story of His Life, 333.
“He ventured to go a few steps” · Ibid., 335.
“He had forgotten his own name” · Ibid., 336.
“Put me in the coffin unshaved” · Ibid., 339.
“It was a dark and still evening” · Ibid., 340.
“It makes no difference to me” · Linnaeus, Nemesis Divina, 36.
Buffon steered the appointment · While the appointment was formally facilitated by Jussieu, no such action was taken on behalf of the Jardin without Buffon’s tacit approval.
“carrying, even on those laborious excursions” · Maurice Thiéry, Bougainville: Soldier and Sailor (London: Grayson & Grayson, 1932), 214.
“What presumption to lay down” · Michael Ross, Bougainville (London: Gordon & Cremonesi, 1978), 118.
“With tears in her eyes” · John Dunmore, Monsieur Baret: First Woman Around the World, 1766–68 (Auckland: Heritage Press, 2002), 101.
“not being wholly Linnaean” · Stafleu, Linnaeus and Linnaeans: The Spreading of Their Ideas in Systematic Botany, 1735–1789, 323.
“How could you reconcile” · Buffon, The Epochs of Nature, 15.
“for a long time the seas” · Ibid., 51.
“when the Elephants” · Ibid., 87.
“proceed with circumspection” · Fellows and Milliken, Buffon, 83.
“When the Sorbonne picked petty quarrels” · Roger, Buffon: A Life in Natural History, 423.
“No man has known the price of time” · Nadault de Buffon, Correspondance Inédite de Buffon, 629.
“on that day” · Stoever, The Life of Sir Charles Linnaeus, 128.
“His delivery was fluent, but mixed” · Ibid., 406.
“wretched boy” · Fries and Jackson, Linnaeus: The Story of His Life, 339.
“It was singular that the lady” · Stoever, The Life of Sir Charles Linnaeus, 292.
“Poh! My father’s successor” · Ibid., 293.
newly ennobled · By the end of his life, Buffon would also acquire the titles Marquis de Rougemont, Vicompte de Quincy, and Seigneur of La Mairie, Les Harans, and Les Berges.
“the strange irony” · Fellows and Milliken, Buffon, 62.
“It would have given me greater pleasure” · James David Draper, Augustin Pajou: Royal Sculptor, 1730–1809 (New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1998), 283.
“Glory…becomes no more than an object” · Roger, Buffon: A Life in Natural History, 201.
“absolutely naked, enveloped only by a drapery” · Draper, Augustin Pajou: Royal Sculptor, 1730–1809, 286.
“unfortunate marriage of actual and symbolic” · Ibid.
“He carries himself straight and tall” · Ibid., 287.
“Let no naturalist steal a single plant” · Fries and Jackson, Linnaeus: The Story of His Life, 343.
“looking at age seventy-eight” · Miriam Claude Meijer, “The Collaboration Manqué: Petrus Camper’s Son at Montbard, 1785–1787,” accessed March 6, 2023, https://petruscamper.com/buffon/montbard.htm.
“He was remarkably tall” · Nadault de Buffon, Correspondance Inédite de Buffon, 594.
“a Natural Method comprising” · Jacques Picard, “Encyclopédistes Méconnus (3ème Partie): Michel Adanson et Son Projet d’Encyclopédie du Vivant,” Dicopathe, accessed March 3, 2023, https://www.dicopathe.com/encyclopedistes-meconnus-3eme-partie-michel-adanson-et-son-projet-dencyclopedie-du-vivant/.
“Style is the only passport” · Butler, Evolution, Old and New, 76.
“Far from becoming discouraged” · Georges-Louis Leclerc le Comte de Buffon, Supplément à l’Histoire Naturelle (Paris: L’Imprimerie Royale, 1776), 33.
“to carry it to France” · Thomas Jefferson, The Writings of Thomas Jefferson: 1816–1826 (New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1899), 332.
“Monsieur De Buffon offers his thanks” · Letter on file in the Library of Congress, dated December 21, 1785.
“It was Buffon’s practice to remain” · Jefferson, The Writings of Thomas Jefferson: 1816–1826, 331.
“the best informed of any naturalist” · Thomas Jefferson, Notes on the State of Virginia (Boston: Wells and Lilly, 1829), 56.
“the animals common both” · Ibid., 47.
“Instead of entering into an argument” · Jefferson, The Writings of Thomas Jefferson: 1816–1826, 331.
“This communication of elephants” · Buffon, The Epochs of Nature, 103.
“I attempted…to convince him” · Jefferson, The Writings of Thomas Jefferson: 1816–1826, 331.
“It would be an acquisition here” · Dugatkin, Mr. Jefferson and the Giant Moose: Natural History in Early America, 96.
“a very troublesome affair” · Ibid., 98.
“a proper catastrophe” · Ibid., 99.
“an infinitude of trouble” · Ibid.
“stuffed and placed on his legs” · Ibid.
“This operation of Nature” · Georges-Louis Leclerc le Comte de Buffon, Histoire Naturelle des Minéraux (Paris: L’Imprimerie Royale, 1786), 156.
“Nothing has more retarded the progress” · Fellows and Milliken, Buffon, 166.
“all that is best in love” · Ibid., 34.
“A virtue existing solely” · Buffon, Natural History, General and Particular (Histoire Naturelle), 414.
“Sleep had abandoned him” · Nadault de Buffon, Correspondance Inédite de Buffon, 636.
“What kindness!” · Fellows and Milliken, Buffon, 65.
“I love you and I will love you” · Vicompte D’Haussonville, The Salon of Madame Necker, trans. Henry M. Trollope (London: Chapman and Hall, 1882), 285.
“submit to her judgement” · Ibid., 297.
“Ah, God!” · D’Haussonville, The Salon of Madame Necker, 285.
“But for the union of souls” · Ibid.
“When I see him” · Mark Gambier-Parry, Madame Necker: Her Family and Her Friends (Edinburgh: William Blackwood and Sons, 1913), 83.
“I feel myself dying” · Roger, Buffon: A Life in Natural History, 425.
“You are still a charmer to me” · D’Haussonville, The Salon of Madame Necker, 303.
“at a time when a warmer sun was gilding” · Nadault de Buffon, Correspondance Inédite de Buffon, 612.
a gift from Catherine the Great · Roger, Buffon: A Life in Natural History, 425.
“a general and immense natural work” · Bernard-Germain-Étienne Lacépède, Histoire Naturelle des Quadrupedes Ovipares et des Serpens (1788).
“when I become dangerously ill” · Stephen Jay Gould, The Lying Stones of Marrakesh (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2011), 84.
“Dear Ignatius” · Nadault de Buffon, Correspondance Inédite de Buffon, 613.
three teaspoons of Alicante wine · Ibid., 614.
forty minutes past midnight · Gillispie, Science and Polity in France at the End of the Old Regime, 143.
“of a slightly larger size” · Roger, Buffon: A Life in Natural History, 433.
engraved label reading · Cerebellum of Buffon · Draper, Augustin Pajou: Royal Sculptor, 1730–1809, 285.
“Buffon died Wednesday” · Roger, Buffon: A Life in Natural History, 434.
“I go every week to the Jardin” · Suzanne Curchod Necker, Mélanges Extraits des Manuscrits (Paris: Charles Pougens, 1798), 327.
“gifted with a lively and penetrating mind” · Pascal Duris, Linné et la France (1780–1850) (Geneva: Librairie Droz, 1993), 37.
“the old errors and its prejudices” · Ibid., 135.
“plain stone monument” · Stoever, The Life of Sir Charles Linnaeus, 252.
“I myself witnessed the extravagant tumult” · Étienne Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire, Biographical Fragments (Fragments Biographiques): Previous Studies on the Life, Works and Doctrines of Buffon (Paris: F. D. Pillot, 1838), 34.
“Buffon, whose writings seduced” · Duris, Linné et la France (1780–1850), 134.
“receive with health, Monsieur, the homage” · Letter of September 21, 1771. Smith, A Selection of the Correspondence of Linnaeus and Other Naturalists, from the Original Manuscripts, 552.
“I die innocent!” · Alison Johnson, Louis XVI and the French Revolution (Jefferson, N.C.: McFarland & Company, 2013), 200.
“an annex of the king’s palace” · Packard, Lamarck, the Founder of Evolution, 30.
“giving orders to nature” · Gillispie, Science and Polity in France at the End of the Old Regime, 161.
“I will undertake the responsibility for your inexperience” · Butler, Evolution, Old and New, 239.
“of insects, of worms, and microscopic animals” · Packard, Lamarck, the Founder of Evolution, 37.
“The law of 1793 had prescribed” · Ibid.
“Citizens, my name is Buffon!” · Roger, Buffon: A Life in Natural History, 377.
“Come and fill the place” · George Henry Lewes, Studies in Animal Life (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1860), 140.
“the driest chronological facts” · Sara Lee, Memoirs of Baron Cuvier (London: Longman, 1833), 11.
“I am known, then” · Ibid., 14.
“I have just found a pearl” · Ibid.
“Geoffroy and Cuvier knew no jealousy” · Lewes, Studies in Animal Life, 141.
“filled with gross mistakes” · Packard, Lamarck, the Founder of Evolution, 48.
“Obtain, O Linné, this immortality!” · Pascal Duris, “Linné et le Jardin du Roi,” Hypotheses, April 16, 2012, https://objethistoire.hypotheses.org/88, 14.
“It is well known that Buffon” · Stoever, The Life of Sir Charles Linnaeus, 251.
“The revolution is over” · Andrew Roberts, Napoleon and Wellington (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2002), 3.
“He was then at his maturity” · Lewes, Studies in Animal Life, 144.
“the conditions of life” · Butler, Evolution, Old and New, 210.
“correlation of parts” · Richard Hertwig, General Principles of Zoology (New York: Henry Holt and Company, 1896), 16.
“these animals are perfectly similar” · Toby A. Appel, The Cuvier-Geoffroy Debate: French Biology in the Decades Before Darwin (Oxford, U.K.: Oxford University Press, 1987), 82.
“we certainly do not observe” · Caitlin Curtis, Craig D. Millar, and David M. Lambert, “The Sacred Ibis Debate: The First Test of Evolution,” PLOS Biology (2018), 5.
“It is undeniable that his position of hostility” · William A. Locy, Biology and Its Makers (New York: Henry Holt and Company, 1908), 415.
“Linnaeus allotted four classes of inhabitants” · Johan Friedrich Blumenbach, De Generis Humani Varietate Nativa Liber (Gottingen: 1775), 41.
“five principal varieties of mankind” · Johan Friedrich Blumenbach, The Anthropological Treatises of Johann Friedrich Blumenbach (London: Longman, Green, 1865), 264.
“I have allotted the first place” · Ibid.
“Never has a single head done more harm” · Robert Gordon Latham, The Natural History of the Varieties of Man (London: John Van Voorst, 1850), 108.
“the most degraded of human races” · Gould, The Mismeasure of Man, 69.
“the Caucasian [race], to which we belong” · George Cuvier, The Animal Kingdom, Arranged in Conformity with Its Organization (London: Wm. S. Orr and Co., 1854), 49.
“There are but two ways of accounting” · Charles White, An Account of the Regular Gradation in Man (London: C. Dilly, 1799), 52.
“Our wise men have said” · Voltaire, Les Lettres d’Amabed (London, 1769), 53.
“Doth M. Buffon think it sufficient” · Lord Kames, Sketches of the History of Man, vol. 1 (Edinburgh: Creech, 1774), 73.
“which Napoleon considered unworthy” · Richard W. Burkhardt, The Spirit of System: Lamarck and Evolutionary Biology (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1977), 10.
“Reptiles…build a branching sequence” · Gould, The Lying Stones of Marrakesh, 140.
“Why not proclaim an important truth?” · Burkhardt, The Spirit of System: Lamarck and Evolutionary Biology, 202.
“I shall see Buffon again” · Gillispie, Science and Polity in France at the End of the Old Regime, 160.
“Monsieur Adanson devoted himself to his great work” · Cuvier, The Edinburgh New Philosophical Journal, April–July 182, 177.
“too great indulgence” · Gould, The Lying Stones of Marrakesh, 117.
“Blind, poor, forgotten, he remained alone” · Packard, Lamarck, the Founder of Evolution, 68.
“Buffon is to the doctrine of the mutability” · Isidore Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire, Histoire Naturelle Générale des Règnes Organiques (Paris: Libraire de Victor Masson, 1854), 383.
“I have always had the highest” · Smith, A Selection of the Correspondence of Linnaeus and Other Naturalists, from the Original Manuscripts, 574.
“Nor shall I ever forget” · Smith, Memoir and Correspondence, 324.
“takes the lead among those” · Ibid., 330.
“In spite of all opposition” · James Edward Smith, Translation of Linnæus’s Dissertation on the Sexes of Plants (Dublin: Luke White, 1786), xii.
“some systematical tables concerning Natural History” · Linnaeus, Travels, 98.
“His works, I imagine, are little known” · Benjamin Stillingfleet, Literary Life and Select Works of Benjamin Stillingfleet (London: Longman, 1811), 186.
“Linnaeus’ method has pleased by its novelty” · Smith, A Selection of the Correspondence of Linnaeus and Other Naturalists, from the Original Manuscripts, 46.
“Their attempts to reduce the names” · Richard Brookes, A New and Accurate System of Natural History, Volume VI (London: J. Newberry, 1763), v.
“the chief intention of these discourses” · Georges-Louis Leclerc le Comte de Buffon, Natural History, General and Particular (Histoire Naturelle), trans. William Smellie (London: W. Strahan and T. Cadell, 1785), xviii.
“I incline to think” · John Gascoigne, Joseph Banks and the English Enlightenment: Useful Knowledge and Polite Culture (Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press, 2003), 200.
“I admire your defense” · Smith, A Selection of the Correspondence of Linnaeus and Other Naturalists, from the Original Manuscripts, 578.
By the time of Smith’s death · Surprisingly for one so devoted to Linnaeus, Smith left behind instructions to sell his collection to the highest bidder. Unwilling to let the impetus for their creation fall again into private hands, the Linnean Society borrowed the money to purchase it for 3,150 pounds—a sum so large the Society would not pay off the debt until 1861.
“A person who is in the pursuit” · John Thornton, The Temple of Flora (London: Thornton, 1807), unnumbered.
“Thousands became attached to the pursuit” · James L. Drummond, Observations of Natural Systems of Botany (London: Longman, Brown, Green, and Longman, 1849), 1.
“that language in which the history” · Fries and Jackson, Linnaeus: The Story of His Life, 370.
“The voyage to Japan is reckoned” · Carl Peter Thunberg, Travels in Europe, Africa, and Asia (London: F. and C. Rivington, 1796), 8.
“a very singular plant” · IK Foundation & Company, The Linnaeus Apostles: Global Science and Adventure (London: IK Foundation & Company, 2007), 300.
“this paradoxical quadruped” · George Shaw, Vivarium Naturae, or the Naturalist’s Miscellany (London: Royal Society of London), unnumbered.
“under the necessity of christening it” · Jacob W. Gruber, “Does the Platypus Lay Eggs? The History of an Event in Science,” Archives of Natural History 18, no. 1.
“My child, the Duck-billed Platypus” · Oliver Herford, The Simple Jography, or How to Know the Earth and Why It Spins (New York: John W. Luce and Company, 1908), 95.
“It was not offensive when it was proposed” · “On the Troubles of Naming Species,” The Economist, September 21, 2022, www.economist.com/science-and-technology/2022/09/21/on-the-troubles-of-naming-species.
“there is one universal principle of development” · Theodor Schwann, Microscopical Researches into the Accordance in the Structure and Growth of Animals and Plants (London: Sydenham Society, 1847), 165.
“an assemblage of these particles constitutes” · Buffon, Natural History, General and Particular (Histoire Naturelle), 371.
a consensus · This division endured well into the later twentieth century. Even in the face of ample evidence that bacteria were not plants, academic biologists interested in studying them were still required to register with their university’s botanical department.
“Darwin might be anything” · Thomas Henry Huxley, Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley (London: Macmillan and Co., 1913), 137.
“I can remember the very spot” · Charles Darwin, The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin (New York: Appleton and Company, 1898), 69.
“I am almost convinced” · Charles Darwin, Charles Darwin’s Letters: A Selection 1825–1859 (Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press, 1998), 81.
“absurd though clever” · Packard, Lamarck, the Founder of Evolution, 74.
“Wallace’s impetus seems to have set” · Huxley, Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley, 230.
“If I can convert Huxley” · Ibid., 179.
“Habit also has a decided influence” · Charles Darwin, On the Origin of Species (London: John Murrary, 1869), 12.
“a modification of Lamarck’s doctrine” · Charles Darwin, The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin (London: John Murray, 1887), 14.
“I thank you most sincerely” · Ibid., 44.
“My dear Huxley” · Ibid., 45.
“was the first author who” · Darwin, On the Origin of Species, xv.
“This animal…is known to live” · Jean Baptiste Lamarck, Zoological Philosophy, trans. Hugh Elliot (London: Macmillan and Co., 1914), 122.
“Lamarck’s hypothesis would predict” · Michael T. Ghislen, “The Imaginary Lamarck: A Look at Bogus “History” in Schoolbooks,” The Textbook Letter, September–October 1994.
“Acquired characteristics are not inherited” · Ibid.
“I am not likely to take a low view” · Packard, Lamarck, the Founder of Evolution, 74.
“the common misconception of Buffon” · Butler, Evolution, Old and New, 97.
“sailed as near the wind” · Ibid., 91.
“this great man in the violence” · Stoever, The Life of Sir Charles Linnaeus, 128.
“inaccuracy and thoughtlessness in his manner” · Saint-Beuve, Causeries du Lundi, 38.
“Buffon’s chimpanzee” · Robert Hartmann, Anthropoid Apes (New York: D. Appleton and Company, 1886), 267.
“facts calculated to excite astonishment” · Georges-Louis Leclerc le Comte de Buffon, and Others, Buffon’s Natural History of Man, the Globe, and of Quadrupeds (New York: Leavitt & Allen, 1857), iii.
“Such is Buffon’s arrangement” · Ibid., 135.
“One day early” · George Bernard Shaw, Back to Methuselah: A Metabiological Pentateuch (New York: Brentano’s, 1921), vii.
“And he wandered away and away” · Botsford Comstock, Handbook of Nature-Study (Ithaca, N.Y.: Comstock Publishing Co., 1935), 2.
“not two hundred steps away from the Jardin” · Elizabeth Cabot Cary Agassiz, Louis Agassiz: His Life and Correspondence (1887), 162.
“He greeted me with great politeness” · Ibid.
“I had given it so much attention” · Ibid., 167.
“Before the immortal works of Linnaeus” · Agassiz, 1842–6, Nomenclator Zoologicus preface, unnumbered.
“men of science, applying their attainments” · Anonymous, “Miscellaneous Intelligence: Arts and Sciences at Harvard,” American Journal of Science and the Arts IV (1847), 295.
“The monuments of Egypt have fortunately” · Louis Agassiz, “The Diversity of Origin of Human Races,” The Christian Examiner and Religious Miscellany XIV (1850), 116.
“You and we are different races” · Henry J. Raymond, History of the Administration of President Lincoln (New York: J. C. Derby & N. C. Miller), 469.
Lincoln considered ineradicable · As early as the Lincoln-Douglas debates of 1858, he’d spoken of “a physical difference between the white and black races which I believe will forever forbid the two races living together on terms of social and political equality.”
“The President of the United States seems” · Frederick Douglass, The Portable Frederick Douglass (New York: Penguin Publishing Group, 2016), 479.
“the propriety of considering Genesis as chiefly relating” · Agassiz, “The Diversity of Origin of Human Races,” 138.
“they may but be compared to children” · Stephen Jay Gould, The Panda’s Thumb: More Reflections in Natural History (New York: W. W. Norton, 1980), 174.
“he will somewhere find” · American Freedmen’s Inquiry Commission, Preliminary Report Touching the Condition and Management of Emancipated Refugees (United States Government Publication, 1863), 34.
“If Buffon had assumed” · Mendel’s Annotations in His German Translation of Darwin’s (1868) The Variation of Animals and Plants Under Domestication, v. 2, supplemental file to D. J. Fairbanks, “Mendel and Darwin: Untangling a Persistent Enigma,” Heredity 124 (2020).
“It requires some courage to undertake a labor” · Theodore Dru Alison Cockerell, Zoölogy: A Textbook for Colleges and Universities (Yonkers-on-Hudson, N.Y.: World Book Company, 1920), 42.
“The world has arisen in some way” · Louis Agassiz, “Evolution and the Permanence of Type,” The Atlantic Monthly (1874), 101.
“The wise of old welcome” · James Russell Lowell, The Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell (Boston: Houghton, Mifflin and Company, 1890), 444.
“There are some people who see” · Leonard Huxley, Thomas Henry Huxley: A Character Sketch (London: Watts & Company, 1920), 115.
“In the study of evolution” · William Bateson, Mendel’s Principles of Heredity: A Defence (Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press, 1902), v.
“a new province of observational and experimental work” · Herbert George Wells, Julian Huxley, and George Phillip Wells, The Science of Life (London: Cassell & Company Ltd., 1934), 22.
The Science of Life · Wells’s son George is also credited as a co-author. Although he published no subsequent work, the younger Wells did go on to work as a zoologist.
“in some of the more backward regions” · Ibid.
“consummate the sexual function” · Paul T. Phillips, “One World, One Faith: The Quest for Unity in Julian Huxley’s Religion of Evolutionary Humanism,” Journal of the History of Ideas 68, no. 4 (2007).
Huxley watched in dismay · It’s worth noting that a younger Huxley was a vocal supporter of “eugenics,” which he perceived as the benign deployment of genetic knowledge to improve humanity. This naivete did not survive the rapid escalation of Nazi “eugenics” into full-fledged genocide.
“In a scientific age” · Julian Huxley and A. C. Haddon, We Europeans (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1936), vii.
“as blond as Hitler” · Ibid., 13.
ruining the authors’ careers · Benedict died soon after the war, but Weltfish, forced to testify before the House Un-American Activities Committee about her supposed Communist sympathies, was fired by Columbia.
“The biological fact of race and the myth” · Julian Huxley and Others, The Race Question (Paris: UNESCO, 1950), 8.
“looks a rather dull and formal” · W. T. Stearn, “The Background of Linnaeus’s Contributions to the Nomenclature and Methods of Systematic Biology,” Systematic Zoology 8, 1 (1959).
white, Swedish, and male · The zoologist and paleontologist Edward Drinker Cope (1840–1897) is occasionally misidentified as the type specimen of Homo sapiens. While Cope may have wished for that distinction—his will specified that his skeleton be preserved and displayed for science—it was not granted.
“The older descriptive work in biology” · Wells, Huxley, and Wells, The Science of Life, 22.
“champion of taxonomic redundancy” · Lewis Smith, “Seaside Snail Most Misidentified Creature in the World,” The Guardian, March 12, 2015, https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2015/mar/12/seaside-snail-most-misidentified-creature-in-the-world.
“quickly buries itself under the skin” · Carl Linnaeus, A General System of Nature, Through the Three Grand Kingdoms (London: Lackington, Allen and Co., 1806), 57.
produce a specimen · The Swedish Academy of Sciences even offered a reward in gold for a single specimen of Furia infernalis. There were no claimants.
“To put our results into perspective” · Giraffe Conservation Foundation, “New Genomic Level Analysis Confirms Four Species of Giraffe and a Need to Prioritise Their Conservation,” Giraffe Conservation Foundation, May 5, 2021, https://giraffeconservation.org/2021/05/05/4-giraffe-species-confirmed.
“Giraffes are assumed to have” · Ibid.
“Linnaeus’ work on the classification” · Isabelle Charmantier, “Linnaeus and Race,” The Linnean Society, September 3, 2020, www.linnean.org/learning/who-was-linnaeus/linnaeus-and-race.
“Species names are not static” · Sandra Knapp, “Naming Nature: The Future of the Linnaean System,” The Linnean Special Issue 8 (2008), 175.
“Until now, we haven’t known whether” · Stephanie Pappas, “There Might Be 1 Trillion Species on Earth,” Live Science, May 5, 2016, https://www.livescience.com/54660-1-trillion-species-on-earth.html.
“Linnaeus’s motivation for assigning species” · Marc Ereshefsky, The Poverty of the Linnaean Hierarchy: A Philosophical Study of Biological Taxonomy (Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press, 2008), 214.
“humongous fungus” · Vince Patton, “Oregon Humongous Fungus Sets Record as Largest Single Living Organism on Earth,” OPB, February 12, 2015, https://www.opb.org/television/programs/oregon-field-guide/article/oregon-humongous-fungus/.
“almost as a spider web” · Carl Zimmer, “DNA Analysis Reveals Ancient Secrets,” New York Times, February 11, 2020.
“This chain is not a simple thread” · Georges-Louis Leclerc le Comte de Buffon, Histoire Naturelle des Oiseaux (Paris: 1770), 394.
“statements about the current state” · Francine Pleijel and George Rouse, “Least-Inclusive Taxonomic Unit: A New Taxonomic Concept for Biology,” Proceedings of the Royal Society B 267, no. 1443 (2000).
“major and still growing impacts” · Paul J. Crutzen and Eugene F. Stoermer, “The “Anthropocene,” in The Future of Nature: Documents of Global Change, ed. Libby Robin, Paul Warde, and Sverker Sorlin (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 2013), 483.
“The most despicable condition of the human species” · Buffon, The Epochs of Nature, 125.
“It really is an extraordinary book” · Ibid., viii.
“nothing more than a rough sketch” · Loren Eisley, Darwin’s Century: Evolution and the Men Who Discovered It (New York: Anchor Books, 1961), 39.
“Buffon asked almost all” · Otis Fellows, From Voltaire to la Nouvelle Critique: Problems and Personalities (Geneva: Librairie Droz, 1970), 26.
“Those who have looked with care” · Ibid., 25.
“Linnaeus mentions the law of generation” · Stafleu, Linnaeus and Linnaeans: The Spreading of Their Ideas in Systematic Botany, 1735–1789, 303.
“A slime mold creates” · Tim Stephens, “Astronomers Use Slime Mold Model to Reveal Dark Threads of the Cosmic Web,” UC Santa Cruz, March 10, 2020, https://news.ucsc.edu/2020/03/cosmic-web.html.
“Nature is not a thing” · Roger, Buffon: A Life in Natural History, 329.