The cooling Earth

Abstract

The twenty-first of September 1792 was a momentous day in Paris. King Louis XVI was deposed and the Republic was inaugurated. Four months later, on 21 January 1793, he lost his head on the Place de Louis Quinze (now the Place de la Concorde) to the newly introduced machine of death, the guillotine – first used in France in April 1792 – and at much the same time the trappings of royalty were dismantled. The royal garden in Paris, the Jardin du Roi, was renamed Jardin des Plantes. This garden was and remains one of the major botanic gardens of the world. It had been laid out in 1626 by Guy de la Brosse and Jean Heroard for Louis XIII, and specialised in medicinal plants – not unusual at the time, when plants were often used in traditional herbal medicine, and when the botanists and medics were always on the look out for new varieties and species which could provide different cures and remedies. The gardens, which now cover 28 hectares, were opened to the general public in 1650, and around them developed a number of institutions which now house the Museum National d'Histoire Naturelle. Into this museum were brought numbers of exotic species of plants and animals, rocks and minerals collected from the far-flung corners of the French empire that stretched from the east to Louisiana in North America. Following the Revolution the King's own menagerie was removed from Versailles and the animals were transported to the site.