Abstract
SUMMARYThe duck-billed platypus, or Ornithorhynchus, was the subject of an intense debate among natural historians in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. Its paradoxical mixture of mammalian, avian and reptilian characteristics made it something of a taxonomic conundrum. In the early 1820s Robert Jameson (1774–1854), the professor of natural history at the University of Edinburgh and the curator of the University's natural history museum, was able to acquire three valuable specimens of this species. He passed one of these on to the anatomist Robert Knox (1791–1862), who dissected the animal and presented his results in a series of papers to the Wernerian Natural History Society, which later published them in its Memoirs. This paper takes Jameson's platypus as a case study on how natural history specimens were used to create and contest knowledge of the natural world in the early nineteenth century, at a time when interpretations of the relationships between animal taxa were in a state of flux. It shows how Jameson used his possession of this interesting specimen to provide a valuable opportunity for his protégé Knox while also helping to consolidate his own position as a key figure in early nineteenth-century natural history.
Highlights
The Plinian Society provided a forum where ideas such as phrenology, the transmutation of species and Étienne Geoffroy St Hilaire’s new transcendental anatomy were eagerly discussed. Their interest in the theories of Geoffroy was shared with Grant and Knox, and with Robert Jameson, who ‘gave an account of the doctrines of Geoffroy St Hilaire on the analogy between extinct animals and those living’ to the Wernerian Society on 25 April 1829.9 It is unsurprising that the debate on the taxonomic status of the platypus seems to have aroused lively interest in Edinburgh natural history circles when three specimens of the creature arrived in the city in the early 1820s
At a time when understandings of the natural world were shifting and new discourses on the relationships between living things were competing for acceptance, the possession of, and access to, rare and important specimens of this kind provided a significant locus of academic legitimacy and authority
In order to understand the problem of the platypus as it appeared to early nineteenth-century natural historians, first we must glance briefly at contemporary mammalian taxonomy, which was very much in a state of flux in the early nineteenth century
Summary
The duck-billed platypus, or Ornithorhynchus, was the subject of an intense debate among natural historians in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. The Plinian Society provided a forum where ideas such as phrenology, the transmutation of species and Étienne Geoffroy St Hilaire’s new transcendental anatomy were eagerly discussed Their interest in the theories of Geoffroy was shared with Grant and Knox, and with Robert Jameson, who ‘gave an account of the doctrines of Geoffroy St Hilaire on the analogy between extinct animals and those living’ to the Wernerian Society on 25 April 1829.9 It is unsurprising that the debate on the taxonomic status of the platypus seems to have aroused lively interest in Edinburgh natural history circles when three specimens of the creature arrived in the city in the early 1820s. At a time when understandings of the natural world were shifting and new discourses on the relationships between living things were competing for acceptance, the possession of, and access to, rare and important specimens of this kind provided a significant locus of academic legitimacy and authority
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