European Naturalists Research Articles

Collecting empires: Dominik Bilimek and early subterranean zoology between politics and field research

The Moravian Cistercian monk and collector Dominik Bilimek (1813–1884) is considered one of the earliest European naturalists to conduct zoological research on subterranean fauna in Latin America. During the second French invasion of Mexico, from 1861 to 1867, he accompanied Maximilian of Habsburg, the newly enthroned emperor of Mexico, to the region. There, he explored the Grutas de Cacahuamilpa near Taxco de Alarcón, comparing its fauna to his earlier discoveries in Postojnska jama in Carniola (Slovenia). After the victory of the Mexican republican forces and Maximilian’s execution, Bilimek retained his role as curator of the emperor’s collections, which he took back with him to Europe and exhibited at Miramare Castle near Trieste. Prior to his Mexican venture, Bilimek had embraced the imperial goals and intellectual agendas of the Viennese central administration while teaching at the monarchy’s military institutes. Following the revolutions of 1848/49, extensive research undertakings—including geoscientific, biological, and archaeological surveys—were initiated to preserve the Habsburg monarchy as a supranational entity amidst internal and external crises, and to legitimize its territorial framework as both a natural and cultural unit. These developments coincided with the initial surge of zoological interest in Carniolan caves, which spurred efforts to gather similar findings in other karst regions of the monarchy. Drawing on historical sources, this article explores the intersection of political concepts and fieldwork practices in the early study of cave biology. Special attention is given to the sites, networks, and modes of collecting during this transformative period.

Plants of the USA: recordings on native North American useful species by Alexander von Humboldt

BackgroundThe German naturalist Alexander von Humboldt conducted an expedition through the American continent, alongside Aimé Bonpland, from 1799 to 1804. Before finally returning to Europe, they decided to take a side trip to the USA between May 20 and July 7, 1804. Humboldt’s most detailed account of his time in the USA consists of a manuscript entitled “Plantae des États-Unis” (1804), containing information on useful plants and timber of the country. The aim of this paper is to retrieve, for the first time, ethnobotanical information regarding North American plants and their uses inside this Humboldt’s manuscript as well as to highlight the erasure and invisibilization of North American Indigenous knowledge within historical documents and bibliography, mainly during the nineteenth century.Methods“Plantae des États-Unis” (digitized version and its transcription) was carefully analyzed, and information on plant species mentioned in the manuscript (including botanical and vernacular names, traditional uses, and general observations) was retrieved. Traditional uses were correlated with ethnobotanical data from the Native American Ethnobotany Database and encyclopedic literature on North American plants from the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, as well as recent pharmacological studies searched in scientific papers.ResultsIn the manuscript are mentioned 28 species distributed in 15 botanical families, with Fagaceae (9 Quercus species) being the most representative. All species are USA natives, except for one undetermined species (only the genus was mentioned, Corylus). Four species were directly mentioned as medicinal (Toxicodendron radicans, Liriodendron tulipifera, Actaea racemosa, and Gillenia stipulata), while other four were described as tanning agents (astringent) (Cornus florida, Diospyros virginiana, Quercus rubra, and Quercus velutina). Two species were described as bitter (Xanthorhiza simplicissima and A. racemosa). Nine Quercus species were described, but five were reported as the most useful oaks for cultivation in Europe (Quercus bicolor, Quercus castanea, Quercus virginiana, Quercus michauxii, and Quercus alba); three of them were used for ship construction (Q. virginiana, Q. michauxii, and Q. alba), two as astringent (Q. rubra and Q. stellata), and one had wood of poor quality (Quercus phellos). One species was described as a yellow dye (Hydrastis canadensis), and the other was mentioned as toxic (Aesculus pavia). Ten species did not have any useful applications listed.ConclusionsAlthough “Plantae des États-Unis” is a brief collection of annotations, these data reveal a historical scenario of outstanding plants with social and economic interest in the USA at the beginning of the nineteenth century. The data highlight a clear process of suppression of the traditional knowledge of Native North American Indigenous peoples in past historical records and literature, due to the lack of acknowledgment by white European settlers and American-born explorers. This ethnobotanical inventory may help us understand the relationship between plants and Native North American Indigenous peoples, as well as European naturalists and settlers, and USA-born people in the past, and reflect on the importance of Indigenous traditional knowledge, bioeconomy, sustainable management, and conservation of biodiversity in the present and future.

Genomic analysis supports Cape Lion population connectivity prior to colonial eradication and extinction.

Cape lions (Panthera leo melanochaitus) formerly ranged throughout the grassland plains of the "Cape Flats" in what is today known as the Western Cape Province, South Africa. Cape lions were likely eradicated because of overhunting and habitat loss after European colonization. European naturalists originally described Cape lions as "black-maned lions" and claimed that they were phenotypically distinct. However, other depictions and historical descriptions of lions from the Cape report mixed or light coloration and without black or extensively developed manes. These findings suggest that, rather than forming a distinct population, Cape lions may have had phenotypic and genotypic variation similar to other African lions. Here we investigate Cape lion genome characteristics, population dynamics, and genetic distinctiveness prior to their extinction. We generated genomic data from 2 historic Cape lions to compare to 118 existing high-coverage mitogenomes, and low-coverage nuclear genomes of 53 lions from 13 African countries. We show that, before their eradication, lions from the Cape Flats had diverse mitogenomes and nuclear genomes that clustered with lions from both southern and eastern Africa. Cape lions had high genome-wide heterozygosity and low inbreeding coefficients, indicating that populations in the Cape Flats went extinct so rapidly that genomic effects associated with long-term small population size and isolation were not detectable. Our findings do not support the characterization of Cape lions as phylogeographically distinct, as originally put forth by some European naturalists, and illustrates how alternative knowledge systems, for example, Indigenous perspectives, could potentially further inform interpretations of species histories.

Not a Silent Invasion: The Reaction of European Naturalists to the Spread of Zebra Mussel (Dreissena polymorpha) in the 19th—Early 20th Century

The case of naturalization of the zebra mussel, Dreissena polymorpha (Pallas, 1771), in countries lying beyond its native Ponto–Caspian range is remarkable as one of the first instances when the scientific community as early as the mid-19th century was fully aware of the non-indigenous status of a particular species as well as of the need for the study and monitoring of this process. Based on a study of contemporary sources, I reconstruct the early response of European naturalists (including those who today would be called “citizen scientist”) to the invasion of Dreissena and describe their attitudes to the problem, including the divergence in opinion about the origin and the means of dispersal of this bivalve species. An analysis of papers published in English, French, German, and Russian between 1774 and 1920 showed that the invasion of D. polymorpha was by no means “silent”; quite the opposite, it provoked an immediate reaction from naturalists. The scientific agenda for the study of the new invader was proposed in England as early as 1838.

Ottoman plants, nature studies, and the attentiveness of translational labor.

Translations, whether in the form of text, illustration, or interpretive analysis, served knowledge-making in multiple ways. It offered a refuge, severed contexts, and concealed the various workers that created it. Over the course of the seventeenth century, European naturalists in Istanbul, such as Luigi Ferdinando Marsigli (1658-1730), procured illustrations of Ottoman nature as fundamental resources to identify, collect, and compare indigenous plants and newly bred varieties. Despite maintaining an actual mediation for cross-cultural interactions, these sources of virtual communication remain largely forgotten in modern scholarship. This article argues that this curious yet invisible corpus was not a nonagentive medium in an alienated leisure of a gentleman-scholar; instead, these illustrations were designed to call upon the viewer's constant attention in self-motivated scientific labor. Such handy tools responded and contributed to early modern scholars' modes of working, and in exchange they determined these sources' own function, position, and visibility - either as a by-product or as a derivative. It is therefore only when integrated into the labor history of science that the degrees of invisibility pertaining to both Ottoman nature studies and self-directed labor can come into a granular view.

Favored Races in the Struggle for Life: Racism and the Speciation Concept.

Evolutionary speciation, whether it be cladistic or phyletic, has always been associated with race concepts. Biological races are conceived as definable stages of divergence from a common ancestor. However, the species concept in Western science began within a special creationist framework. The sixteenth century European voyages of discovery resulted in special creationist schemes explaining the origin of the new peoples encountered. These were designed to provide the moral justification for their colonization and enslavement. By the seventeenth century, European naturalists were beginning to seriously question the meaning of the variation within the animals and plants they observed within the context of God's role in creation. By the middle of the nineteenth century, "the species question" was the most important intellectual enterprise within biology. Here I discuss how notions of speciation influenced and were influenced by conceptions of race within Homo sapiens.

Armadillos under the Microscope

In the nineteenth century, an animal from the Americas known as the armadillo offered an extraordinary subject for zoologists engaged in the study of the outer covering of four-limbed vertebrates and its components. The armadillo, a cuirassed living mammal, had excited the curiosity of European naturalists since the early sixteenth century, and their shells had thus become a common sight in collections. The armadillo’s carapace provided a structure that could be scrutinized in order to understand animal materials, one that afforded the use of microscopes and chemistry in the emerging life sciences that tried to understand the relationship between form and function and the chemical composition of animated matter. The carapace of the armadillo moved from the culture of curiosity in which it was first collected into the new field of animal chemistry, a key move that is crucial for historians to understand the emergence of the study of animal materials. Armadillos accompanied the expansion of chemistry, microscopy, and physics as they were used to study the materials that constituted the mammals’ dermal coverings. This paper mines nineteenth-century publications for episodes connected to the long story of the study of this shell’s anatomical and chemical contrivances, and the crucial role it played both in the emergence of new scientific knowledge and in the discovery of new bio-inspired materials still derived from this animal today. This paper is part of a special issue entitled “Making Animal Materials in Time,” edited by Laurence Douny and Lisa Onaga.

Anabas testudineus (Bloch, 1792), climbing perch (Anabantidae), and its discovery in India

This paper examines the history of discovery, early research and description of Anabas testudineus ( Bloch, 1792 ) (Anabantidae), an amphibious fish from southern India that was said to climb palm trees and so has been dubbed the “climbing perch”. Amphibious fishes constitute one of the most unusual groups of aquatic creatures since they can spend part of their life in terrestrial habitats. The first reports of such fishes date back to Antiquity, but with the onset of the Age of Discovery, naturalists were able to find actual examples of tropical amphibious fishes and send preserved specimens to Europe. A fish which could move overland and was rumoured to clamber up tree trunks became known to European naturalists through the efforts of a variety of people. Many of them were amateur naturalists whose main activities included politics, commerce and missionary work. The species was described by Marcus Elieser Bloch (1723–1799) in 1792, but this would not have been possible if the Reverend Christoph Samuel John (1747–1813) had not obtained specimens in India and sent them to Berlin. Around the same time, Lieutenant Dagobert Karl Daldorff ( fl. 1790–1802) documented the unusual amphibious behaviour of this fish. Thanks to others, Anabas testudineus was illustrated (albeit inaccurately) and the first scientific description published.

The primary types of some species of Centris bees described by European entomologists in the 18th and 20th centuries (Hymenoptera: Apidae)

In this paper are presented notes on the primary types of some species of the oil-collecting bees of the genus Centris described by the European naturalists and entomologists Amédée Louis Michel Lepeletier de Saint-Fargeau, Anders Christian Jensen-Haarup, Arthur Louis Marie Joseph Vachal, Charles Émile Blanchard, Embrik Strand, Félix Édouard Guérin-Méneville, Guillaume-Antoine Olivier, Jean Guillaume Audinet-Serville, Jean Pérez, Johann Christoph Friedrich Klug, Johann Ludwig Christ, John Obadiah Westwood, Josef Anton Maximilian Perty, Jules Dominique, Karl Hermann Konrad Burmeister, Karl Wilhelm von Dalla Torre, Massimiliano Spinola, Peter Cameron, and Wilhelm Ferdinand Erichson. Information on the type status, type locality and depository are provided. In order to stabilize some names, lectotype designations were made for Centris rhodophthalma, C. sponsa var. asuncionis, C. transversa, Hemisia byssina and Ptilotopus americanus. Centris sponsa var. asuncionis is withdrawn from the synonymy of C. sponsa, revalidated and raised to species level. Centris byssina is proposed as nomen oblitum and as a new junior synonym of C. trigonoides, nomen protectum.

A Naturalist between Two Worlds

In the 1830s, European naturalists traveled to South America to gain experience as field collectors, a practice increasingly important to natural history and the production of scientific knowledge as the nineteenth century progressed. This article explores the strategies followed by the French naturalist Claude Gay (1800-1873) in his attempt to make a name for himself in the eyes of both the Chilean and French scientific communities and governments, as he established his career as a field collector. Gay had to forge credibility among local social circles and hierarchies to win the financial support of the Chilean government, while simultaneously pursuing a career and a reputation as a naturalist in France. This article analyzes Gay’s practices and strategies for each community and discusses the extent to which his field practices were influenced not only by the scientific knowledge, experience, and instruments used, but also by the social, political, and economic context in which he developed his scientific work.

Iranian World Plant Species in the European Network of Botanical Information Exchange in the Sixteenth Century

Abstract Geographic discoveries in the sixteenth century, alongside methodical reforms in the practice of natural history, created a situation that was conducive for information exchange between European agents and local informants and scholars outside of Europe. These contacts, in turn, acted as a strong stimulus for change in European natural history. Until now, research on this process of transformation has been mainly focused on areas like the Indian subcontinent or the Americas, where most of these activities occurred, both in terms of politics and science alike. But Iran, a crucial part of the world trade network in that period, is still largely neglected in this research. This paper seeks to begin to redress the balance, introducing some notable plant species that were designated to the Iranian world by sixteenth-century European naturalists. This introductory survey will help to shed some light on the diversity of scientific exchange in the sixteenth century and the role played by other lesser known areas in this process.

Malinowski and malacology: global value systems and the issue of duplicates.

This article situates the collecting practices of museums of natural history in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries in dialogue with similar practices amongst societies in the Pacific by focusing on how European curators, dealers in natural history and Pacific Islanders shared a common fascination with Spondylus shells. In particular, this article examines the processes for turning Spondylus shells into unique or duplicate specimens. Spondylus shells were crucial for regulating gift and commercial exchanges in the societies of both regions. Famously, the anthropologist Bronisław Malinowski claimed that these shells were an essential element of the gift-based kula exchange, which helped him distinguish Western capitalist society from less developed societies without commercial trade. Yet Spondylus shells were also collected and exchanged as gifts amongst British and European naturalists in this period, performing the same roles as in Melanesia. In addition, such gift exchanges could only come into being thanks to the actions of commercially motivated dealers, located both in the Pacific and in Europe, who were the suppliers of these shells both to Melanesian participants in the kula and to Western natural historians and collectors. These observations call into question earlier arguments that equate modernity with the rise of commercial capitalism. It is instead claimed that commercial and gift exchanges were intricately connected and reliant on each other throughout the period, whether in the worlds of Western museums or in Pacific archipelagos. The act of turning Spondylus shells into unique or duplicate specimens was the key tool for regulating these exchanges.

Penjelajahan Orang Prancis dan Penelitian Sejarah Alam di Nusantara Pada Masa Kolonial

This article seeks to elaborate the research on natural history carried out by French naturalists in Indonesia during colonial period. The tropical nature attracted many European naturalists to conduct research in order to gain economic advantages from the natural richness. The curiosity toward the alien nature always came with the observation to the people living in that region. Nevertheless, not all the research was carried out by the plan. In the case of French naturalists, the research that they performed in this region was conducted coincidently while they were visiting this region. This article analyzes how the French naturalists made their research on natural history in the Archipelago. It examines as well the objects that interested them. Lastly, it shows to what extent the colonial knowledge was formed through the encounter between the Europeans and the local people.

Nález rukopisu F. A. Nickerla o denních motýlech Čech

In 2014, F. A. Nickerl´s manuscript titled Böhmens Tagfalter was unexpectedly discovered during relocation of the entomological department of the National Museum Prague. The find is mainly one of great cultural-historical significance, as it was already published in full in 1837. The publication in question (Nickerl 1837) has a high professional level for its time, and is considered the first scientifically written work in the field of entomology in the Czech Republic. F. A. Nickerl was one of the most important Central European naturalists, being instrumental to the development of entomology and museology in Bohemia. From 1850 he worked as custodian of zoological collections at the Czech Museum in Prague, then later at the Museum of the Kingdom of Bohemia (1854–1919, today the National Museum). Among other things, he was a member of the German natural science association Lotos, which published a (at the time prestigious) journal of the same name, of which he was also the editor. Several species of moths were named in his honor, and he himself described several new Lepidoptera species from Bohemia. He is the author of several publications, of which his Synopsis (Nickerl 1850) which loosely follows (and significantly expands upon) the work discussed here, is most notable. At the same time, he was a person of extraordinary character, which is pointed out by a number of contemporary and later authors, cf. e.g. Tykač (1937). It is due to all of the above that any finding closely related to F. A. Nickerl’s life or work should be considered exceptional and worthy of the attention of our generation.

Making Scientific Sense of Traditional Medicine

The search for medicinal plants often accompanied the expansion of empire in Africa during the sixteenth through the nineteenth centuries. Although Ethiopia was never formally colonized, European naturalists carried out plant collecting expeditions within Ethiopia’s borders in ways that resembled the unequal power relationship between Europe and colonized African territories. Ethiopian plant material was sold to botanical gardens in Europe, studied, and even incorporated into European pharmacopeia with little credit given to local wisdom. By the mid-twentieth century, Ethiopia’s Ministry of Health supported local efforts to transform endemic plants into standardized commercial products and into pharmaceuticals for domestic markets while limiting foreign bioprospecting. Ethiopian scientists struggled to have their local knowledge and scientific expertise recognized in the context of highly unequal global power relations. Meanwhile, gender and class inequalities built into the local institutions directing medicinal plant research and development in Ethiopia also reproduced exploitative relationships. This paper argues that the history of Ethiopia’s efforts to make “traditional medicine” legible to science demonstrates the complicated global politics of scientific knowledge production and highlights the problems of exploitation in medicinal plant research within African countries.

Political Essay on the Kingdom of New Spain, Volumes 1 and 2: A Critical Edition ed. by Alexander von Humboldt

Reviewed by: Political Essay on the Kingdom of New Spain, Volumes 1 and 2: A Critical Edition ed. by Alexander von Humboldt Lucas Nossaman (bio) Political Essay on the Kingdom of New Spain, Volumes 1 and 2: A Critical Edition alexander von humboldt, edited by vera m. kutzinski and ottmar ette, translated by j. ryan poytner, kenneth berri, and vera kutzinski University of Chicago Press, 2019 Vol. 1, 586 pp.; Vol. 2, 634 pp. What is the relationship between New World colonialism and the sciences? These newly published volumes from the work of German polymath Alexander von Humboldt, the most celebrated scientist of the nineteenth century in Europe and the US, will help to nuance considerably the usual responses to that question. In The Passage to Cosmos: Alexander von Humboldt and the Shaping of America (U of Chicago P, 2009), Laura Dassow Walls contended that the story of US national origins must include Humboldt to make sense of the nineteenth-century drive to explore, collect, and connect new knowledges of nature. But following her book's title, scholars have focused mainly on the impact of Humboldt's Cosmos (1845–59). These freshly translated and edited volumes, in effect the first of their kind in English since the nineteenth century, remind us that it was the earlier Political Essay on the Kingdom of New Spain (particularly the revised French edition published from 1825 to 1827) that established Humboldt's reputation for combining knowledges of nature and human cultures into interconnected wholes. Susan Scott Parish and others have historicized the various modes of New World science, but many scholars continue to assume that most nineteenth-century European naturalists of the Americas followed Thomas [End Page 623] Jefferson's example: they erased Native presence, idealized the continents as pristine wildernesses, and hardened racial distinctions to justify white paternalism. New Spain, however, offers a glimpse of an alternative nineteenth-century tradition that saw intrinsic value in the land and people of the New World. Humboldt frames his proto-ecological understanding squarely against that of Columbus and Cortés: he pulls the imperialistic past into the present nineteenth century to imagine a future composed of diverse civilizations, racial harmony, and environmental stewardship. The question of whether his vision was ever fulfilled, or will be anytime soon, can direct us to consider how historical scientific literature both contributes to and contests our present world of climate change, global inequality, and racial injustice. To be sure, these particular volumes are not for the faint of heart. They consist primarily of statistical facts and forecasts concerning New Spain's "economy," capaciously understood at the time to include what we now understand as the fields of sociology, anthropology, archaeology, mineralogy, engineering, geography, and geology, among other sciences. Reading New Spain is a dizzying endeavor not only because today we expect facts in tighter analytical categories but also because, even at the time, Humboldt was expanding genre conventions to propose a more global perspective as he progressed toward what he would later call the Cosmos, his numinous term for the ecological chains of connection running through Earth, its people, and even the stars and planets above. For him, New Spain became a unique vista for witnessing the myriad forces shaping Earth's present form: "Nowhere can one better observe the admirable order with which different types of plant life succeed each other. … At every step, one sees changes in the physiognomy of the land, in the appearance of the sky, in the bearing of the plants, the shape of the animals, the customs of the inhabitants and the type of cultivation they practice" (1.409). When Humboldt imagined the web of nature, he grounded his ecological perspective in the facts he amassed during his field studies and archival research of Mexico. Scholars who persevere through these volumes will discover commentary that dissents from the scientific mainstream, and these passages could function as valuable pedagogical material for advanced undergraduate or graduate courses on science, literature, and colonialism. For instance, when paired with Jefferson's Notes or Crevecoeur's Letters (Humboldt praises the former but also corrects it, in particular Jefferson's geographic coordinates [End Page 624] for the Presidio of Sante...

The Ammonite Tirolites idrianus – A Paleontological Icon of the Idrija UNESCO Global Geopark (Slovenia)

Idrija UNECO Global Geopark embraces the area of Idrija Municipality in the western part of Slovenia, with an area of 294 km2. Its main town Idrija, with a famous mercury ore deposit beneath, has always been a home to several European naturalists, who explored natural features, plants, animals and fossils of the area since the beginning of mining in 1490. The ammonite Tirolites idrianus is one of the most important fossils finds in the area of the Idrija Geopark. It is named after Idrija and is an index fossil. This review focuses on the ammonite Tirolites idrianus, its type locality and stratigraphic distribution in the area of the Idrija Geopark. We also discuss means of interpreting the value and importance of this fossil to various groups of visitors, such as school groups, and groups of visitors in the Visitor Centre.

And after fire, the Cerrado flowers: A review of post-fire flowering in a tropical savanna

Post-fire flowering is a fire-adaptive trait that is underused in fire ecology literature to describe plant responses to fire. Most of the species described so far as having this strategy occur in mediterranean vegetation, while less is known about this event in tropical savannas. European naturalists described this fire-related response in the Cerrado when visiting Brazil and the first experiments to show the stimulation of flowering by fire were carried out by L. Coutinho, a pioneer in fire and savanna ecology in Brazil. The present study reviewed the literature on the Cerrado and compiled a database with 402 species that had any flowering response related to fire. As a result, we classified species based on flowering responses to fire (fire-dependent, fire-stimulated, fire-independent and fire-sensitive). About 85% of all the species included in the database are known to flower after fire, most of which are eudicots of the families the Asteraceae and Fabaceae, and ca. 45% are forbs. According to the classification, 267 of the species are fire-stimulated, 73 are fire-dependent, while only 11 of all the species are fire-sensitive. We encourage the use of post-fire flowering response in the future to analyze plant community responses to fire and help address knowledge gaps about how fire affects plant community assembly in tropical savannas.

Socrates on the Farm: Agricultural Improvement and Rural Knowledge in Eighteenth-Century Germany and Switzerland.

In many eighteenth-century agricultural texts, peasants were depicted as an impediment to agrarian improvement, superstitious and resistant to novelty. That was the stereotype one often encountered, in any case, in more programmatic writing about agriculture from this period. A closer look at the era's technical literature tells a more complicated story, however. Much as traveling European naturalists relied on local intermediaries in far corners of the globe, elite agricultural improvers back home relied on local rural knowledge as they drafted a new technical literature on farming. This article looks at Jacob Guyer (also known as Kleinjogg), a Swiss farmer who became an enlightened celebrity after the Zurich doctor Hans Caspar Hirzel published a biography of him in 1761. Hirzel called Kleinjogg a "philosophical farmer"; the article explores the implications of this title, and examines the various ways that elite eighteenth-century authors used contact with rural people and direct experience of farming as a source of authority.

Early Modern Attitudes to the Ravens and Red Kites of London

Ravens (Corvus corax) and red kites (Milvus milvus) were commonly seen in London in the early modern period. The aim of this paper is to reconstruct the diversity of attitudes towards these birds. Previous historiography on the subject has failed to contextualize its sources. The excited accounts of travellers like Schaseck, the Venetian Ambassador’s amanuensis and Lupold von Wedel need to be counter-balanced by considering the bored antipathy common amongst the British naturalists; William Turner, Francis Willughby and John Ray and the descriptions of sanitation services provided by European naturalists and local poets. The final part of the paper reconstructs the patchwork of legislation and custom relating to the species from early modern London.