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Linnaeus on Sumptuous Books
Excerpts from the dissertation, Incrementa botanices (1753)
as revised in Amoenitates academicae 3: 390-93. 1756.
John L. Heller
And so we have completed the principal epochs of Botany in as short a space as possible, as if for a chart to be hung on the wall, and its principal Authors, those which are indispensable for persons who would be proficient in this science. But before I lift my hand from the desk, as they say, I will also indicate in a few words how in my opinion that costly invention of engraving ILLUSTRATIONS in copper and printing them is now ending in luxury (and) the ruin, as it has of several kingdoms, so too, perhaps, of this noble science itself. For in the old days, figures were cut only on wood; these represented their plants elegantly, though not with respect to their smallest parts, as in the work of Brunnels, Fuchs, Clusius, Rudbeck, etc. At that time, too, figures were transferred by trade from one owner to another and rearranged as each person desired.
Plantin, the printer of Antwerp, acquired a large stock, for his time, of woodcut figures, thereby reducing the cost of the many botanic works which were published at that time under his care and expense. For Clusius, offering at Loë's press a French translation of Dodonaeus's history, borrowed several figures from Fuchs, all of which Plantin subsequently bought. The same Clusius also published his own History at the house of Plantin himself. Plantin also contracted for the cutting on wood of Lobelius' figures. ...
One cannot deny that those costly figures, which the more Recent Authors have engraved on copper, are much better than those of the Early Botanists, because with copperplates more of the smallest parts can be rendered than with woodcuts, and more distinctly. Their use, however, has so increased the price of books that not a few Sons of Botany who are reared in modest circumstances are compelled to do without such sumptuous books. I call to witness the experience of a person in this situation who set out to purchase the work of Besler, of Barreller, the History of Morison, the Phytographia of Plukenet, the Gazophylacium of Petiver, the Ordines of Rivinus, the Gardens of the Commelinis, the Malabaricus of Rheede, the America of Plumier, the Centuria of Breyn, the Elthamensis of Dillen, the Amboina of Rumphius, the Jamaica of Sloane, the Danubius of Marsili, and especially the handcolored works such as Catesby's Carolina, Martyn's Centuria, Seba's thesaurus, Ehret's Plates, and also Blackwell's Herbal and Weinmann's Phytanthozaiconographia--when adding up their prices, they come to a sum sufficient to buy a reasonably complete Library in any other discipline whatever. And those who have treated ZOOLOGY, though they are few, have now nevertheless raised the cost of books in that science to such an extreme that only students supported by great wealth can acquire them; by way of example we will cite Rumphius, Gualtieri, d'Argenville, Buonanni, Lister on the Testacea; Swammerdam, Réaumur, Roesel, Albin, Edwards, Mme. Merian, Wilkes, Willughby, and a long line of others on Insects and Birds, whose total cost certainly exceeds a thousand ducats. And so if science is ever to be spread abroad, it is necessary for Systematists also to stand by her side with their labor, lest she be ruined in the end by her own splendor. Once the
