Hunt Institute Archives Text Discovery Platform

Page transcription

on the cover
BETULA
NANA
LINNAEAN DISSERTATIONS

George B. Van Schaack

The cover illustration shows the title page of the first Linnaean "dissertation". Translated it says: "Botanical dissertation concerning Betula nana, which Lawrence Magnus Klase modestly submits to the public examination of gentlemen, under the sponsorship of the Medical Faculty of the Royal Academy of Upsala, presided over by the learned master Dr. Carolus Linnaeus, in the hall of Gustavus the Great, on June 30, 1743, at the usual hour before noon." It is a slender pamphlet of twenty pages containing a description of the dwarf birch, in particular differentiating it from the common birch, listing previous references to it, discussing its uses, and, in general, 'monographing' it as we say today. The pamphlet has an engraving attached showing a branch as found in the Royal Academy's botanical garden.

Thus was launched the series of 186 "theses" directed by Linnaeus during the remaining thirty-three years of his life. It seems clear that a few of them were substantially the work of the students who studied with him; but equally likely most of them were largely his own, the student merely making a thorough study of the material, probably writing the initial draft of the text, and pretty surely paying for the publication of copies to be on hand for distribution at the examination.

The Garden's library contains an excellent collection of these 'Amoenitates', as they were called. It has all but one of the originals as prepared for the examination, and also most of the later collected editions. The latter often have some changes, many of them important for present day work. The depth of the Garden's library collections in this particular respect is typical, especially for the fields of plant taxonomy and distribution, botanical history, and botanical illustration.

The single original dissertation lacking from the Garden's collection is Anthropomorpha (animals of manlike form), in which Christian E. Hoppius of St. Petersburg, presented the history of the Simia genus (apes). Pretty certainly Linnaeus stuck his neck out further than in any other of his publications, as he instructed his student to recognize four species: Pygmaeus, Satyrus, Lucifer, and Troglodytes, with documentation taken from tales of travel to distant lands, and to make an illustration showing four biped animals that were too manlike in appearance. The Garden's bound set of original dissertations shows only stubs where the leaves have been cut out; was it by some reader over-intrigued by the content, or by some former owner who could not tolerate such potentially heretical material in his library?

Cf. Wisconsin Bot. Paper, Vol. 56(2)
Jan/Feb 1968