Sociable Knowledge. Elizabeth YaleЧитать онлайн книгу.
concerns, Bobart devised a way of securing the insects in a case such that they might travel without being harmed. Although we do not know exactly how the insects were transported unharmed, Ray’s correspondence provides us with a wealth of affective information that gives us insight into the importance and difficulty of transporting specimens over long distances. In his correspondence with Lhuyd, Ray freely expressed both his worries about transporting the insects and his joy when he opened the box and viewed the collection.
For over a year Lhuyd and Ray wrote back and forth about Bobart’s collection of insects, worrying about and working out the particulars of transport. Ray fretted that the collection would be damaged in transport by wagon. The insects would fare well enough on the first leg of the trip, by boat down the Thames from Oxford to London. But, Ray wrote, “I fear they cannot be so fixt & put up but they must receive some damage in carrying & recarrying by the jotting of the Wagon” that would take them from London to Black Notley, near Braintree in Essex.79 Bobart, however, devised a method for securing the individual insects and, through Lhuyd, insisted on sending them. Ray acquiesced, requesting that Lhuyd send them through his London bookseller, Samuel Smith.80
The box of insects arrived at Christmas, a timely gift. To Lhuyd, Ray wrote,
That very day that your L{ette}r came to hand, the Box of Insects was also brought me, so that you were not out in y{ou}r conjecture. The several insects were so well fixt, that, to my admiration, there was not one of them stirred by the shaking & jolting of the wagon, but came as entire as they were sent out. I wish I may have as good successe in remitting them. Upon opening of the box I was mightily taken, I might say enravished, with the beauty of the spectacle, such a multitude of rare creatures, & so curiously conserved. Truly the ingenuity & industry of the Collector Mr Bobert is highly to be commended, & he encouraged to proceed.81
One phrase in Ray’s description hints at how the insects were preserved: they “were so well fixt” that the “shaking & jolting of the wagon” had not disturbed them. The use of the word “fixt” suggests that the insects were pinned in place or attached to some kind of backing, but it is difficult to glean more precise information from Ray’s description. Ray wrote most volubly about his emotional response to the collection. “Admiration,” “taken,” “enravished,” “beauty,” “spectacle,” “curiously”: as Ray tried to describe the experience of opening the box and seeing, and studying, the insects, his vocabulary soared above its usual restrained tones. It was almost as if the successful transport of the collection was a miracle in itself, one due solely to “the ingenuity & industry of the Collector Mr Bobert.” Ray’s emotions here might be thought of as the inverse of Aubrey’s when Aubrey contemplated having lost the manuscripts of The Naturall Historie of Wiltshire. Ray, doubtful that the collection would survive transport, must have opened the box with some trepidation. His trepidation was erased as he was “taken” and “enravished” by the sight of the preserved insects. Here was a transportation success of the highest order. Even in success we see how fragile the material links between naturalists were: because Ray never quite expected the insects to arrive intact, his admiration—his enravishment—at the sight of the collection was all the more overwhelming.
These examples, the instructions to plant collectors on Cader Idris and the successful shipment of Bobart’s collection of insects, provide a view of the individual, material links that made seventeenth-century natural history possible. The successful prosecution of seventeenth-century natural history required certain systems to be in place. These were both structural—the national road and river network on which packages traveled—and personal—the carrier and his team of horses; the river pilot; Samuel Smith, Ray’s bookseller and agent in London; and Bobart, whose personal expertise guided the safe shipment of the cases of plants and insects. The national network developed largely for commercial use, to bear loads of raw and finished materials (food, such as butter, eggs, and grain; raw wool and finished cloth; fuel, such as coal and wood) around the country, but once in place, it could just as well support the collecting games of curious naturalists.
Moving People
In the seventeenth century, travel, even within Britain, was no small matter. In his Celtic travels Edward Lhuyd was more than once mistaken for a spy or a tax collector, handled roughly, and thrown in jail; in the remoter reaches of Britain, he was unable to reach friends through the mail. John Ray, incapacitated by old age and painful sores on his legs, was unable to make the journey from Essex to Oxford.
Despite these difficulties, though, naturalists and antiquaries traveled avidly and planned prospective trips even more avidly. They did so for two reasons. The first motive was similar to that driving the exchange and circulation of specimens and objects. Naturalists traveled in order to observe nature firsthand and build the comprehensive collections of plant, animal, and mineral specimens upon which their work was based. Antiquarians also traveled with the aim of developing their collections. They gathered descriptions and sketches of ancient monuments, transcribed chronicles and other texts in out-of-the-way libraries, and dug up such relics as Roman coins and long-buried bones. But travel was not just about collecting specimens and observing nature. It had a second, social, raison d’être: naturalists and antiquarians also journeyed to talk with each other, to establish and renew the bonds of friendship and correspondence.
Edward Lhuyd, in subscription proposals for his study of the natural history, antiquities, and languages of the Celtic regions of Britain, best summed up naturalists’ intellectual reasons for travel: “It’s well known, no kind of Writing requires more Expences and Fatigue, than that of Natural History and Antiquities: it being impossible to perform any thing accurately in those Studies, without much Travelling, and diligent Searching, as well the most desert Rocks and Mountains, as the more frequented Valleys and Plains. The Caves, Mines, and Quarries must be pry’d into, as well as the outward Surface of the Earth; nor must we have less regard to the Creatures of the Sea, Lakes, and Rivers, than those of the Air and Dry Land.”82 Lhuyd described the difficulties (and the joys, quite possibly) of natural historical travel: the naturalist traveled all the most arduous roads, over rocks, mountains, and deserts, and into caves, mines, and quarries.
Antiquarian research also required substantial travel. Lhuyd’s linkage of natural history and antiquities led the way here, in that the firsthand research increasingly prized in both natural history and antiquarian circles was accomplished only through travel.83 Lhuyd’s predecessor at the Ashmolean, Robert Plot, in proposing a journey through Wales and England in search of “curiosities of both Art and Nature,” wrote,
And first, whereas it was a considerable part of the Business of John Leland with all imaginable Care to collect and preserve the ancient MSS. Books of the Abbeys and Monasteries then upon their Dissolution, and that notwithstanding his industrious Performances great numbers there were that never came to his Hands; and such as did, quickly after his Death, through the Iniquity of the Times, being dispers’d again, great part of the MSS. in England are, as it were, lost to the World, lying secretly in Corners and in private Hands, no Man knowing either what MSS. there be, or where to find them: it shall be one of the principal Ends of my Journey to search all the Publick Libraries of Cathedral and Collegiate Churches, of the Colleges in each University, and other Publick Libraries wheresoever, and make distinct Catalogues of them all. And as for such MSS. as shall be found in private Hands, it would not be amiss if the University of Oxford would imploy me to buy up (if they cannot be begg’d) as many as can be purchas’d for the Bodlejan Library; and where they will by no means be parted with to procure leave (if worth while) that an Amanuensis may transcribe the whole, or at least have the Perusal and Liberty to make Abridgements, as Leland did of many. But if neither of these will be admitted, ’twill be some satisfaction that they are added to the Catalogues of the rest, to inform Men that there are such Books, and in what libraries and in whose Hands they are.84
As Plot’s description of his plan indicated, travel, for natural historians and antiquarians, required a certain willingness to be invasive. Not only did they peer into quarries and trek to the tops of mountains; they also invited themselves into the private libraries of gentlemen and the public libraries of bishops. Plot anticipated difficulty from the gentlemen (though not the bishops): he hoped to buy up or transcribe