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Chapter 8 Ministerial Intervention and an Unexpected Outcome

1. previous hit Dodart next hit, Mémoires des plantes, 239-42. His plans were adopted, for after 1676 the minutes mention the second part or continuation of the natural history: AdS, Reg., 8: 155v (June 1677-Apr. 1678); 10: 44r-v, 72r, 82v, 84v, 152v (June 1679-June 1683). [BACK]

2. AdS, Reg., 8: 122r: "que l'on doit donner les premieres au public, comme sont la coriandre, la laictue, la Chicorée tant sauvage que Domestique, le Cresson, & c." [BACK]

3. Ibid., 8: 215v: "dans le dessein d'en faire les Descriptions pour servir a l'histoire generate des plantes." [BACK]

4. Ibid., 10: 72r: " ... tous ces traittez qui devoient composer un juste volume luy ayant esté volez en entrant a Paris, ou il les apportoit pour les faire mettre au net, et les donner a l'Imprimeur; et toutes les diligences qu'il a faites pour les recouvrer luy ayant esté inutiles, il a esté obligé de refaire les deux plus importants de ces traittez, et de recueillir dans ses memoires tout ce qu'il a pû retrouver pour retablir les autres ouvrages." [BACK]

5. Ibid., 10: 82v. [BACK]

6. Ibid., 10: 84v; previous hit Dodart's next hit other treatises were: "Examen de quinz a seize cents experiences de Medecine des Remedes Royaux distribuez par Monr. Pellisson," "L'Usage de la Raison en Physique, et en Medecine," "L'Histoire de la Medecine premiere partic du Regime, et des exercices," "Experiences sur le feu," "Traitté de la Transpiration," and "De la maniere de nourrir les malades." His history of diet and his practical manual on how to live a healthy life by eating and exercising properly were mentioned by Du Hamel in the annual report for 1678-79: AdS, Reg., 8: 214v-15r. [BACK]

7. Ibid., 10: 109r, 112r-v, 152v (12, 19 Aug. 1682, July 1682-June 1683); cf. Histoire, 1: 374 (1683). previous hit Dodart's next hit notes in BMHN MS. 450 seem to date from the 1680s. [BACK]

8. AdS, Reg., 11: 114v (13 Dec. 1684). Reneaume claimed that Tournefort's Iberian herborizations were done for the Academy: Tournefort, 229. [BACK]

9. AdS, Reg., 11: 113r (22 Nov. 1684); Histoire, 1: 405 (1684). [BACK]

10. AdS, Reg., 11: 115v, 133r, 152v (10 Jan., 4 July, 19 Dec. 1685); 12: 21v (4 Dec. 1686). [BACK]

11. Ibid., 11: 116v-17v, 124r (20 Jan., 11 Apr. 1685); Histoire, 1: 431; Huygens, Oeuvres, 9: 10 (23 May 1685). [BACK]

12. Koenigsberger, "Republics and Courts," stresses the ill effects of self-interested patronage in music, art, and science. [BACK]

13. Saunders, Decline and Reform, 99-102. [BACK]

14. AdS, Reg., 11: 157r: La Chapelle's words were "recherche curieuse", "un and "un amusement des Chymistes"; he requested instead "recherche utile ce qui peut avoir rapport an Service du Roy et de L'Estat." The connotation of "curieux" is unclear. According to Liver, Lexique de Molière, and the Grand Larousse de la langue française, 2: 1097, Descartes used the word to refer to the pseudo-sciences. Coming after Duclos's deathbed recantation and given La Chapelle's condemnation of the philosopher's stone, therefore, this could be an attack on the Academy for dabbling in alchemy. But Furetière, Dictionnaire, cites "curieux," "sciences curieuses," and "chimiste curieux," using "curieux" to convey a taste for experiment and discovery, or to suggest the contemporary English notion of the interests exhibited by virtuosi. [BACK]

15. AdS, Reg., 11: 157v: "L'autre Recherche plus convenable à cette Compagnie et qui seroit plus du goust de Monseigneur de Louvois regarde tout toe qui peut illustrer la Physique et servir a la Medecine, ces deux choses estant presque inseparables parceque la medecine tire des Consequences et profite des nouvelles decouvertes de la Physique." Saunders, Decline and Reform, 254-55, has published the entire text of this speech. [BACK]

16. He had previously done so in the case of the abbé de Lannion, who was rebuked and expelled from the Academy: AdS, Reg., 11: 162v (27 Feb. 1686). [BACK]

17. Huygens, Oeuvres, 9: 164 (1 June 1687). [BACK]

18. AdS, Reg., 8: 155v-56r, 195r-v, 216r-17v (June 1677-Apr. 1678, 11 Jan. 1679, Apr. 1678-June 1679); Histoire, 1: 50-51, 162-67, 198, 282, 320-21, 387-89 (1668, 1673, 1675, 1679, 1681, 1684). [BACK]

19. AdS, Reg., 11: 158r. [BACK]

20. Ibid., 11: 166v, 167r, 168r-69r (13, 27 Mar., 3, 6, 17 Apr. 1686). [BACK]

21. Ibid., 12: 66v, 68v-69r, 134v (7, 21 Jan. 1688, 21 May 1689), and passim. [BACK]

22. From 28 January 1688 until the end of 1689, only four descriptions of plants were recorded in the minutes, and only one engraving was verified: ibid., 12: 89v, 107r, 130v, 135r (9 June, 4 Dec. 1688, 30 Mar., 1 June 1689). [BACK]

23. Ibid., 12: 89v-90r, 131v (12 June 1688, 20 Apr. 1689); Histoire, 2: 53, 68 (1688, 1689); cf. Hunt, Catalogue, 1: 369, on Jan Commelin. [BACK]

24. Huygens, Oeuvres, 9: 481. [BACK]

25. AdS, Reg., 12: 88r, 129v, 131v (26 May 1688, 16 Mar., 20 Apr. 1689); 13: 39r (15 Nov. 1690); Histoire, 2: 68 (1689). [BACK]

26. AdS, Reg., 13: 14r-15v, 17r, 40r, 41r, 42v (17, 28 June, 1, 26 July, 29 Nov., 20 Dec. 1690, 13, 17 Jan. 1691), and passim; BMHN MS. 451: 131r-32r (29 Nov. 1690). [BACK]

27. AdS, Reg., 13: 19v (12 Aug. 1690). [BACK]

28. Histoire, 2: 10-11, 29, 53, 62, 63, 66, 68, 92-93, 116, 122 (1686-91). [BACK]

29. External scholarly competition, an obvious source of botanical influence, had little effect one way or the other. Several foreign botanists were already working on similar projects — from the idiosyncratic books of Paolo Boccone to the specialized treatises of Nehemiah Grew and Marcello Malpighi — but the work of John Ray presented the most likely challenge. Ray's monumental Historia plantarum was to be a complete compendium of contemporary botanical knowledge and Tournefort praised it as a "botanical library": Élémens de botanique, 19. Like the academicians, Ray described plants and their chemical analysis; although he could not illustrate his work, he surpassed the Academy's project in scope by discussing plant nutrition and the flow of the sap and proposing an impressive solution to the problem of classification. Ray supplemented his Historia plantarum with other Latin studies of British and European flora, but his prodigious output from 1686 through 1694 did not discourage academicians from resuscitating their natural history of plants as soon as their protector permitted. Jean Marchant owned Ray's books: BMHN MS. 447. See chap. 15, below; Stevenson, "John Ray and Classification," 254; Raven, John Ray, chaps. 4, 8-11; Arber, "A Seventeenth-Century Naturalist." [BACK]

30. AdS, Reg., 13: 43r, 59v, 71r-v, 72r, 73r (14 Feb., 18, 25 Apr., 12, 19, 22 Dec. 1691); Histoire, 2: 116. Two of the plants were as yet unnamed. [BACK]

31. AdS, Reg., 13: 71v, 81v, 105v-6r (15 Dec. 1691, 27 Feb., 12 July 1692); 14: 2v (21 Nov. 1693); 17: 38r-39v (27 Nov. 1697); on ginseng, cf. Histoire ... 1718, 41-45. [BACK]

32. AdS, Reg., 13: 133r-v (6, 13 May 1693); 14: 118v (25 May 1695); Histoire, 2: 153-54, 188 (1692, 1693); Mémoires, 10: 101-3, 119-26. [BACK]

33. AdS, Reg., 14: 204r, 218v (3, 7 Dec. 1695). [BACK]

34. Ibid., 14: 18v, 65r-v (19 June 1694, 2 Mar. 1695); 16: 122r (8 May 1697); Histoire, 2: 116; Mémoires, 10: 10-14 (31 Jan. 1692). The Marchants' annotated copy of Pinax is now BMHN MS. 1061. They corrected and added names of plants, working from personal observation and from books by Jean Bauhin, Parkinson, and others. [BACK]

35. AdS, Reg., 16: 79v (10 Apr. 1697); Histoire ... 1699, 60-63. [BACK]

36. Only Homberg's paper on a vegetable dye focused exclusively on the use of a plant: AdS, Reg., 15: 97r-100r (20 June 1696): "L'Usage des Fleurs de Cartame dans la Teinture." [BACK]

37. There are too many descriptions between 1693 to 1699 to list; see for example, AdS, Reg., 13: 131v (15 Apr. 1693, Marchant); 15: 87v (6 June 1696, previous hit Dodart next hit). [BACK]

38. Histoire, 2: 154, 188, 257-58, 280 (1692, 1693, 1695, 1696). By April 1693 academicians were again reviewing Bourdelin's notebooks: AdS, Reg., 13: 132v (29 Apr. 1693). [BACK]

39. Stroup, "Wilhelm Homberg." [BACK]

40. But not Jean Marchant, to whom he displayed animosity, seeing to it that Marchant would lose the petit jardin: Historia, 419, 448; Laissus and Monseigny, "Les Plantes du Roi." [BACK]

41. Tournefort, Histoire des plantes, aiiijr. [BACK]

42. Tournefort, Élémens de botanique, 5. [BACK]

43. See Tournefort, 217-18, on the several volumes of plant descriptions Tournefort wrote during the 1690s. [BACK]

44. Tournefort, Histoire des plantes, avijv-eiijr: "premieres qualitez des corps," "la configuration des parties." See also Tournefort, 100-101. [BACK]

45. Laissus and Monseigny argue that publication of Tournefort's Élémens de botanique ruled out release of the Academy's natural history of plants; see "Les Plantes du Roi," 209-10. [BACK]

46. Tournefort, Élémens de botanique, eiiijr: "ni les figures entieres de chaque espece de plante ni leurs vertus." [BACK]

47. Ibid., 12-13. [BACK]

48. Tournefort, Histoire des plantes, aiiijr-v. [BACK]

49. Tournefort, Élémens de botanique, 3, 516, 558; Histoire des plantes, aiij, avjr-v, exr-v, 6, 11, 15, 40, and passim; Fontenelle, Éloges, 110; Tournefort, 216, 229. This may be why Fontenelle incorrectly claimed that the natural history had always been intended as a catalogue of plants in France; see chap. 6, above. [BACK]

50. Marchant defined his work for 1699 as completing the second volume of the natural history of plants "sur le dessein que la Compagnie s'est anciennement proposé": AdS, Reg., 18: 144v. [BACK]

51. Tournefort, 209, 212, 227-36. [BACK]

52. Cf. Bertrand, L'Académie et les académiciens, 44-46, 50-51, for a different assessment of corporate and individual projects. [BACK]


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