Linnaeus Tercentenary News
Volume 1, Number 3
Winter 2005
This is an electronic newsletter about the American Swedish Historical Museum's "Linnaeus and America" project to commemorate Carl Linnaeus on the occasion of the 300th anniversary of his birth in 2007. Request a free subscription or a paper copy from the Museum at 1900 Pattison Avenue, Philadelphia, PA 19145-5901; telephone 215.389.1776, fax 215.389.7701, or e-mail info@americanswedish.org. We invite your contributions to the newsletter. Read each issue at www.americanswedish.org.
The Course the World Has Been Waiting For!
Soon you will be able to study Linnaeus’s life and science via the Internet. Uppsala University
will offer a part-time Internet-based course about CL beginning in September 2005, and continuing
until January 2006. Experts on botany, zoology, geology, medicine, history, literature, and
theology will discuss Linnaeus’s many fields of research. The course will focus especially on
his main field, systematic botany. You will also learn about CL the man, his students (the “apostles”),
and Uppsala as an 18th-century scientific center. Information and application forms:
www.ibg.uu.se/linnaeus.
Apply before April 15, 2005!
Suggestions for Linnaeus ReadingFor Linnaeus, the standard life is Wilfrid Blunt (with the assistance of William T. Stearn), The Compleat Naturalist: A Life of Linnaeus (London: Collins, 1971). This lively, accessible, authoritative, and well illustrated biography is out of print, but it is often available from Internet providers, such as Alibris. ISBN 0-00-211142-x. A new edition with new photographs and a revised list of sources is available under the title Linnaeus: The Compleat Naturalist (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2001).
As Paula Robbins notes in her article about Kalm, there is no biography of Linnaeus’s “apostle” to America that is written for an American audience. But please dip into Peter Kalm’s Travels in North America, the English Version of 1770. Revised from the Original Swedish and Edited by Adolph B. Benson. New York: Dover Publications, 1937. (There are editions in many languages other than English.) Kalm was a keen observer of North America’s plants and animals and its human inhabitants. Like Herodotus many centuries earlier, he sifted evidence, including not a few “travelers’ tales,” and tried arrive at the truth, or at least what he thought was reasonable. Kalm’s is a thoroughly engaging personality and his book of endless “highlights” is just simply fun to read. Also, to read the 18th-century English edition, see the link to a digitized copy in “Links to Linnaeus-Related Sites.”
Recently, W. R. Mead published an edition of Kalm’s account of his visit to the English Chilterns during his enforced stay in England while he was on his way to North America (again, as Paula tells us below). The book is Peter Kalm, A Finnish Visitor to the Chilterns in 1748 (published by Mead in 2003; contact him at 6 Lower Icknield Way, Aston Clinton, near Aylesbury, Buckinghamshire HP22 5JS, United Kingdom; ISBN 1-85065-729-7). Mead is a professor emeritus in the Department of Geography, University College, London, and has been interested in Kalm for many years. His edition of PK’s account of his English visit is well annotated and includes Mead’s excellent introduction.
The American Philosophical Society has recently published papers presented at a 1999 symposium about John Bartram, the great American naturalist and contemporary of Kalm and Linnaeus, who was so helpful to Kalm during the latter’s visits to Philadelphia and its environs in 1748-51. The complete citation is Nancy E. Hoffmann and John C. Van Horne, eds., America’s Curious Botanist: A Tercentennial Reappraisal of John Bartram, 1699-1777. Volume 243, Memoirs of the American Philosophical Society Held at Philadelphia for Promoting Useful Knowledge. Philadelphia: American Philosophical Society, in Cooperation with the Library Company of Philadelphia and the John Bartram Association, 2004. Particularly noteworthy among the book’s many interesting essays are Whitfield J. Bell’s opening biographical sketch of Bartram, and Crystal A. Polis and Robert E. Savage’s “Calming John Bartram’s Passion: Sweden’s Scientific Certification of Philadelphia’s Botanist.” This book will help the reader to understand the world of 18th-century American natural history, and John Bartram’s important place in it. Bartram and a number of other Americans (Benjamin Franklin, Cadwallader and Jane Colden, Alexander Garden, and John’s son, William, for example) were members of an international scientific community that included—perhaps we could say was headed by--Carl Linnaeus. $40, cloth, ISBN 0-87169-247-3. Contact the APS for ordering information: 215.440.3400
Linnaeus sent his students out around the world on collecting expeditions not for pure scientific interest alone. He and others in the Swedish government and scientific establishment hoped that foreign plants and animals would be useful to Sweden economically. A good account of the nationalism inherent in the Linnaean “mission” is Lisbet Koerner, Linnaeus: Nature and Nation (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1999). Koerner’s very readable book combines a biography of Linnaeus with an intelligent economic interpretation of Linnaeus’s work. Paper, ISBN 0-674-00565-1.
For children: Margaret J. Anderson, Carl Linnaeus, Father of Classification, Great Minds of Science (Berkeley Heights, NJ: Enslow, 1997). Paper, with a fair number of illustrations. ISBN 0-7660-1867-9. This a pretty clear and straightforward treatment; maybe a little bit lionizing. Her chapter 10, “The Apostles,” treats Kalm and Linnaeus’s other globe-trotting students. Anderson usually does a good job explaining the science. But not when she explains why Linnaeus’s system is not used any longer exactly as he presented it to the world: “Some plants that are not closely related ended up in the same group,” which is surely a problem with his sexual system of classification. A century later Charles Darwin’s The Origin of Species and his theory of evolution “explained how species can change over time,” yielding “a clearer understanding of plant relationships. . . . [and] botanists could develop a more logical system of classification.” Right, but not very clear for a young (or an old) reader.
You can read most of these books (not Koerner’s or Anderson’s) in the ASHM’s library; 215.389.1776.
“Linnaeus Lives” in March: The George Wright Society
On Thursday, March 17, 2005, The ASHM and the Fairmount Park Commission will sponsor a session for
the 2005 convention of the George Wright Society, a nature walk through FDR Park in the style (almost)
of the forays Linnaeus led around Uppsala while he was a professor there in the 18th century. We are
using this as a pilot for the Linnaeus Day excursion on May 21, when the weather will be better (we hope)!
The George Wright Society is an organization of park professionals from around the country.
Don’t Forget Linnaeus Day ‘05If you will be in or near Philadelphia on Saturday, May 21, 2005, plan to visit the ASHM for our first annual Linnaeus Day. Karen Reeds will speak about why we should care about Carl Linnaeus, and Paula Robbins will explain why Pehr Kalm is so important in understanding Linnaean and early American science. Bob Savage will lead a Linnaean-style nature walk through FDR Park. Wilfrid Blunt quotes Johan Christian Fabricius’s description of the nature walks Linnaeus led around Uppsala in the middle of the 18th century:
The cheerful party—there were often a hundred and fifty of us of various nationalities—broke up into small groups who had orders to foregather at an agreed hour; Linnaeus kept with him only a handful of the cleverest students. Sometimes the rendezvous chosen was the Castle of Safja, and we would all set out in that direction, not without a lot of hilarity which Linnaeus never attempted to restrain. As soon as everyone had assembled, Linnaeus began to identify the plants that had been collected.
Blunt goes on to summarize information left by other students. “Whenever a rarity was discovered a bugle call was sounded, whereupon everyone ran to Linnaeus to hear him demonstrate.” After a day spent “botanizing,” everyone “marched back to the town [Uppsala], Linnaeus at their head, with banners waving and horns and kettledrums playing. When they reached the Botanic Garden there were repeated cries of ‘Vivat Linnaeus!,’ after which the party broke up.” (The Compleat Naturalist, 168-69).
Probably the ASHM’s Linnaeus Day nature walk will do without the bugles, banners, and kettledrums.
But we promise that everyone who attends will learn lots about Carl Linnaeus and Pehr Kalm and have a
great time. Call the Museum for information, 215.389.1776, or visit www.americanswedish.org.
Links to Linnaeus-Related SitesCheck these out. We will publish others in future issues.
Linnean Society of London, http://www.linnean.org; the largest collection of Linnaeus materials in the world, and includes his personal collections and library.
Linnaeus Correspondence Project, http://linnaeus.c18.net; a project to publish Linnaeus’s correspondence on the web. Many letters are in English, and it includes letters previously translated into English and published.
“Order from Chaos” online exhibition, http://huntbot.andrew.cmu.edu/HIBD/Exhibitions/OrderFromChaos/pages/Disclaimer.shtml; the Hunt Institute for Botanical Documentation, a Research Division of Carnegie-Mellon University, Pittsburgh, houses the Strandell Collection, the largest collection of Linnaeus materials in the United States. This exhibition draws on that collection and is a splendid way to learn who CL was and what he did.
Historic Bartram’s Garden, www.bartramsgarden.org, in Philadelphia, is the home of America’s greatest early botanist, John Bartram, who was a member of the international community of scientists that included Benjamin Franklin and Carl Linnaeus. Bartram spent a good deal of time with Pehr Kalm when the latter was in the Philadelphia region off and on in the period 1748-51.
Read Pehr Kalm’s Travels Into North America in the English edition of 1772 at www.americanjourneys.org, the Wisconsin Historical Society’s amazing “American Journeys” website. The society has digitized a great number of primary sources of American history. Here’s how to get to Travels: at the homepage, click on “Find a Document.” Scroll through the chronological list of digitized documents; Travels is at 1748, not the year of its publication, but of PK’s arrival in North America. Click on one of the three Travels documents, AJ-117 (both volumes), AJ-117a (volume 1), or AJ-117b (volume 2). Each is searchable by topic. You can read, print, or download from a pulldown menu. There are also buttons for Teachers Materials, Images, and Highlights.
Feature Article:
Pehr Kalm, the Link Between Linnaeus and PhiladelphiaCarl Linnaeus sent several of his best students abroad to discover plants that might be brought back to enrich the Swedish kingdom, which then consisted of both Sweden and Finland. The northern British colonies in America and the French colony of Canada were particularly attractive because Linnaeus and others thought their climates were similar to Sweden’s, and North American plants were known to survive the cold Scandinavian winters. Linnaeus already knew about the great botanist John Bartram of Philadelphia, and as early as 1738, he had requested seeds from Bartram.
One of Linnaeus’ favorite students at Uppsala University was Pehr (or Peter) Kalm, who had grown up in Finland and attended Åbo Akademi in Turku, Finland, before moving to Sweden. There Kalm supervised the gardens and plantation of his patron, Baron Sten Carl Bielke, Linnaeus’s close friend and a fellow founder of the Swedish Royal Academy of Science. Through the efforts of Linnaeus and Bielke, as well as other scientists, including Anders Celsius, the Swedish inventor of the centigrade thermometer, Kalm was groomed in preparation for a journey of exploration. He was appointed lecturer in natural history and economics at Åbo Akademi, and the stipend for that post plus contributions from Uppsala University and the Swedish government’s Department of Manufactures funded Kalm’s journey to North America (along with his faithful servant, Bielke’s gardener and handyman, Lars Jungström).
The trip was supposed to last only two years, but it was almost four years from the time they left Uppsala in October 1747, until their return in June 1751. First, they were shipwrecked on the way to England and had to spend several months in Norway. Then, because of the war between England and France, they were unable to obtain passage for America until August of 1748. However, Kalm used his six months in England to improve his command of English, to meet many influential British botanists, and to learn much more about American plants.
Kalm finally arrived in Philadelphia on September 15, 1748, and was met by Benjamin Franklin, to whom he had been recommended by several mutual acquaintances in England. Franklin introduced Kalm to many of his friends and Kalm wrote that Franklin gave him “all necessary instructions and showed [him] kindness on many occasions.” Kalm immediately set about learning as much as possible about American plants before the onset of winter. Kalm spent many hours in the company of John Bartram, who was most hospitable and helpful, teaching him to identify many American plants he had not seen before, and answering his numerous questions.
Philadelphia impressed the young scientist, who wrote that
it will be easy to conceive why this city should rise so suddenly from nothing into such grandeur
and perfection without any powerful monarch contributing to it, either by punishing the wicked or
by giving great supplies of money. And yet its fine appearance, good regulations, agreeable
location, natural advantages, trade, riches and power are by no means inferior to those of any, even
of the most ancient, towns in Europe. It has not been necessary to force people to come and settle here;
on the contrary foreigners of different languages have left their country, houses, property and relations
and ventured over wide and stormy seas in order to come hither. Other countries, which have been peopled
for a long space of time, complain of the small number of their inhabitants. But Pennsylvania which was
no better than a wilderness in the year 1681, and contained hardly fifteen hundred people, now vies with
several kingdoms in Europe in the number of inhabitants. It has received hosts of people which other
countries, to their infinite loss, have either neglected, belittled or expelled.
(Travels in North America, 1770; reprinted, New York: Dover Publications, 1937, p. 33).
Kalm was also introduced to fellow Swedes, including the portrait painter, Gustav Hesselius. They soon took him across the Delaware to Raccoon (now Swedesboro) in New Jersey, where lived many of the descendants of the Swedish and Finnish settlers of New Sweden (1638-55). On his arrival at Raccoon, Kalm discovered that the Church of Sweden missionary to the congregation in Raccoon, Johan Sandin, had died the previous month. Kalm and Sandin had been friends and fellow students at the university in Uppsala, so Kalm stayed as a guest in Sandin’s home and attended with great care to his surviving family, a widow with a young daughter and a new-born infant.
Kalm had originally studied theology, intending to follow in the footsteps of his father and become a minister. Therefore, he naturally stepped in as substitute preacher for the Raccoon congregation. During his stay in America, he spent three winters in Raccoon, preaching nearly every Sunday in the Raccoon Church and also delivering funeral sermons. His friendship and care for the widow Anna Margaretha Sjoman Sandin resulted in their marriage in Philadelphia in February of 1750.
When weather permitted, Kalm left the Philadelphia area and traveled up the Hudson to Canada, where he stayed for some time in 1749, studying in the area around Quebec and Montreal as the guest of the French king. In the summer of 1750, he traveled to Niagara Falls; his description of that natural wonder was the first written by a trained scientist and was widely read. Kalm discovered many plants native to the St. Lawrence, Hudson, and Delaware valleys that were new to Europeans. He provided Linnaeus with more than 100 American plants for his herbarium.
Kalm returned to Finland, where he was a popular teacher at Åbo Akademi for many years until his death in 1779. He died disappointed that he had not succeeded in growing any North American plants that added substantially to the economy of the Swedish kingdom. He wrote a two-volume account of his travels that was later translated into German, French, and English, but was unable to find a publisher for the third volume, which perished in a fire. He also wrote many articles about American plants and animals and supervised papers written by his students on American subjects. Kalm’s value to us, more than 250 years later, is primarily through the clear and objective descriptions he wrote of the people and places he saw during his journey. He also served to spread knowledge of and interest in Linnaeus’ system in the American colonies.
Unfortunately, the impression that Kalm made on several of his acquaintances in Philadelphia was not a favorable one. They were not pleased with some of the conclusions that Kalm made in his Travels, when they were finally translated into English in 1770. An early twentieth-century Philadelphia botanist, John Harshberger, wrote of Kalm, “he seems to have been remarkably credulous; and, moreover, it is alleged, took to himself the credit of some discoveries which rightfully belonged to John Bartram.” James Logan, then elderly and in poor health, was suspicious that Kalm was really a spy for the French. Bartram complained several times that he had received no letter of thanks or copies of Kalm’s publications. Franklin wrote of Kalm, “It is dangerous conversing with these Strangers that keep Journals.”
*****
Paula Ivaska Robbins is working on what will be the first biography of Pehr Kalm written for an
American audience. She is a retired university administrator and the author of many articles and
four books: Successful Midlife Career Change (AMACOM, 1978); The Royal Family of Concord: Samuel,
Elizabeth and Rockwood Hoar and Their Friendship with Ralph Waldo Emerson (Xlibris, 2003), and two
historical novels based on the life of her Finnish grandmothers. Paula taught adult education for a
semester at the University of Helsinki in 1982, sponsored by the Finnish Academy. Her cousin, Ari Ivaska,
is Professor of Analytical Chemistry at Åbo Akademi. She holds degrees from Vassar College, Boston
University, and the University of Connecticut. She lives in Asheville, North Carolina, where she
is a freelance writer, medical editor, and publisher of a bed and breakfast directory for Unitarian
Universalists, and a volunteer garden guide at the North Carolina Arboretum.
Contact Paula at paularww@bellsouth.net.
About the ASHMFor more than 75 years, the American Swedish Historical Museum has been preserving and presenting Swedish and Swedish-American history and culture. The Museum stands on land once owned by a 17th-century Swedish colonist. It presents the history of the New Sweden colony and the accomplishments of such important Swedes as Fredrika Bremer, John Ericsson, Jenny Lind, and John Ericsson. It keeps Swedish culture alive in the Delaware Valley with language and cooking classes, a choir (the Swedish Museum Singers), and such outstanding annual ethnic events as Julbord and Lucia Fest in December, Pea Soup and Punsch in January, Valborgsmässoafton in April, and Midsommarfest in June. (You don't need to be Swedish to enjoy them!) With other Swedish-American organizations the ASHM presents the Annual New Sweden History Conference and many programs for students, teachers, and families.
Open Tues.-Fri., 10-4, Sat.-Sun., noon-4. Admission, $6 adults, $5 students and senior citizens. For program and membership information, call 215.389.1776, or visit the Museum's website at www.americanswedish.org.
Go to the first issue of Linnaeus Tercentenary News.
Go to the second issue of Linnaeus Tercentenary News.