The leopard in the garden life in close quarters at the Muséum d'Histoire Naturelle

ISIS

Volumn 98, Issue 4, 2007, Pages 675-694

  Burkhardt Jr , Richard W ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS AT URBANA CHAMPAIGN   (United States)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

ANIMAL; ARTICLE; FRANCE; HISTOLOGY; HISTORY; INFORMATION CENTER; PANTHERA; PHYSIOLOGY; PUBLICATION; ZOOLOGY;

ANIMALS; EXHIBITS AS TOPIC; HISTORY, 19TH CENTURY; MUSEUMS; NATURAL HISTORY; PANTHERA; PARIS; ZOOLOGY;

EID: 41149158000     PISSN: 00211753     EISSN: 15456994     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1086/529263     Document Type: Article

References (92)

1. G. Cuvier, "Extrait d'un rapport sur l'état de l'histoire naturelle et sur ses accroissements depuis le retour de la paix maritime," in Recueil des éloges historiques lus dans les séances publiques de l'Institut de France, 3 vols. (Paris: Firmin Didot Frères, 1851), Vol. 3, p. 273. Here and throughout the essay, all translations into English are mine.
2. Janet Browne, Charles Darwin: The Power of Place (London: Cape, 2002). The literature addressing the theme of "place" in the development of science is growing apace.
3. See esp. David Livingstone, Putting Science in Its Place: Geographies of Scientific Knowledge (Chicago: Univ. Chicago Press, 2004);
4. and the March 2005 issue of the British Journal for the History of Science (2005, 38), which is devoted to the theme "Historical Geographies of Science," with overviews by Simon Naylor, "Introduction: Historical Geographies of Science - Places, Contexts, Cartographies," pp. 1-12,
5. and Livingstone, "Text, Talk, and Testimony: Geographical Reflections on Scientific Habits: An Afterword," pp. 93-100.
6. See also Robert E. Kohler, Landscapes and Labscapes: Exploring the Lab-Field Frontier in Biology (Chicago: Univ. Chicago Press, 2002).
7. Particularly relevant for the present study is Dorinda Outram, "New Spaces in Natural History," in Cultures of Natural History, ed. N. Jardine, J. A. Secord, and E. C. Spary (Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1996), pp. 249-265.
8. I have addressed the question of place as it relates to French zoological practices in Richard W. Burkhardt, Jr., "Unpacking Baudin: Models of Scientific Practice in the Age of Lamarck," in Jean-Baptiste Lamarck, 1744-1829, ed. Goulven Laurent (Paris: Editions du CTHS, 1997), pp. 497-514.
9. For questions of place as they relate to the study of animal behavior see Burkhardt, "Ethology, Natural History, the Life Sciences, and the Problem of Place," Journal of the History of Biology, 1999, 32:489-508;
10. and Burkhardt, Patterns of Behavior: Konrad Lorenz, Niko Tinbergen, and the Founding of Ethology (Chicago: Univ. Chicago Press, 2005).
11. The relation between "centers of calculation" and "peripheral" locations has received much attention in the history of science, stimulated in particular by Bruno Latour, Science in Action: How to Follow Scientists and Engineers through Society (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard Univ. Press, 1987), Ch. 6.
12. See, e.g., David Philip Miller, "Joseph Banks, Empire, and 'Centers of Calculation' in Late Hanoverian London," in Visions of Empire: Voyages, Botany, and Representations of Nature, ed. Miller and Peter Hans Reill (Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1996), pp. 21-37.
13. See also David Wade Chambers and Richard Gillespie, "Locality in the History of Science: Colonial Science, Technoscience, and Indigenous Knowledge," Osiris, N.S., 2000, 15:221-240, where, with respect to the movement of scientific artifacts and ideas, the authors note the attraction of a "networks of exchange" model rather than a wheel model with individual spokes leading from a metropolitan hub to different points on the periphery.
14. Likewise, Tony Ballantyne, Orientalism and Race: Aryanism in the British Empire (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2001), shows how the history of knowledge production in the British Empire on matters of race and language is better represented in terms of multiple, overlapping webs than in terms of simple, binary, metropole-periphery relations.
15. For an entry to the burgeoning scholarly literature on the theme of "Museums and the History of Science" see the special Focus section in Isis, 2005, 96(4):
16. Samuel J. M. M. Alberti, "Objects and the Museum," pp. 559-571;
17. Sophie Forgan, "Building the Museum: Knowledge, Conflict, and the Power of Place," pp. 572-585;
18. Sally Gregory Kohlstedt, "'Thoughts in Things': Modernity, History, and North American Museums," pp. 586-601;
19. and Jim Bennett, "Museums and the History of Science: Practitioner's Postscript," pp. 602-608.
20. I have treated these respective cases in Richard W. Burkhardt, Jr., "Naturalists' Practices and Nature's Empire: Paris and the Platypus, 1815-1833," Pacific Science, 2001, 55:327-341;
21. Burkhardt, The Spirit of System: Lamarck and Evolutionary Biology (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard Univ. Press, 1977; new ed., 1995), pp. 148-150;
22. and Burkhardt, "La ménagerie et la vie du Muséum," in Le Muséum au premier siècle de son histoire, ed. Claude Blanckaert, Claudine Cohen, Pietro Corsi, and Jean-Louis Fischer (Paris: Muséum. National d'Histoire Naturelle, 1997), pp. 481-508,
23. rev. in English as "Constructing the Zoo: Science, Society, and Animal Nature at the Paris Menagerie, 1794-1838," in Animals in Human Histories: The Mirror of Nature and Culture, ed. Mary J. Henninger-Voss (Rochester, N.Y.: Univ. Rochester Press, 2002), pp. 231-257.
24. On the origins of the menagerie see in particular Ernest-Théodore Hamy, "Les anciennes ménageries royales et la ménagerie nationale fondée le 14 brumaire an II (4 novembre 1793)," Nouvelles Archives du Muséum, 4th Ser., 1893, 5:1-22;
25. Gustave Loisel, "Histoire de la ménagerie du Muséum," Revue Scientifique, 1911, pp. 262-277, 301-304;
26. Yves Laissus and Jean-Jacques Petter, Les animaux du Muséum (Paris: Muséum d'Histoire Naturelle, 1993);
27. Burkhardt, "La ménagerie et la vie du Muséum"; and Louise E. Robbins, Elephant Slaves and Pampered Parrots: Exotic Animals in Eighteenth-Century Paris (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Univ. Press, 2002), pp. 213-230.
28. Desfontaines's letter is reproduced in Procès-Verbaux du Comité d'Instruction Publique de la Convention Nationale (Paris: Imprimerie Nationale, 1891-1907), Vol. 2, pp. 816-817;
29. and Hamy, "Les anciennes ménageries royales," p. 22.
30. The professors made their choice on 16 Prairial an 2 (4 June 1794). The two other artists selected were the famous botanical illustrator Pierre-Joseph Redouté and his younger brother Henri-Joseph Redouté. The latter produced illustrations of botanical and zoological specimens for the museum and took part in Napoleon's expedition to Egypt. For more on these and other artists of the museum see Luc Vezin, Les artistes au Jardin des Plantes (Paris: Herscher, 1990).
31. Georges Cuvier, "La panthère," in Lacepède and Cuvier, La Ménagerie du Muséum national d'histoire naturelle, ou description et histoire des animaux qui y vivent ou qui y ont vécu; par les citoyens Lacepède et Cuvier, avec des figures peintes d'après nature, par le citoyen Maréchal, peintre du Muséum (Paris: Miger, 1801). The individual entries in this volume were separately paginated; the quotation comes from p. 4 of the "panther" entry. Cuvier predicted that as one came to have a more complete knowledge of which big cats came from which continents, how the animals looked at different stages of their lives, and which forms proved to be mere varieties of the same species, certain older names, such as "leopard" and "ounce," would probably need to be discarded. What earlier authors had called a "leopard," Cuvier surmised, would simply turn out to be a panther. Ironically, over time just the opposite has happened with the nomenclature of these big cats. Scientists today no longer recognize a species called a "panther" but do recognize several species of leopards.
32. On 24 Brumaire an 3 (14 Nov. 1794) Mertrud presented to the professorial assembly three drawings Maréchal had made of the panther's stomach and genital organs. Later, on 14 Germinal an 3 (3 Apr. 1795), he reported on all the animals he had dissected in the comparative anatomy course he gave at the museum from December 1794 to March 1795. See Archives Nationales de France, "Procès Verbaux des Assemblées des professeurs," AJ/15/96, p. 170, and AJ/15/97, p. 25. (On manuscripts used in the preparation of this piece see note 14, below.)
33. G. Cuvier, "La panthère" (cit. n. 9), p. 6. I thank Caitjan Gainty of the University of Chicago for retrieving the page number of this quotation for me.
34. On Lacepède's remarks, juxtaposed with the unruly behavior of the public, see Burkhardt, "La ménagerie et la vie du Muséum" (cit. n. 5), pp. 488, 491.
35. On the founding of the museum see esp. Ernest-Théodore Hamy, "Les derniers jours du Jardin du Roi et la fondation du Muséum d'Histoire Naturelle," in Centenaire de la fondation du Muséum d'Histoire, naturelle, 10 juin 1793-10 juin 1893: Volume commemoratif publié par les professeurs du Muséum (Paris: Imprimérie Nationale, 1893), pp. 1-163;
36. and Emma Spary, Utopia's Garden: French Natural History from Old Regime to Revolution (Chicago: Univ. Chicago Press, 2000).
37. See also Charles Coulston Gillispie, Science, and Polity in France: The Revolutionary and Napoleonic Years (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton Univ. Press, 2004), pp. 165-183.
38. For the museum's continuing history see Camille Limoges, "The Development of the Muséum d'Histoire Naturelle of Paris, c. 1800-1914," in The Organization of Science and Technology in France (1808-1914), ed. Robert Fox (Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1980), pp. 209-240;
39. and Blanckaert et al., eds., Le Muséum au premier siècle de son histoire (cit. n. 5).
40. Manuscripts relating to the history of the Muséum d'Histoire Naturelle are preserved at the Archives Nationales in Paris as well as at the Bibliothèque Centrale of the Muséum d'Histoire Naturelle. For the present article I have primarily used the Archives Nationales series: "Procès Verbaux des Assemblées des professeurs, 1790-1848," numbered AJ/15/96-142 (preserved on microfilm) (hereafter cited as A.N., "Procès Verbaux"); and the "Minutes des Procès Verbaux des Assemblées de professeurs, et pièces annexes," numbered AJ/15/577-678 (with thousands of original documents relating to the professorial meetings) (hereafter cited as A.N., "Minutes").
41. A.N., "Procès Verbaux," AJ/15/99, 14 Thermidor an VI (1 Aug. 1798), p. 14.
42. A.N., "Minutes," AJ/15/587, 27 Vendémiare an 10 (19 Oct. 1801). The "musical chairs" nature of professorial apartment selection is nicely illustrated by the procès verbal for 24 Messidor an 3 (12 July 1795), which spells out who was moving to which apartment following the museum's recent acquisition of additional buildings. The chemist Antoine-Louis Brongniart chose for his apartment the first floor (French style) of a house acquired from a "citoyen Leger." Gerard Van Spaendonck (the professor of iconography) and the zoologist Lacepède selected the first floor and the ground floor, respectively, of the former Intendant's house. The chemist Antoine-François de Fourcroy was to get an apartment in the former church known as "l'église des nouveaux convertis." Pierre Guillotte, formerly the museum's head guard, was to occupy the apartment vacated by the botanist René-Louiche Desfontaines once Desfontaines took up residence in a house separated from the Leger complex. The zoologist Lamarck, who had previously lived on the third floor of the former Intendant's house, was to move to the rooms that Guillotte was vacating, and the librarian would then move into the spot where Lamarck had been. Finally, Van Spaendonck's former lodgings were to go to the head gardener, Jean Thouin. See A.N., "Procès Verbaux," AJ/15/97, p. 56.
43. Dorinda Outram, Georges Cuvier: Vocation, Science, and Authority in Post-Revolutionary France (Manchester: Manchester Univ. Press, 1984);
44. Outram, "New Spaces in Natural History" (cit. n. 2);
45. and Spary, Utopia's Garden (cit n. 13).
46. Gillispie, Science and Polity in France (cit. n. 13), discusses the museum in the course of his comprehensive treatment of French science during the Revolution.
47. On Daubenton's comment see esp. Jeff Loveland, "Daubenton's Lions: From Buffon's Shadow to the French Revolution," New Perspectives on the Eighteenth Century, 2004, 1:29-41.
48. After enthusiastically describing the two live young elephants that were part of the Stadholder's menagerie at Loo, Thouin noted special items that the different professors could anticipate receiving. Daubenton, the mineralogist, could look forward to specimens from as far away as China and Japan. Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire, the professor of birds and mammals, was going to get a stuffed baby elephant with, its downy skin, lots of well-preserved monkeys, two giraffe hides, and more. Lacepède would receive reptiles and amphibians. Lamarck would get a wonderful collection of shells, corals, sea urchins, and the like. Mertrud's animal anatomy collection would be enhanced by various skeletons - a giraffe fifteen feet tall, a large orangutan, and a large crocodile - plus the skulls and horns of a great many other animal species. Thouin went on to identify items for the botanists and chemists as well. His letter, dated 24 Ventose an 3 (14 Mar. 1795), was read at the professorial meeting of 24 Germinal an 3 (13 Apr. 1795): A.N., "Minutes," AJ/15/578. On the French appropriation of the Stadholder collection see Ferdinand Boyer, "Le transfert à Paris des collections du Stathouder (1795)," Annales Historiques de la Révolution Française, 1971, 43:389-404;
49. Boyer, "Le Muséum d'Histoire naturelle à Paris et l'Europe des sciences sous la Convention," Revue d'Histoire des Sciences, 1973, 26:251-257;
50. and Gillispie, Science and Polity in France (cit. n. 13), pp. 433-442.
51. Regarding the zoologists' publications on the Stadholder's specimens see Henri Daudin, Cuvier et Lamarck: Les Classes zoologiques et l'idée de série animale (1790-1830), 2 vols. (Paris: Félix Alcan, 1926-1927), Vol. 1, pp. 30-31. Geoffroy would not have been named professor of zoology in June 1793 had the comte de Lacepède not previously given up his own post at the Jardin des Plantes to take refuge in the countryside.
52. The colorful story of how Geoffroy gained favor at the Jardin des Plantes by saving the crystallographer René-Just Haüy from execution, and how Geoffroy then became professor at the new Muséum d'Histoire Naturelle, is told in Isidore Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire, Vie, travaux et doctrine scientifique d'Étienne Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire (Paris: Bertrand, 1847), pp. 7-28;
53. and more succinctly in Gillispie, Science and Polity in France, pp. 181-182.
54. On Lamark's ideas and career see esp. Marcel Landrieu, Lamarck, le fondateur du transformisme: Sa vie, son oeuvre (Paris: Société Zoologique de France, 1909);
55. Leslie J. Burlingame, "J. -B. Lamarck," in Dictionary of Scientific Biography, ed. Charles C. Gillispie, 16 vols. (New York: Scribners, 1970-1986), Vol. 7, pp. 584-594;
56. Burkhardt, Spirit of System (cit. n. 5);
57. Ludmilla Jordanova, Lamarck (Oxford: Oxford Univ. Press, 1984);
58. Pietro Corsi, The Age of Lamarck: Evolutionary Theories in France, 1790-1830 (Berkeley: Univ. California Press, 1988);
59. and Laurent, ed., Jean-Baptiste Lamarck (cit. n. 2).
60. The collections were certainly important. In 1803 Lamarck told his students that "only those who have occupied themselves for a long time and diligently with the determination of species, and who have consulted rich collections, can know the extent to which living species blend into each other": J.-B. Lamarck, "Discours d'ouverture d'un cours de zoologie, prononcé en prairial an XI, au Muséum d'histoire naturelle, sur la question: qu'est-ce que l'espèce parmi les corps vivans?" in Discours d'ouverture des cours de zoologie donnés dans le Muséum d'histoire naturelle (An VIII, An X, An XI et 1806) par J.-B. Lamarck, ed. A. Giard (Paris, 1907), pp. 85-105, on p. 96.
61. For the argument about the invertebrates see Lamarck, Système des animaux sans vertèbres (Paris, 1801), pp. 11-12.
62. J.-B. Lamarck, "Présentation, à l'assemblée d'un candidat, pour remplir une place d'aide naturaliste du museum, faite dans la séance du 4 nivose an 3, par le C. lamarck," A.N., "Minutes," AJ/15/578, 4 Nivose an 3 (24 Dec. 1794).
63. The respective stories of Gauthier and Olivier Marat (from the museum's perspective, at least) can be tracked in the "Procès Verbaux" and "Minutes" from this period. See A.N., AJ/15/96-98 and AJ/5/578-579. See also Spary, Utopia's Garden (cit. n. 13), pp. 186-187;
64. and Outram, Georges Cuvier (cit. n. 17), p. 166. Spary suggests that Gauthier may have been a better naturalist than the museum claimed and that the museum was basically unhappy because the Committee of Public Safety, in appointing him, had usurped the museum's prerogatives. Whatever the case, the museum insisted that Gauthier was essentially unfit for the job, and it succeeded in getting the Committee of Public Instruction to revoke his appointment.
65. Outram mentions the case of Olivier Marat, taking the details of the story from Germain Bapst, "Histoire d'un cabinet minéralogique, " Revue des Deux Mondes, 1892, 2:437-449. Bapst describes how Daubenton wrote to the Minister of the Interior, saying that the museum would not be able to give Olivier Marat a position until the National Convention, provided the museum with the funds the new institution needed for 1794. Though Daubenton first took Olivier Marat to be the brother of Jean-Paul Marat (and he is identified as such by Bapst and Outram), he proved in fact to be the martyred revolutionary's brother-in-law.
66. Lamarck, "Présentation à l'assemblée" (cit. n. 22). Lamarck's statement regarding Cuvier (with the original spelling preserved) reads as follows: "j'aurois desiré que le C. Cuvier put obtenir vos suffrages, mais ce citoyen me paroit plus savant qu'artiste. Il a envoyé quelques memoires à la Société d'histoire naturelle, et nous a fait passer quelque manuscrits qui nous apprennent que quoique livré à ses seuls efforts et presque sans aucuns secours dans les environs de fécamp ou il demeure, il etudie avec beaucoup be succès l'histoire naturelle, il est donc plus savant qu'artiste; or, me trouvant dans l'obligation de metre chacun à sa place, je ne puis vous le presenter, je le regrette d'autant plus qu'on nous assure que cet homme tres laborieux, est d'un caractere tres doux et fort social." On Cuvier see William Coleman, Georges Cuvier, Zoologist: A Study in the History of Evolution Theory (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard Univ. Press, 1964);
67. Outram, Georges Cuvier;
68. Martin J. S. Rudwick, Georges Cuvier, Fossil Bones, and Geological Catastrophes (Chicago: Univ. Chicago Press, 1997);
69. and Rudwick, Bursting the Limits of Time: The Reconstruction of Geohistory in the Age of Revolution (Chicago: Univ. Chicago Press, 2005), esp. pp. 353-388, 557-571.
70. Georges Cuvier, "Notice sur l'établissement de la collection d'anatomie comparée du Muséum," Annales du Muséum d'Histoire Naturelle, 1803, 2:409-414; the comment is on p. 411. In autobiographical remarks written more frankly years later, Cuvier acknowledged that some colleagues had opposed his designs for expansion, while others had sided with him, but once the collection reached a certain stage no one dared hinder its further development.
71. See Outram, Georges Cuvier, p. 176.
72. Georges Cuvier, "Note instructive sur les recherches à faire relativement aux différences anatomiques des diverses races humaines," reproduced in Georges Hervé, "À la recherche d'un manuscript: Les instructions anthropologiques de G. Cuvier pour le Voyage du 'Géographe' et du 'Naturaliste' aux Terres Australes," Revue de l'École d'Anthropologie de Paris, 1910, 20:303-306.
73. See Étienne Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire, Lettres écrites d'Égypte à Cuvier; Jussieu, Lacepède, Monge, Desgenettes, Redouté jeune, Norry etc. aux Professeurs du Muséum et à sa famille, ed. E.-T. Hamy (Paris: Hachette, 1901). Geoffroy's letters to Cuvier show his distress when, after sending letter after letter to Cuvier, he received no replies. When Cuvier eventually replied with what Geoffroy described as "two sentences," Geoffroy did not fail to note the unevenness of the exchange. When Geoffroy finally returned to France in November 1801 and was waiting out his quarantine at Marseille, he wrote to Cuvier: "Give me as quickly as possible your news, my dear friend, and that of all my colleagues at the Jardin and the Société Philomathique." He then asked, "Has my apartment been kept for me?" (p. 210). He was unhappy when he subsequently learned that it had not. Another apartment had been designated for him, but he felt it lacked the attractions of his earlier abode.
74. The best account remains Toby Appel, The Cuvier-Geoffroy Debate: French Biology in the Decades before Darwin (New York: Oxford Univ. Press, 1987).
75. Frédéric Cuvier's five-page undated, untitled manuscript is filed with the documents of the professorial meeting of 31 May 1815, A.N., "Minutes," AJ/15/610. On Frédéric Cuvier and the menagerie see Burkhardt, "La ménagerie et la vie du Muséum" (cit. n. 5); and Burkhardt, "Constructing the Zoo" (cit. n. 5). See also Richard W. Burkhardt, Jr., "Frederic Cuvier and the Study of Animal Behavior," Bulletin d'Histoire et d'Epistémologie des Sciences de la Vie, 2001, 8:75-98;
76. and Burkhardt, "A Man and His Menagerie," Natural History, Feb. 2001, pp. 62-69.
77. Indirect evidence suggests that the matter was decided in Frédéric Cuvier's favor. The procès verbal of the professorial assembly of 30 Aug. 1815 mentions Cuvier's request for a door leading from the former stable of the buffaloes (buffles) to the "parc d'experience," and the procès verbal of 13 Sept. 1815 indicates that the assembly agreed to pay the expense of opening a door between Cuvier's apartment and "the old park of the elephant." A.N., "Procès Verbaux," AJ/15/115.
78. With representatives of other nations arriving to request the return of specimens, the professors not surprisingly stressed the internationalist character of their institution. Students from all over Europe, they said, came for instruction at the museum, and it would be damaging for natural history in general to have the Paris collection weakened. Brugmans's first letter to the museum and the museum's response to it are recorded in the procès verbal of a special meeting of the museum's professors held on 22 Sept. 1815. Subsequent exchanges with Brugmans and others requesting restitution are recorded in the meetings that followed: A.N., "Procès Verbaux," AJ/15/115; and A.N., "Minutes," AJ/15/611. Though scholars have described the original appropriation of the Stadholder collection by the French, the Dutch efforts to repatriate the collection in 1815 have yet to be treated in any detail.
79. See Burkhardt, "Naturalists' Practices and Nature's Empire" (cit. n. 5). In his 1824 "Extrait d'un rapport sur l'état de l'histoire naturelle et sur ses accroissements depuis le retour de la paix maritime" (cit. n. 1), Georges Cuvier was happy to have things both ways. Harking back to the years before the freedom of the seas was restored, he allowed that even this had been good for French zoology. The lack of access to abundant new specimens, he explained, had forced the French in this period to turn their attention to the inner structures of those specimens they already had and, likewise, to look to the earth and discover fossils representing earlier stages of the earth's history.
80. See esp. Stephen Jay Gould, The Flamingo's Smile (New York: Norton, 1985);
81. Sander Gilman, Difference and Pathology: Stereotypes of Sexuality, Race, and Madness (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell Univ. Press, 1985);
82. Londa Schiebinger, Nature's Body: Gender in the Making of Modern Science (Boston: Beacon, 1993);
83. and Zine Magubane, "Which Bodies Matter? Feminism, Poststructuralism, Race, and the Curious Theoretical Odyssey of the 'Hottentot Venus,'" Gender and Society, 2001, 15:816-834.
84. A copy of the 30 Dec. 1815 letter from the prefect of the police, responding to the request of Thouin and Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire, can be found among the documents from the professorial assembly of 3 Jan. 1816: A.N., "Minutes," AJ/15/612. Cuvier's report was published as Georges Cuvier, "Extrait d'observations faites sur le cadavre d'une femme, connue à Paris et à Londres sous le nom de Vénus Hottentotte," Mémoires du Muséum d'Histoire Naturelle, 1817, 3:259-274.
85. Henri de Blainville also reported on the examination: Blainville, "Sur une femme de la race hottentote," Bulletin des Sciences par la Société Philomathique de Paris, 1816, pp. 183-190.
86. Cuvier's essay later reappeared under the title "Femme de race boschismanne" in the multivolume work on mammals published by Etienne Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire and Frédéric Cuvier, Histoire naturelle des mammifères, avec des figures originales enluminées, desinées d'après des animaux vivants, 7 vols. (Paris: C. de Lasteyrie, 1818-1842). Accompanied by the two portraits done by Huet, this was the only article on a human being to appear in the entire work.
87. G. Cuvier, "Extrait d'observations faites sur le cadavre d'une femme, connue à Paris et à Londres sous le nom de Vénus Hottentotte," p. 259. We may note that Sarah Baartman's name never appears in Cuvier's scientific report. Nor is there any mention of the fact, perfectly well known to the museum, that she had been baptized in Manchester. The woman had simply become, in Cuvier's words, "our Boschismannian," the name then given to her race. A copy of the notice of Baartman's baptism was attached to the letter from the prefect of police allowing the transfer of the body to the museum: A.N., "Minutes," AJ/15/612, 3 Jan. 1816.
88. A.N., "Minutes," AJ/15/643, 3 Apr. 1832.
89. After Cuvier's death, his apartment remained in the possession of his widow, after a special decree to this effect by the government. This raised the hackles of the professorial assembly because it felt that the power to decide what happened to a professor's apartment after his death should belong to the museum, not the government. A.N., "Minutes," AJ/15/643, 20 May 1832.
90. I thank Philippe Chavot for inquiring about Frédéric Cuvier's gravesite on my behalf.
91. At the beginning of the twentieth century, particularly in Berlin and Amsterdam, zoo directors took up the sorts of scientific questions and practices that helped define the nascent science of ethology. See Burkhardt, Patterns of Behavior (cit. n. 2).
92. Frédéric Cuvier, "Observations preliminaries," in Georges Cuvier, Recherches sur les ossements fossiles, 4th ed. (Paris: E. d'Ocagne, 1834), Vol. 1, p. xxii.