Daniel Solander

Edward Duyker, Per Tingbrand

• Publisher: Miegunyah Press Digital
• Year: 2013
• Print ISBN: 9780522846362
• eBook ISBN: 9780522863116
• Topic: Biological Sciences
• Subtopic: Science General
• Index: Biological Sciences

Daniel Solander, the eighteenth-century Swedish naturalist and traveller, was a pioneer of the scientific study of natural history and one of the earliest collectors in New Holland. For many years a colleague of Joseph Banks, he sailed to the Pacific with Banks and James Cook in the Endeavour in 1768. With Banks, he described and classified more than one thousand new species. Solander's letters offer important insights into some of the foremost scientific issues of the day and his close association with such remarkable men as Carl Linnaeus, Banks, John Ellis and William Hunter.
The letters give little hint that English was not his native tongue. His warm and relaxed style reveals considerable linguistic ability and explains why the novelist Fanny Burney fondly called him a 'philosophical gossip' and why James Boswell declared, 'Throw him where you will, he swims'. This collection is based on international research. Some 180 letters written either by or to Solander were located and copied and appear in their original language.

DANIEL
SOLANDER

COLLECTED
CORRESPONDENCE
1753–1782

edited and translated by
Edward Duyker and Per Tingbrand

THE MIEGUNYAH PRESS

FOREWORD

BY ALAN FROST

Daniel Solander, naturalist, circumnavigator and bon vivant, has in general been a shadowy figure to those unfamiliar with Sir Joseph Banks’ life and Captain James Cook’s voyage on the Endeavour. Yet in fact he was quite significant in the English Enlightenment, and more generally in the adoption of the Linnean system of classification throughout Europe.

Born in Sweden, Solander studied under the great Linnaeus, then decided to pursue his profession in England. What he first envisaged as a sojourn turned to a permanent stay, with the qualification that he was away between 1768 and 1771 during the voyage with Cook and Banks on the Endeavour. For natural history, this voyage was epochal— as Solander’s friend John Ellis told Linnaeus, Banks and Solander returned ‘laden with the greatest treasure of Natural History that ever was brought into any country at one time by two persons’.

For the next dozen years, Banks, Solander and a team of clerks and engravers laboured to prepare a comprehensive catalogue of the botanical riches the pair had collected. But what with Banks’ multifarious activities, the project languished after Solander’s death in 1782. Only in our time have the fruits of their labour become available, in the stunning edition of the Florilegium published by Alecto Historical Editions. Had this work appeared in Solander’s time, the importance of his contribution to the development of European science would have been immediately apparent, for as Banks afterwards very generously acknowledged: ‘Solander’s name will appear on the tide page beside mine, since everything was written through our combined labour. While he was alive, hardly a single sentence was written while we were not together’.

A team under the direction of Harold Carter is presently working to reconstruct and publish Banks’ correspondence. Only when this is known as fully as the existing records will allow, will the significance of Bank’ presence, and those of his associates, to science and society be properly appreciated.

In this endeavour, Edward Duyker’s and Per Tingbrand’s edition of Solander’s correspondence will play a significant part. Solander’s letters reflect many of the great intellectual concerns of his time—for example, the identification and classification of species; the nature of fossils and their geological implications; the development of the ‘Botanic’ garden and the transmigration of plants; the European exploration of the outer world; the growth of comparative anatomy. As the many tributes from his many friends attest, Solander was also a sociable man, so that his letters also offer insights into English and Swedish circumstances, and a deal of gossip. They tell, too, of his very significant role in the classification, preservation and extension of the collections of the young British Museum.

This book presents these letters with proper scholarly rigour for the first time, with texts both in the original languages (Swedish, Danish, Latin, German, English), and in English translations, the latter meticulously annotated. One can only admire the editors’ thoroughness in scouring the archives of the world, and their diligence in dealing with what they have found.

After Solander’s death, Banks wrote of their time together on the Endeavour:

During this voyage, which lasted three years, I can say of him that he combined an incomparable diligence and an acumen that left nothing unsettled, with an unbelievable equanimity. During all that time we did not once have any altercation which for a moment became heated. We often freely contested each other’s opinions in all subjects, but always ended as we had begun, good-humouredly and generally being of the same opinion after one of us had accepted his opponent’s reasons.

We shall be much in Edward Duyker’s and Per Tingbrand’s debt for giving us these records of Daniel Solander’s life.

CONTENTS

Foreword by Alan Frost

Acknowledgements

Introduction

Part I Sweden 1753–1760

Part II London, Early Years 1760–1762

Part III British Museum, Endeavour, Iceland 1763–1772

Part IV Solander Lionized 1773–1782

Part V Ancillary Correspondence 1772–1813

Botanical Terms

Swedish Terms and Tides

Bibliography

Calendar of Correspondence

Botanical Index

Zoological Index

General Index

ILLUSTRATIONS

Those not attributed are in the editors’ collection

Dr Solander, contemporary engraving half-title page

Uppsala Universitetsbibliotek

Daniel Solander’s signature, January 1757

Kungliga Biblioteket, Stockholm

PLATES

facing

Piteå, Solander’s birthplace in northern Sweden, from

drawings by Wollmar Gustaf Lauw 28

Kungliga Biblioteket, Stockholm

Presumed portraits of Solander’s parents, by unknown artist/s 29,44

Piteå Museum

Carl Linnaeus in 1775, by Alexander Roslin 45

Kungliga Vetenskapsakademien, Stockholm

Carl Linnaeus’ home in Uppsala 60

Svenska Linnésällskapet

Elisabet Christina ‘Lisa Stina’ Linnaeus, by

Sven Niklas Höök 61

Svenska Linnésällskapet

New Docks at Karlskrona, by Jacob Gillberg 76

Statens Sjöhistoriska Museum, Stockholm

Sofia Elisabet Paterssen (née Burmarck), by an unknown artist 77

Norrvidinge kyrka, Skåne

A page from Pehr Löfling’s Letterbook, 14 May 1753 92

Real Jardin Botanico, Madrid

Peter Jonas Bergius in 1761, by Johan Joachim Streng 93

Bergianska stiftelsen, Kungliga

Vetenskapsakademien, Stockholm

An engraving of fossils from Gustaf Brander’s Fossilia

Hantoniensa (1766) 108

Linnean Society of London

Encrinus, detail from a plate engraved by John Mynde 109

Uppsala Universitetsbibliotek

Uppsala in the eighteenth century, by Johan Gustaf Härstedt 156

Uppsala Universitetsbibliotek

Erik Gustaf Lidbeck in 1787, by Martin David Roth 157

Lunds Universitetsbibliotek

The bark, ‘Earl of Pembroke’, later ‘Endeavour’, leaving Whitby

Harbour in 1968, by Thomas Luny 172

National Library of Australia

Captain Cook, Sir Joseph Banks, possibly Daniel Solander

and others, attributed to John Hamilton Mortimer 173

National Library of Australia

Gardenia, detail from a plate engraved by John Mynde 220

Uppsala Universitetsbibliotek

Busbridge in 1787, by W. Bailby 221

Maureen Nyazai, Godalming

Ellis Aquatic Microscope, London, c. 1760 236

Powerhouse Museum, Sydney

Prospect of Funchal, the Capital of the Island of Madeira in the year

1750, by Christopher Henrik Braad 237

Svenska Ostindiska Kompaniets Arkiv, Göteborgs

Universitetsbibliotek

Heberdenia bahamensis, 1985 colour engraving, plate 395

Banks’ Florilegium 284

Alecto Historical Editions/British Museum

(Natural History)

Bougainvillea spectabilis, 1984 colour engraving, plate 355

Banks’ Florilegium 285

Alecto Historical Editions/British Museum

(Natural History)

View near Rio de Janeiro, c. 1821, by Augustus Earle 300

Rex Nan Kivell Collection, National Library of

Australia

The Inside of a house in Iceland with sketch of Sir Joseph Banks and

Dr Solander. . . by John Cleveley 301

Linnean Society of London Sir Joseph Banks, by Benjamin West 316

Usher Gallery, Lincoln

The Simpling Macaroni, a satirical cartoon of Daniel Solander,

1772 317

Holterman Collection, Kungliga Biblioteket, Stockholm

So...

Table of contents

• DANIEL SOLANDER