Peter Simon Pallas (1741-1811). Zoographia rosso-asiatica Petropoli: In officina Caes. Academiae Scientarum Impress., 1831. 3 vols. Ellis Aves D424
By Nature Wise... Peter Simon Pallas was German born and studied in Germany, the Netherlands, and Great Britain before he came to St. Petersburg at age 26, and a year later was leading (with Falk and Delisle) an expedition as a member of the Academy of Sciences, through central Russia, the Lower Volga, the Caspian lowland, Altai, Lake Baikal, and Trans-Baikalia, collecting geographical, botanical, geological, paleontological, zoological and ethnological data. He discovered and described many new species of animals and plants, including this owl, and many animals and plants have been named after him. He was the first to depict the relationships between animals in the form of a family tree. In his Zoographia rosso-asiatica he summarized the many 18th century expeditions. Today, one of the largest ornithological collections, so important for taxonomy, morphology and zoogeography, is St. Petersburg's Zoological Institute of the Academy of Sciences. This volume, plus many more by Pallas, are from our own Ellis collection of natural history consisting of 15,000 bound volumes as well as pamphlets, letters, original drawings, and manuscripts, one third of which is ornithological in nature, with another third of travel literature, mostly scientific voyages and travels. The Great Soviet Encyclopedia lists 3 species of the genus Strix in the former USSR: S. alvco (tawny owl), S. uralensis (Ural owl), and S. nebulosa (Great or Lapp owl). Unless the nomenclature has changed for one of these and it wasn't really first described by Pallas, this would be a 4th species, S. barbata.
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Chappe d’Auteroche, abbé (1728-1769). Voyage en Sibérie. Paris: Debure, pere, 1768. 3 vols. Ellis Aves E36
"Leave Northern Siberia to the Bears," he said... Among the westerners who achieved scientific immortality for their courageous forays into the frozen parts of Russia, was a Frenchman with equal passion for both religion and science: priest and astronomer Abbé Chappe d'Auteroche. Sent out to Tobol'sk by Louis XV to observe the transit of Venus across the sun, he was later sent on a similar mission to observe Venus in Baja California, where he died of yellow fever. This wonderful three volume travelogue is filled with detailed descriptions of climate, flora, fauna, mineralogy, and the mining trade, as well as manners and customs of the inhabitants, and an astute geopolitical assessment of the areas the abbé was in, all accurately represented in engravings. Included is Chappe's translation of Krashenninikov's text on Kamtchatka and thus is one of the earliest printed accounts of Alaska and the Aleutian Islands. The Voyage didn't "play" in Petersburg, however, and Catherine is said to have found much of it highly offensive and may have had a hand in the answer to it, entitled, The Antidote, a scathing treatise longer than the Voyage itself.
Johann Friedrich von Brandt (1802-1879). Mittheilungen über die Naturgeschichte des Mammuth oder Mamont (Elephas primigenius). St. Petersburg: Kaiserlich Akademie der Wissenschaften, 1866. Ellis Omnia C330
The Elephantine Russian Empire... Johann Friedrich Brandt, known as well by his Russian moniker Fedor Fedorovich Brandt, was a native of Saxony, educated in Berlin as zoologist, surgeon, botanist and pharmacologist. He moved to St. P. just short of his 30th birthday to head the Zoological Museum of the Academy of Sciences, where he authored many scientific books and papers of which this department has quite a stash. Alas, the woolly mammoth is now extinct (as of ca. 10,000 years ago) but before that he was a contemporary with Lower Paleolithic humans in the second half of the Pleistocene, inhabiting Europe, northern Asia and America. At least 40 mammoths have been found in the permafrost of northern Siberia and Alaska (possibly many more now with global warming). An expedition of the Academy found the most complete specimen to date in 1901-02 (again, this record may have been bumped by now). All parts of the animal, including stomach contents, were analyzed, and the skeleton can be viewed today in the Academy's Zoological Museum.
L’encyclopedie, ou Dictionnaire raisonné des sciences, des arts et des métiers. Mis en ordre & publié par M. Diderot. A Paris: chez Briasson, David, Le Breton, 1751-1780. 35 vols. G135, pls. v.6
The Trotskys and Other Awful Diseases; or, Bring Out Your Dead... One advantage of living in a frosty clime is that when the temperatures dip, the vectors for plague disappear: rats die and fleas become inactive. For this reason, in part, Petersburg was spared the succeeding waves of bubonic plague that have stuck other parts of Russia during much of her history. Nevertheless, the THREAT to homeland security that Catherine the Great felt near the end of the 18th century when plague was raging in Moscow, was as large in her eyes as this flea (carrier of the plague bacterium, Yersinia pestis) and caused what John T. Alexander of the Kansas University History Department and author of Bubonic Plague in Early Modern Russia: Public Health and Urban Disaster, calls "Trepidation in Petersburg." Money, luggage, goods of all sorts coming from outlying areas were fumigated, wrappings were burned, people coming through the checkpoints surrounding the city obeyed strict rules or were quarantined. On the other hand Catherine worried about disruptions to the economy, paralysis of her government, and stumbling blocks for her armies. Whether it was these preventive measures, or the frosts of winter or a combination of many things, old "Piter" came through virtually unscathed.
Johann Peter Falk (1727-1774) Beyträge zur topographischen Kenntniss des Russischen Reichs. St. Petersburg: gedruckt bey der Kayserl. Akademie der Wissenschaften, 1785-1786. 3 vols. Linnæana C525
Hunting the White Siberian Taiga... The "Academic Expeditions," so-called, had been organized between 1768 and 1774 by the tsardom and would demonstrate the high standards of the Academy of Sciences. The Empress Catherine II, however, wanted prestige as well and to this end had explorers assigned to three main groups that would survey and describe geographically different parts of the country. Johann Peter Falk, a pupil of the great Swedish naturalist Carl Linnaeus, was one of the leaders, with Pallas, of the most important, the Orenburg Expedition. The task was to make a record of observations on mineralogy, botany (the plants are arranged according to the Linnaean sexual system of classification), zoology, history, ethnology, agriculture and animal husbandry, illnesses, both human and animal, trading and fishing industry, commerce, customs and traditions, archaeology, and more. Reports were sent back to Petersburg and published as soon as received. Unfortunately the stresses of these expeditions were great and many of the participants came to a sad end; some were imprisoned or murdered in places far from home (with no embassies!) Falk himself, completely exhausted and distraught, committed suicide.
Johann Georg Gmelin (1709-1758). Flora sibirica sive Historia plantarum sibiriae. Petropoli: ex Tip. Academiae Scientiarum, 1747-1769. 4 vols. Linnæana D63, v.1
Into the Hinterlands of the Mother of all Hinterlands... Johann Georg Gmelin, born into a famous family of German scientists, came to St. Petersburg at the age of 18 (in 1727) and 6 years later took off with German historian Gerhard Friedrich Müller and French astronomer Louis Delisle on a long, difficult, but ultimately extremely important journey into Siberia. With these 3 expedition leaders were 6 students; 2 artists; 2 hunters; 2 mountaineers; 4 surveyors; 12 soldiers including a corporal; a drummer; and a Pallas's owl in a pine tree. The expedition would return to St. P. ten years later and from it would come this four volume botanical work, the first large flora of Siberia and of the utmost rarity when complete, as is our copy. The last two volumes were published after Gmelin's death and in a much smaller edition. It is his most important work and comes from our collection of Linnaeana (the first two volumes are cited in Linné's Species Plantarum, 1753, the most important work in the history of botany). Gmelin's own journal of the expedition was published in four volumes in 1751 and was subsequently translated into several European languages. The grass shown here is from the genus Triticum whence cometh our Kansas Volga Geman brand of Turkey Red wheat.
William Woodville (1752-1805). Medical botany. 2d ed. London: printed and sold by William Phillips, 1810. Linnæana D92, v.4
Hey Baba Reba, Rhubarb Pie! Scottish doctors, surgeons, and naturalists played a pre-eminent part in Anglo/Russian natural history in the 18th and early 19th centuries, for example, John Fraser (1750-1811) as royal botanical collector to the Tsar; Matthew Guthrie as physician in St. P.; John Rogerson at the Russian court; Robert Erskine (1677-1718) as Peter the Great's chief physician. And then there was James "Rhubarb" Mounsey, physician to both the Empress Elizabeth and Peter III, and finally, director of the medical chancery, responsible for all medical affairs throughout Russia. Since the Renaissance, rhubarb (a.k.a. Mongol Metamucil), native to far eastern Russia and China, had resisted Europe's attempts to get a handle on importing it successfully and on its very special botanical and chemical properties. Known and highly valued at least since 2700 B.C. as a cathartic, explorers, botanists, physicians, and pharmacists attempted to adapt it for use in the West, but there were many varieties and it didn't breed true by seed. James Mounsey was to play a big part in acquiring the "real" rhubarb for the English pharmacopoeia. Woodville's account is a good beginning to the story of how it became a state monopoly for Russia and an important commodity for the East India Company. Historian Clifford Faust has written a whole book on the subject.
Magnitskii, Leontii Filippovich. Arifmetika. [Russia], 1713 This book had been previously mended in a manner that did not allow for the easy flexing of the pages. Heavy western paper had been applied in wide strips to cover damage and tears. These inappropriate mends were removed with moisture and replaced with less invasive repairs. Tears and areas of loss were mended individually with Japanese paper and wheat starch paste. Japanese paper is often used for conservation mending because it is strong and thin with long fibers. It can be toned with acrylics to blend in with the color of the paper. Wheat starch paste is a good adhesive choice because it may be reactivated in water; therefore, these repairs are usually reversible should they need to be removed in the future.
Romer Wilson (1891-1930). The social climbers: a Russian middle-class tragedy in four acts seen through London: Ernest Benn, 1927. B6125
Feodor: Verochka, do you remember those evenings we spent in the cornfields? British writer Romer Wilson's novels and novellas and in this case, a play, deal with the issues of art, love, and contemporary issues – contemporary with the first quarter of the 20th century in Leningrad in this instance. This is one of 250 copies signed by the author, a fine bibliographical prize for a middle-class social-climbing book-collector.
André Schaeffner (born 1895). Strawinsky. Paris: Les Éditions Rieder, 1938. C9651
The Last of the Warmenoughs... It is said that 1913 had the cold feel of revolution in St. P. The weather told the story as it had before in Russian literature (the setting for the events in Pushkin's poem "The Bronze Horseman" was the calamitous flood of 1824, the worst of many). Biely's novel Petersburg appeared that year and foretold the Great War; his oft repeated "oo-oo-oo" symbolizes, of course, the wind. In one of Alexander Blok's poems the October Revolution is depicted as a snowstorm. And 1913 was the 300th anniversary of the founding of the Romanov dynasty and it was observed that in proper Russian irony wind blew down the decorations on the eve of the anniversary celebration. It was just a sign of the times, then, when Stravinsky's 1913 production of "The Rite of Spring," danced by Nijinsky, blew into Paris and took it by storm and scandal.