Essay on the Geography of Plants by Alexander von Humboldt and Aime Bonpland

306 Pages·2010·1.96 MB·English

Essay on the Geography of Plants

Essay on the Geography of Plants
alexander von humboldt
and aime´ bonpland
Edited with an Introduction by Stephen T. Jackson
Translated by Sylvie Romanowski
the university of chicago press :: chicago and london
Stephen T. Jackson is professor of botany and ecology at the
University of Wyoming. Sylvie Romanowski is professor of French
at Northwestern University and author of Through Strangers’ Eyes:
Fictional Foreigners in Old Regime France.
The University of Chicago Press, Chicago 60637
The University of Chicago Press, Ltd., London
© 2009 by The University of Chicago
All rights reserved. Published 2008
Printed in the United States of America
17 16 15 14 13 12 11 10 09 1 2 3 4 5
isbn-13: 978-0-226-36066-9 (cloth)
isbn-10: 0-226-36066-0 (cloth)
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Humboldt, Alexander von, 1769–1859.
[Essai sur la géographie des plantes. English]
Essay on the geography of plants / Alexander von Humboldt and
Aimé Bonpland ; edited with an introduction by Stephen T. Jackson ;
translated by Sylvie Romanowski.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references.
isbn-13: 978-0-226-36066-9 (cloth : alk. paper)
isbn-10: 0-226-36066-0 (cloth : alk. paper)
1. Phytogeography. 2. Plant ecology. 3. Physical geography.
I. Bonpland, Aimé, 1773–1858. II. Jackson, Stephen T., 1955–
III. Romanowski, Sylvie. IV. Title.
qk101 .h9313 2009
581.9—dc22
2008038315
The paper used in this publication meets the minimum
requirements of the American National Standard for Information
Sciences—Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials,
ansi z39.48-1992.
Contents
preface, vii • note to the reader, xiii • note on nomenclature, xv
note on units, xvii • acknowledgments, xix
Introduction: Humboldt, Ecology, and the Cosmos :: 1
stephen t. jackson
Translator’s Note :: 47
sylvie romanowski
Essay on the Geography of Plants :: 49
alexander von humboldt and aime´ bonpland,
translated by sylvie romanowski
Text of Humboldt’s Tableau physique :: 145
translated by sylvie romanowski
Humboldt’s Pictorial Science: An Analysis of the
Tableau physique des Andes et pays voisins :: 157
sylvie romanowski
Plant Species Cited in Humboldt’s Essay and Tableau physique :: 199
stephen t. jackson
Instruments Utilized in Developing the Tableau physique :: 221
stephen t. jackson
Biographical Sketches :: 227
stephen t. jackson
Bibliographical Essay and Bibliography :: 253
stephen t. jackson
Color plate, Tableau physique :: back pocket
illustrations follow pages 46 and 175.

Preface
This project had its origins in a chance conversation during a Chicago-to-
Paris fl ight in the summer of 2003. Sylvie Romanowski and I were seated
next to each other, and, upon chatting, we learned that we were respectively
professors of French literature and botany. I mentioned my frustration in
attempting to read a recently acquired reprint volume of Humboldt’s Essai
sur la géographie des plantes. I was not sure whether my problems had to do
with archaic idioms in the document or the sad state of my French-language
skills after decades of neglect. Sylvie suggested she might be able to help and
asked me to send a copy to look at. Upon my return to Laramie, I sent a copy
of the Essai text to Sylvie. She was intrigued, and upon seeing a facsimile of
Humboldt’s color plate that accompanied the Essai, she developed a defi nitive
case of the “Humboldt virus.”
The Humboldt virus is an easy one to catch. All it takes is a reading of part
of Humboldt’s Personal Narrative, or an essay from his Views of Nature, or sim-
ply a perusal of the Chimborazo profi le which accompanied the Essai. You are
confronted with a man who was interested in nearly everything, who could
speak and write authoritatively about the electrical properties of muscles, the
philology of the ancient Incas, the political economy of Mexico, and the min-
eralogy of the Urals; who was equally comfortable conversing with Gauss,
Goethe, and Gay-Lussac (not to mention Thomas Jefferson, Tsar Nicholas I,
Abraham Mendelssohn-Bartholdy, an anonymous, pedantic poison-master
in the upper Orinoco, or Carlos del Pino, the Guayqueria whom Humboldt
enlisted as his assistant in Venezuela); who dined on ants and monkeys in
the Orinoco and foie gras and caviar in Paris salons; who was passionate in
his love of political freedom and his hatred of slavery; who envisioned how
hundreds of point-observations of temperature, magnetism, or plant form
could be assimilated to reveal global patterns; who led the funeral procession
for the fallen Berlin revolutionaries of 1848 at the same time he was serving
as chamberlain and confi dant to the Prussian king; who was happy to do
chemical experiments in a fl ooded Paris basement, inventory plants while
climbing the slopes of Cotopaxi, make exacting astronomical measurements
in a mosquito-infested jungle, or dissect electric eels with a local savant in
viii :: preface
a dusty llanos village; who, when told he must ride across the Quindiu Pass
aboard a sillero—a mulatto man saddled with a chair—strapped one of the
chairs to his own back and insisted that he carry the sillero; who inspired
the scientifi c career of Charles Darwin, the artistic career of Frederic Edwin
Church, and the political career of Simón Bolívar; who was eulogized in
America by Ingersoll, Emerson, and Agassiz (respectively an agnostic, a mys-
tic, and a zealot); who was the subject of the dedication page of Edgar Allan
Poe’s last major work; who spent his considerable inheritance self-funding
his scientifi c explorations, underwriting his scientifi c monographs, and sup-
porting his less fortunate colleagues; who made substantive contributions
to nearly every branch of the natural and social sciences of his time; whose
work laid the foundations for a dozen disciplines, ranging from geophysics
to biogeography to political economy.
Resistance is pointless once you have begun to engage Humboldt.
Though his personality is often remote (his Personal Narrative is anything but
personal), his insatiable curiosity and intellectual power are always close at
hand. Within a few months of our fi rst meeting, Sylvie and I had agreed to
work together on a complete translation of Humboldt’s Essai, and before the
project was long underway we were both inspired to write accompanying
essays.
The Essai sur la géographie des plantes, with its accompanying Tableau physique
des Andes et Pays voisins, is one of Humboldt’s most infl uential works. It has
long been regarded as one of the foundation texts of ecology and biogeog-
raphy, but it is more than that. It is the fi rst mature, integrated statement of
Humboldt’s view of a unifi ed nature, with diverse properties showing co-
herent patterns in space at local to global scales. The Essai (and its German
equivalent, Ideen zu einer Geographie der Pfl anzen) has been reprinted at various
times since its fi rst publication in 1807. But it has never appeared in an En-
glish translation.
Since the Second World War, English has emerged as the lingua franca of
science. As a consequence, native-born English speakers working in the sci-
ences no longer have to develop fl uency in French, German, or other lan-
guages. In fact, scientists at universities in the United States often view for-
eign languages as a burden, discourage students from taking them, and even
try to purge them from the required curriculum. It is an unfortunate fact that
most scientists in the United States and other English-speaking nations are
unable to read and appreciate Humboldt’s Essai.
The primary purpose of this volume, then, is to bring Humboldt’s Essai to
preface :: ix
an English-speaking audience at relatively low cost. But why should anyone
in the early twenty-fi rst century read a 200-year-old scientifi c work, however
canonical? The question is obviously easy to answer for historians or human-
ists, but why should scientists interrupt their busy lives to read Humboldt, or
any of the old masters?
Scientists have a well-deserved reputation for being focused on the “here
and now”—the burning questions that are at the frontier of knowledge. They
tend not to be concerned with the questions and concepts of a decade ago, let
alone a century. This is paradoxical, because science is inherently a histori-
cal enterprise. The body of current knowledge is built on years, decades, or
centuries of previous scholarship and research, and it is subject to the same
kinds of historical contingencies and artifacts as any other human endeavor.
Some scientists recognize this, and acknowledge the need to step back and
examine where a question or concept has come from, how it has evolved,
and whether something important has been overlooked along the way. At its
most fundamental level, this is good scholarship and leads to a healthy sense
of humility. Furthermore, concepts tend to evolve in time, and so confusion
and pointless controversy can be avoided by looking at their lineages. And
occasionally, long-neglected ideas are rediscovered and brought back to life,
helping to solve current puzzles or opening new avenues for discovery.
Historical examination is particularly critical for ecology, evolution, and
biogeography, because these are inherently historical sciences. Obviously so,
in the sense that the phenomena that they attempt to explain—the abun-
dance and distribution of organisms across the globe, the diversity of life
at local to global scales, the origin of features of organisms that fi t them to
their respective environment, the movement of energy and materials in space
and time—all have historical components. None can be fully explained with-
out some knowledge of history, because different processes occur at differ-
ent rates, Earth’s environment changes through time, and system states at
any given time are contingent on previous states and events.
However, ecology, evolution, and biogeography are historical in another
sense: virtually all of the core concepts date back to the nineteenth century
or before, and ideas proposed one or two or even three centuries ago remain
relevant and topical today. This undoubtedly arises from the sheer diversity
and complexity of the subject material. Ecologists and evolutionary biolo-
gists are probably no more susceptible than physicists and chemists to Fran-
cis Bacon’s “Idols of the Theatre” (i.e., unquestioned paradigms and notions
inherited from previous generations), nor are they necessarily more prone to