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  • 5 - Specimens of Observation: Edward Hobson’s Musci Britannici

  • Edited by Joshua Nall, University of Cambridge, Liba Taub, University of Cambridge, Frances Willmoth, University of Cambridge
  • Book:
    The Whipple Museum of the History of Science
    Published online:
    19 August 2019
    Print publication:
    22 August 2019, pp 101-118
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  • Summary

    This chapter explores an intriguing book/object hybrid in the Whipple Museum’s collection: a set of mosses in the Whipple Museum dated 1818 and labelled Musci Britannici. These sets of labelled specimens are known as exsiccatae (from the Latin for ‘dried’) and usually consist of pressed plants all belonging to the same taxonomic group mounted on loose sheets contained in covers or boxes. Such an object highlights and straddles divisions between libraries and museums, between cabinet and field work, and between commerce and the established practice of gift exchange in natural history. By studying the production and distribution of exsiccatae at a time when taxonomic systems were in formation, it is argued that, more than books or collections, they were instruments for seeing, designed to hone visual skills and calibrate observational powers. It also offers a window onto the social status and working skills of artisan botanists such as the maker of Musci Britannici, Edward Hobson, a poor warehouseman from Manchester.