Given the changeability of Welsh weather and the precariousness of the footing at the top of the mountain, his task was not without some danger. The collector was warned to go only “as high as he can with Safety” but to push that limit as far as possible. Collectors were also to “be directed to a baich or sandy place where Môrgelyn grows” (“Môr-gelyn” was a “Tea-plant”) as well as the interior of Harlech Castle, a Norman castle that by the seventeenth century was “a place much talkd of” not for its defensive capabilities but on account of the plants growing in its ruins. At each place the collector gathered multiple samples of the roots, leaves, and branches of all the plants, being “cautious in picking up the very least thing his eyes can discover.” The collectors were paid one farthing for each distinct species collected. The plants collected from Cader Idris alone “can not amount to less than 2 shillings.”73
Once the collector had returned with the specimens, he handed them off to a packer, who prepared them for shipment by carrier. The packer was addressed throughout the instructions in the second person, and it was he who was to select and supervise the collector and the carrier. The instructions to the packer and carrier were as follows:
You must get a box of an indifferent size; such as you might guesse would scarce contain them; then lay in some mosse at the bottom of it lightly besprinkle’d with water. Soe lay in the shrubs & greater plants first, pressing them down with your hands pretty close; then a little mosse lightly wetted; & soe the rest of the plants, putting here & there a little mosse upon them as you lay ’m in. When all are put in fill up the box with Mosse: that they may have noe room to be dishevld in the Carriage & besprinkle it lightly with water: Soe nayle it up securely, boreing some small holes in several parts of the cover, wherein the Carrier must besprinkle a handful or two of water every night; & see the box layd in a sellar or some cool place. They should be gather’d one or two or at farthest 3 days before the Carrier sets out.74
These directions for packing and shipping the plants were based on procedures developed by Jacob Bobart, the Younger, the head gardener at the Oxford Physic Garden, and had been used to transport plants to Oxford from France, Italy, and Germany.75 For the plants to be shipped successfully—that is, for them to be more alive than dead when they arrived at the Physic Garden—the carrier had to follow pretty specific instructions. To the carrier, who was used to transporting less finicky goods such as wool, grain, manufactured items, and perhaps books, these requirements may have taken some getting used to, especially the request to “besprinkle a handful or two of water every night; & see the box layd in a sellar or some cool place.”76 Thus preserved and cared for, nestled in their beds of damp moss, the plants would safely make their way from Cader Idris to the sheltered beds and glass houses of the Oxford Physic Garden. Similar procedures could be used to transplant live snails as well: Lhuyd sent some via carrier to Martin Lister, at work on his Historiae conchyliorum, in a “small strawberry basket” packed with wet moss.77
As these examples show, collecting and sending specimens were more complex than sending and receiving a letter or a packet of papers. First of all, more people were involved—in addition to the carrier, collectors and packers were needed. Furthermore those people needed to follow specialized, carefully elaborated procedures in order to ensure that the plants were successfully transported. When carrying a packet of papers, a carrier needed to know only the address of the recipient. When delivering plants, a carrier also needed to know how to care for his living freight. He had to take on some of the knowledge of the naturalists and become skilled in tasks that gardeners and botanists took for granted.
Naturalists expended much effort managing exchanges such as these because writing was insufficient as a means of conveying information. They had to see and physically handle specimens. This was evident in a 1691–1692 exchange between John Ray, Lhuyd, and Jacob Bobart, who had gathered a collection of Oxfordshire insects. Lhuyd, as one of Ray’s contacts, served as an intermediary between Bobart and Ray. Ray wanted to see the insects in order to determine if there were any species found in Oxfordshire that he had not seen in Essex—this would add to the completeness of the natural history of insects on which he was working (published posthumously in 1710 as Historia insectorum). Ray was frustrated by efforts to describe the insects in letters, writing to Lhuyd that “by Descriptions I doubt we shall hardly scarce come to a right understanding of one another.”78 Ray was unable to travel so far as Oxford to see the specimens because of chronic illness, one of the symptoms of which was painful sores on his legs. In response to these concerns, Bobart devised a way of securing the insects in a case such that they might travel without being harmed. Although we do not know exactly how the insects were transported unharmed, Ray’s correspondence provides us with a wealth of affective information that gives us insight into the importance and difficulty of transporting specimens over long distances. In his correspondence with Lhuyd, Ray freely expressed both his worries about transporting the insects and his joy when he opened the box and viewed the collection.
For over a year Lhuyd and Ray wrote back and forth about Bobart’s collection of insects, worrying about and working out the particulars of transport. Ray fretted that the collection would be damaged in transport by wagon. The insects would fare well enough on the first leg of the trip, by boat down the Thames from Oxford to London. But, Ray wrote, “I fear they cannot be so fixt & put up but they must receive some damage in carrying & recarrying by the jotting of the Wagon” that would take them from London to Black Notley, near Braintree in Essex.79 Bobart, however, devised a method for securing the individual insects and, through Lhuyd, insisted on sending them. Ray acquiesced, requesting that Lhuyd send them through his London bookseller, Samuel Smith.80
The box of insects arrived at Christmas, a timely gift. To Lhuyd, Ray wrote,
That very day that your L{ette}r came to hand, the Box of Insects was also brought me, so that you were not out in y{ou}r conjecture. The several insects were so well fixt, that, to my admiration, there was not one of them stirred by the shaking & jolting of the wagon, but came as entire as they were sent out. I wish I may have as good successe in remitting them. Upon opening of the box I was mightily taken, I might say enravished, with the beauty of the spectacle, such a multitude of rare creatures, & so curiously conserved. Truly the ingenuity & industry of the Collector Mr Bobert is highly to be commended, & he encouraged to proceed.81
One phrase in Ray’s description hints at how the insects were preserved: they “were so well fixt” that the “shaking & jolting of the wagon” had not disturbed them. The use of the word “fixt” suggests that the insects were pinned in place or attached to some kind of backing, but it is difficult to glean more precise information from Ray’s description. Ray wrote most volubly about his emotional response to the collection. “Admiration,” “taken,” “enravished,” “beauty,” “spectacle,” “curiously”: as Ray tried to describe the experience of opening the box and seeing, and studying, the insects, his vocabulary soared above its usual restrained tones. It was almost as if the successful transport of the collection was a miracle in itself, one due solely to “the ingenuity & industry of the Collector Mr Bobert.” Ray’s emotions here might be thought of as the inverse of Aubrey’s when Aubrey contemplated having lost the manuscripts of The Naturall Historie of Wiltshire. Ray, doubtful that the collection would survive transport, must have opened the box with some trepidation. His trepidation was erased as he was “taken” and “enravished” by the sight of the preserved insects. Here was a transportation success of the highest order. Even in success we see how fragile the material links between naturalists were: because Ray never quite expected the insects to arrive intact, his admiration—his enravishment—at the sight of the collection was all the more overwhelming.
These examples, the instructions to plant collectors on Cader Idris and the successful shipment of Bobart’s collection of insects, provide a view of the individual, material links that made seventeenth-century natural history possible. The successful prosecution of seventeenth-century natural history required certain systems to be in place. These were both
