Maybe Slightly more than Seven (Deadly-ish) Sorts of Sins...

Seven Deadly Sins -Tableau de mission - François-Marie Balanant (1862-1930)

Having recently being nominated as a Versatile Blogger (thank you Miss Simmonds!), I now have to carry out the following missions, if I've understood correctly:

• Write down seven things that are (or rather were until now) little known about myself...

• Nominate a certain number (15) of other new-ish bloggers - this could prove difficult... 

• Let the nominees know of their nomination, so that they too may continue the process...

• Link back to the  person who nominated me in the first place... 

At least that's what I think I'm supposed to do - I may well have got this wrong!!! Thank goodness I'm not in charge of the Oscars!

Strangely enough, most of my seven 'things' seem to be linked to some form of sinful behaviour or another, but don't appear to find a direct animal symbol (well, maybe a few 'obvious' ones...). In the old tableaux de mission spiritually-errant individuals were reined back in from the temptations of evil and sin through imagery that needed little interpretation to be understood, even by the most incalcitrant (would-be) sinner...In the subsequent scheme of things the toad came to symbolise Avarice; the snake - Envy; the lion - Wrath; the snail - Sloth; the pig - Gluttony; the goat - Lust; the Peacock - Pride...

Beach-combing started seriously at a tender age... Two spades - not just one.

It has long been recognized that most frowned-on behaviour first manifests itself in early childhood. Such negative traits and tendencies may have developed through Nature and/or Nurture. They are therefore either brought about by detrimental external influences, or simply through genetic makeup -  so that we are congenitally corrupt and riddled with mini time-bombs of vice even before birth.... Someone or something has a lot to answer for!

1/ Beach-combing and general magpie-style scavenging.
One of my earliest memories was that of being 'spotted' trying to wrongfully enter the peacock enclosure via the undergrowth in the Botanical Gardens in Birmingham - determined to get my grubby hands on some peacock feathers. I will never know whether this determination would have led me to actually pluck any stray samples still attached to the resident peacocks because the squawking of the women deterred me somewhat and I left empty-handed! Ever since then I've been obsessed by peacocks... I even saw a white peacock a few years ago which duly opened out its fan without any prompting or coercion - truly magical! It was probably a good thing for both of us that a rigid metal fence made sure there were no close encounters of any kind. My fingers were positively itching...

2/ Nymphomania...
My friend and I were fascinated by the painting 'Hylas and the Waternymphs' by John William Waterhouse, 1896, and used to race off on our bikes to the local beaches after school to bathe in our suitable nymph clothing (red mini dresses, as it turned out). This was, of course, a purely seasonal activity (too cold in winter) that we soon grew out of once we'd got 'proper' boyfriends of our own to drown. Similarly, the film 'The French Lieutenant's Woman' was responsible for our 'churchyard phase' when we momentarily took to draping ourselves over ivy-clad graves, striking atmospheric poses for photos in black and white.

Hylas and the Waternymphs - J.W. Waterhouse (1896).

3/ Chocolate factories...with or without Willy Wonka.
 Discussing our life ambitions at the (not so) young age of 11 years, I remember being unimpressed by my friend's aim of living in America, though I don't recall how she responded to my seriously-stated objective of working in a chocolate factory. Sadly I don't know if she ever made it to the U.S; I certainly never became a Cadbury employee, but have been on several visits to the Bournville factory since those early days. Wafts of chocolate smells literally lead you up to the main building - sensations worthy of the great Roald Dahl book! Cadbury has itself now gone largely 'Yankee' and living in France means that supplies of 'real' chocolate are in short supply, and are at astronomical prices. Since a girl has to make do with the things at hand, I have resorted to Nutella to fill that vital gap.

 Actually I do have a long-standing relationship with Nutella... Having heard that you could lose vast amounts of weight by simply eating one type of food, and nothing else for several days, I decided to combine duty and pleasure by eating nothing but... Nutella. Funnily enough the diet didn't work, if I remember rightly, and my boyfriend was rather annoyed (it was his pot of Nutella, after all). However the good news is that the experience failed to put me off this foodstuff-of-sorts and now I just raid my children's stock whenever I need a chocolate fix or the fancy takes me.

4/ Hard as Nails...
When I was at school I read an article about South-American drug-addicts who grew their little-finger nails in order to use these home-grown tools to shovel up cocaine for 'snorting' purposes. While I had no interest in this usage, I did want to see just how long a nail could grow and so endeavoured on my own nail-growing mission. The nails proved to be most resilient and didn't break once in the two-year stint. Nevertheless they finally met their demise when I had to cut them off for fear of frightening the children that I looked after as an au pair girl. My dad promptly made a silver fixture for the nails which I promptly wore as earrings!

These look like miniature yellowing walrus tusks now... Yuck!

5/ Life has its Ups and Downs...
My life is pretty pedestrian these days, but I did accomplish a few notable ascents and descents in my comparatively adventurous past. I think the most spectacular Up moment was climbing to the Temple of the Moon near the Machu Picchu site. We got trailed from the outset by one of the stroppy resident llamas who proved to be difficult to shake off and seemed to be particularly surly because we didn't feed it. I was hoping not to experience the spitting capacities of this stalking local at first hand and at close quarters.

This wasn't actually the Indian temple, but still... I certainly wouldn't have been grinning like that if it had been!

One of the more memorable Downs was the race to descend from another high-perched temple. This one was situated in Southern India, and had boasted an early-morning feeding session for the Holy eagles that soared in the skies above the surrounding hillsides. On arrival we had to remove (and leave behind) our shoes before ascending the never-ending stone steps that wound their way up to the temple's feeding platform. Then we simply had to wait till the eagles deigned to present themselves. Fine, except that on the day of our particular pilgrimage the eagles simply never turned up... By the time we finally decided to abandon the mission the blazing midday sun had transformed the stone steps into burning coals destined to test the faith and endurance of any mere mortal - not to mention bare feet. With the wind at our heels we sought damage limitation by running back down as fast as possible but were not entirely successful. Firewalking, indeed.

6/ My meaningful 'other'... A feline friend.
Our cat is a Siberian whose characteristics include, amongst other things, having incredibly tufty paws. These may have afforded he and his fellow Siberians ample protection from the vigours of the Russian winter climate, but they aren't wholly adapted to life as a flat-dwelling feline where smooth surfaces are made all the more slippery due to felted 'Hobbit' feet. Drawing to an abrupt halt is virtually impossible as Krasnogorsk (or just plain 'Oggie') continues his trajectory, willing or not, and often ends up crashing into things or sliding off the edge of launch/landing pads.

Oggie.

His favourite early-morning trick is sucking my right ear to the point that the lobe actually became rather distended at one stage.... This certainly beats the traditional alarm clock.

7/ Queen Bee...
In this particular hive it is, indeed, I who rule. As Queen I try to reign with a steady hand and steely will but despite my unstinted efforts there is frequent civil unrest which manifests itself periodically over the thorny issues of housework/homework. Here are some workers photographed at the beginning of their long-term training programme. Although considerably older now, they still need to be re-directed and reminded of their tasks with great regularity to the point that 'droning on' takes on a whole new meaning in this household; I'm the drone.

Work-shy workers from the hive of activity.

Here is my list of nominated fellow bloggers. I've found this part tricky to draw up as most of the blogs that I follow are well-established and the writers probably wouldn't really wish to state their seven personal facts (deadly or otherwise) and certainly wouldn't really want to read about those of a whippersnapper blogger like myself... I'm not actually sure the nomination receivers below will be too thrilled either, but there you have it!

Anyway, here are a few blogs - though the list doesn't meet the 15-nominee requirement. Sorry! 

Mr Hanna Says...

The Folly Bird 

Silverpebble

A Mermaid's Tale

Dog-Daisy Chains

The Washerwoman

Parisienne Curieuse

Jane and the happy crow

tales of 'snowdrop cottage'

Miss Simmonds Says

And so a final Thank You to Miss Simmonds...

I also love looking through people's windows...that can get you into a lot of trouble!

Mermaid Mirror... Beach-combing treasures and the Perfect Beaches of Porthcurno and Pedn Vounder!

Pedn-Vounder beach, near Porthcurno...

 Spring is on its way here again; quite a feat this year as many of the plants didn’t make it through the harsh winter weather as temperatures here regularly fell to below 10°C. Nevertheless the determined daffodil blades and revived pansies flowering again after the permafrost of late January point to a gradual change in season. While the cold, steely skies were still setting the mood a few weeks ago I started to make another mermaid mirror in order to think of brighter horizons and warmer atmospheres; the summer, in short, but not just anywhere! 
These shells I picked up from the beaches around and about the Penzance region last year.

Some come from the most unassuming beaches (I don’t know how far Battery Rocks in PZ could really be called a beach, despite its pebbles and swimming point), and truly appear to be small, unexpected treasures... 
 Others come from far more spectacular, scenic parts of the coast.

Mirror, mirror on the wall - sadly not the most photogenic of them all...

Most of the ones here (barring the much bigger ones which must have come from exotic destinations very far-removed from Cornwall) were found on the coves around Porthcurno. 
Porthcurno, from the Cornish Porth Kernow – ‘Port of Cornwall’ is approximately 14km from Penzance and then about 4.5km from Land’s End - the latter being the most extreme point of the British mainland. Accessible by winding country roads that are fantastic to ride down by bike (and a nightmare to ride back up again), and maybe even more breath-taking by bus and nerve-racking around the narrow bends, Porthcurno and the surrounding area offer incredible views of the coastland, cliffs and sea.

Burning bright Montbretia...

  From the top of the cliffs where the Minack Theatre is carved from granite, partially into the very stones themselves, you can look over Porthcurno and the string of other coves that lead towards Logan Rock, along the Treen cliffs. Radiant in summer and dramatic in winter it truly deserves its nomination as one of the most beautiful bays in the world. 

 Walking from the tiny village of Treen, along the South West Coastal Footpath through fields and farmland and then tracing a sometimes perilous path along the cliffs, before finally descending through wooded land you experience Porthcurno in all its glory. Taking this route, as opposed to going straight to the Porthcurno valley itself and then parking in the large carpark there means that you manage to reach destination whilst maintaining the magical, natural feel of the area and somehow don't seem to notice the many other visitors and the facilities set out for tourists and local inhabitants.

 Passing the beautiful Pedn Vounder beach along the coastal path, with its tantalizing stretch of golden sand and turquoise sea, and its racy reputation as a naturist site I had always wondered how people managed to scale and scrabble their way there unscathed. This time we went down ourselves, but with great trepidation, on my part at least, because although no one else seemed to be daunted by the descent I most certainly was! I wasn’t as much concerned about my rock-navigation skills as those of the children who haven't really had any such experience. I was astounded by the number of families, babies, toddlers and elderly folk included, fully kitted out with voluminous bags blithely heading down the tortuous track. These people looked totally unfazed by the experience, whilst I felt physically sick especially when the man behind us slipped and dropped the nervous puppy he'd been carrying - I was practically having kittens by this stage, but we'd already reached the point of no return and had to push on regardless. 

Snaking sand patterns...

However we did finally touch down onto the golden sand without any traumatic turns (the puppy was fine), but I vowed to take another route for the ascent...which we duly did. Nevertheless the final arrival was marked by the children’s shrieks on discovering that Pedn Vounder is indeed frequented by naturists… and mine on (re)discovering just how cold the water actually is on this part of the coast! 

The beach is fairly safe, just as long as you do not allow yourself to get stranded by incoming tides. There are no sand shelves that suddenly dip down, leading you out of your depth or wild waves to bowl you off your feet and then pummel you in the undertow.  All of these characterize the beach at Porthcurno and mean that lifeguards have to be ever-vigilant. Yet these elements add to the general excitement of beach for children and parents alike as sudden rogue waves come crashing up the beach to drench unsuspecting visitors and swallow up their belongings. To say that the water temperature is bracing seems to be understating matters, as the water seems to bite into (city-dwelling) flesh. Just as I would reluctantly come out of the water, blue-lipped and numb as a child, my children do now...but I will only very reluctantly enter the water today. As part of a strategy to avoid going into the sea this time, I started beach-combing and came across many of the small shells that now decorate my mirror and that are said to be one of the main components of the sand at Pedn Vounder.

Towards Logan Rock..

On the left of the beach is the Logan Rock, balanced on the top of the Teryn Dinas cliffs. The natural monument, formed by erosion brought about by the elements, no longer rocks or ‘logs’ as it once had done. Indeed, the rock had to be fixed back into its original position, at great expense and effort, following an act of hooliganism which saw a drunken group of sailors dislodge the 80-ton mass in the early 19^th century. Today's graffiti and petty theft seem pretty minor dismeanours in comparison to that wrecker's party...

The Logan Rock may have brought a certain fame, and limited fortune to the inhabitants of the area, but it was to be the vital role that Porthcurno played in global communications later in the century that made the region famous on an international scale. 

Old mirror - reflecting the toilet space behind!

 From the 1870’s underwater cables were brought to terminate in Porthcurno, linking Great Britain to its empire, first with India, and then Australia. Operations were increased and cable station facilities rendered more sophisticated over the following decades. The initial Eastern Telegraph Company (ETC) expanded to the point that between the two world wars Porthcurno was the largest submarine cable station in the world. Indeed, ETC merged with Marconi’s Wireless Telegraph Company in 1928 and after several subsequent changes of name finally become known as Cable and Wireless Worldwide. Such communication activity made Porthcurno an obvious target during wartime and therefore measures were taken to defend and fortify the zone. Tunnels that were protected by concrete defences were bored into the surrounding granite to store telegraph equipment. I presume that the concrete steps that lead up the rocks on the right-hand-side of the beach are the remains of some of these fortifications. When I was a child I used to think these were the sad ruins of someone’s strange beach house and could never work out if this must have been a great place to live (summer months) or terrifying (wild winter seas)… 

Steps outside the Minack - you have to pay to get nearer - unfortunate for a flying visit...

We scrambled up these same rocks a few years ago to look at the marine life that seems to try to outdo the theatrics taking place in the Minack Theatre above. Dolphins come and go, enticing the crowds, but the sea creatures that really keep the audience captivated are the enormous basking sharks. These swim into the bay, their eery black triangle visible when in the water (the children got out very quickly that day!) and their shadowy mass moving slowly, easy to follow from the rocks above. Even if these sharks are totally harmless, their sheer volume and the ease with which they coast the shoreline - undaunted by man - is truly humbling. 

Beach-combed shells - with two 'imposters'...

 But with or without the sharks, the whole Porthcurno coastline is unforgettable – for beach-combers, bathers and lovers of natural beauty alike. My next trip there is far on the horizon, so in the meantime I'll have to content myself with looking at old photos, making another mermaid mirror or maybe thinking about mermaids...or rather one particular little mermaid...

A seasonally city-bound mermaid...

Galeries de Paléontologie et d'Anatomie Comparée....

Fixed flight.

Before temperatures plummeted (falling to minus 18° here the other weekend) I went to see one of my favourite museums in Paris which by the nature of its exhibits – principally skeletons and fossils – and the nature of the very building and exhibit presentation seems to be frozen in time. Welcome to the Galeries de Paléontologie et d’Anatomie Comparée – part of the Muséum National d’Histoire Naturelle (or MNHN as the French love giving initials to everything which complicates things for the uninitiated!)….

An alternative Noah's Ark...

 Apart from the odd interactive digital panel that appears to be a token gadget to satisfy a click-happy public, the glory of the museum is simply the unadulterated,  somewhat old-fashioned presentation of its exhibits. These need no justification or gimmickry to attract even, or rather especially, the youngest visitors. Should you wish to come during the school holidays, expect to queue for a considerable time as a glut of children gaze and gasp at the more dramatic forms of beast, breath-taking in terms of size, volume and age. 

Marine beasts

 As with all museums, however, one of its main roles, apart from simply conserving and improving the collection, encouraging research and teaching, is the diffusion of knowledge. The impressive lay-out of the displays, the vast glass mural cabinets and standing cases bear explanatory labels and descriptions, many hand-written and dating back to the inauguration of the museum, as the faded ink and ornate script attest. 

The canine family.

 While the museum has adapted the display of its collection to the taste and needs of the visitors over the years, it has mercifully not yet felt the need to pander to digital addictions by providing distracting tactile screens that never seem to truly inform. And yes, I do acknowledge that just saying that makes me a freak, frozen in time myself, but there you have it!...  Indeed, since its inauguration the museum has sought to vary the exhibitions, presenting some of its collection whilst storing others pieces in order to rotate the exhibits to enhance interest and improve conservation. This technique may appear logical to us today, but wasn’t common at that time and subsequently was adopted by other museums who admired this initiative.

Skulking Stegasaurus outside the museum.

 The museum grounds set the tone before you even enter the building. From the outside, it presents itself as an imposing edifice of red brick design – typical of many from the very end of the 19^th century – and especially reminiscent of Victorian architecture.

Main entrance of the Galerie de Paléontologie et Anatomie Comparée.

 Andre-Joseph Allar undertook the decoration of the façade when the work requested by the natural history professors Albert Gaudry and George Pouchet for the inauguration of the Galeries in 1898. and even if the dramatic bas-reliefs animating the building have been worn down by the weight of years, climate and pollution the initial effect must have been striking. Situated just beyond the gated entrance of the Jardin des Plantes, opposite the Gare d’Austerlitz, the museum is surrounded by the impressive trees and shrubbery of the park. Amongst outsized ferns and other suitably ‘pre-historic’ foliage and trees such as the Monkey Puzzle (Araucaria Araucana) are imposing sculptures of beasts that seem to be grazing in these majestic grounds whilst guarding the museum.

The architect responsible for its realization was Ferdinand Charles-Louis Dutert (1845-1906), who was perhaps better known for the creation of the Galerie des Machines for the Exposition Universelle of 1889 (for which Gustave Eiffel created his infamous feat of engineering – the Eiffel Tower). The Galerie des Machines was indeed an impressive structure, composed of vast metal trusses and bridges spanning the great width of the building whilst large expanses of glass provided luminosity and a sense of lightness. 

Galerie des Machines: Dutert.

 This was sadly demolished in 1909, however these features of glass and metal appear in the Galeries de Paléontologie et d’Anatomie Comparée. Here the metallic skeleton is not only visible, but is fully emphasized. Delicate iron fretwork decorates the mezzanine level in an organic manner and flourishes of ferns and flora enhance the stairwell and handrails to intricate effect, in some ways acting as a precursor to Art Nouveau.

Ironwork on the balcony handrail.

 The stonework of the museum also bears references to the natural world, with sculpted creatures emerging from pillars and lurking on cornices if the visitor cares to lift his eyes to notice them… You cannot fail to miss the striking sculpture of Emmanuel Frémiet, one of the greatest artistes animaliers, which demonstrates the ever-powerful hold of the natural world on man. 

Orangutan: Frémiet. 1895

 Once you’ve paid your entrance fee however, and walked into the vast room on the ground floor, you soon feel that Man still strives to maintain his dominant position in the animal kingdom. At the head of a veritable troup of animal skeletons stands an écorché statue of a man, all muscles and veins visible, yet this vulnerability is belied by his determined stance and a strategically placed fig leaf!. With one arm raised, the statue, very much man-made, unlike the natural remains of his animal procession, seems to be ordering his bestial followers forward, heralding the way, like a surreal version of Noah preparing his ark.

The 'écorché' leading on his troup...

 Just as ‘Noah’ has been stripped of his protective layers, his animal herd seems to be an ironic parallel to the huge procession of naturalized (i.e. stuffed) beasts that can be seen in the Grande Galerie de l’Evolution of the Natural History museum on the other side of the Jardin des Plantes. In the section of comparative anatomy, over 1000 skeletons of mammals, birds, fish, reptiles overwhelm you in their diversity. Many of the specimens were brought to the collection from naturalists’ missions around the world in the18th and 19th century, or came from the animals once housed in the Ménagerie du Jardin des Plantes, or elsewhere (eg. The rhinoceros from the Ménagerie de Versailles). 

 On the day that I visited, the museum was full of art students, busy sketching various forms and subjects, school children and a number of foreign visitors just admiring the building and collection alike. The ground floor has to be my favourite of the three collections to be seen. The big procession of marine, air-borne and terrestrial beasts all highlight different aspects of comparative anatomy of species and groups that still exist today, or have just become extinct. Walking around the central display you encounter the animals in all their skeletal glory.

Elephant minus the characteristic trunk and ears...

 Comparative anatomy dictates the differentiation and classification of species and the first lateral display windows that you encounter on your right offer an ‘alphabet of the skeleton’ and study of locomotion. Most specimens surprise you by their sheer size, and the incredible intricacy of the bones and many others seem virtually unrecognizable without their furry/ fleshy coverings and characteristics. The elephant skull, minus a trunk and huge ear flaps, has a strangely truncated, block-shaped form, whilst other skulls, such as that of the duck-billed platypus prove just how accurate the species’ name actually is.

Duck-billed Platypus.

 The more delicate specimens are displayed in the mural glass cabinets, as are glass jars containing organs and body tissue, all of which serving to demonstrate similarities and differences in function, form and structure in the animal world. The majority of the jarred specimens date from long ago, and many of these appear to be like macabre displays from a travelling fair, destined to titillate and shock the general public. Ancient mutant forms floating in formalin attract us with a strange quaintness as Geoffrey Saint-Hilaire’s cabinet of Monstres demonstrates. Other forms simply fascinate us by their strange properties – just have a look at the giraffe’s tongue for a prime example of this!

A siamese skeleton.

 In this part of the museum we see that in terms of skeletal formation and function Homo Sapiens is not so very different from the primates apart from his notably upright position and the resulting proportion of bones. Perhaps as a security measure most of these skeletons are safely exposed behind glass - visitors do actually steal skulls and various other bones from the Catacombs in Paris, as I witnessed myself! As a consequence, the photos caught the light and reflections but I quite liked the effect, as Man seems to be floating in a timeless, unreal space, almost traced onto the squat remains of the primate family.

Homo Sapiens floating in the primate family.

 This effect was more marked, and poignant even, with the cabinet bearing the skeletons of foetuses. Here, groups of ‘unborn’ babies appear huddled together, with strangely expressive head positions, bowed down and puzzled by their fate, arms and hands hanging down, at a loss – all still-born yet destined to live together in this state of limbo, floating in time and space in a cradle of animal bones. 

The forlorn foetuses.

 The anthropological and pre-historical collections were largely transferred to the Musée de l’Homme in 1937, but copies of Lucy’s bones are displayed on the first floor of the Galerie de Paléontologie. 

Part of the stairwell.

 Heading up the the decorative stairs the visitor comes across a mural plaque depicting the Tree of Life, which enables us to situate Man in this vast, diverse classification. Arriving in the paleontological section of the museum we see the force of evolution in the succession of fossilized vertebrates that populated the earth from over 600million years ago. 

 Here is a long disappeared world, retraced through the lay-out of the large room. The visitor passes in front of ancient beasts only familiar to us through books and the screen – the big ‘stars’ being the dinosaurs of monstrous dimensions; Diplodocus, Tyrannosaurus, Triceratops and Ichthyosaurus. 

The terrifying Tyrannosaurus.

 We also encounter distant ancestors of species common to us today – the horse, giant deer, birds, primates, and of course, Lucy herself. All the creatures are imposing due to their size, and visible signs of their force and ferocity. 

A collection of fiendishly ferocious fangs

Huge tusks, horn formations, antlers, massive jaws, jagged feet and treacherous teeth and fangs leave no doubt to the brutality of the fight for the survival of the fittest. One imposing beast, related to the Armadillo is the Glyptodon Asper, with its own glass cage to protect it (or us!) has a particular ‘crazy-paving’ armoured shell . 

Glyptodon Asper with its intricate shell and hard-wearing feet.

 Leaving this floor we enter the mezzanine where the invertebrate specimens are to be found. The names roll of the tongue like an ancient school textbook – trilobites, ammonites, arachnids, nautiloids, gastropods, molluscs… What I really liked is that this part of the museum even looks like an ancient study room. 

Fossile display cabinets.

 A spiral staircase leads up to a library full of ancient volumes (sadly inaccessible to the public), long rows of old display cabinets stretch out and the whole atmosphere is of a distant world that I hope will long be preserved and revered here, at least. The museum was partially renovated in 1998, but escaped the ravages of excess modernization and the need to meet the extensive criteria of health and safety and has kept its spirit intact. The French poet, Paul Claudel, said that the museum was…"rien de moins que [le] plus beau musée de Paris [...]. À chacun de mes passages en France, je reviens visiter cette galerie sublime avec un sentiment de vénération religieuse, qui chaque fois, me donne envie d'enlever non seulement mon chapeau mais aussi mes chaussures." 

 The museum also attests to the quasi-religious veneration of the natural world and the sciences and reflects the continued thirst to understand these during the 19^th century. From the previous century, scientists had been attempting to find, describe and name species of the natural world – largely basing their classification on the work of the Swedish zoologist, botanist and physicist Carolus Linnaeus (1707-1778). His studies and publications - especially his Systema Naturae - put forward his theories on the division and sub-division of the animal world with a system of taxonomy using binomial nomenclature.

 At the head of the huge parterre of the Jardin des Plantes is a large statue of Georges-Louis de Buffon (1707-1788) for it was he who transformed what was initially known as the Jardin du Roi, from its creation as the royal herbarium in 1633 into a centre of research and a museum when he was named intendant in 1739. Over the next fifty years Buffon increased the size of the grounds, replanted the Jardin with trees and plants from foreign lands and improved the zoological and botanical specimens for the Cabinet d’Histoire Naturelle du Roi to the point that it offered the most elaborate collection In Europe. Buffon was the first to evoke the birth of the universe and the Earth in terms that did not include religious theory, but instead advanced the idea that time itself was the “grand ouvrier de la Nature” (Nature’s workman), based on a theory of revolutions. He was recognized as not being “an evolutionist, yet he was the father of evolutionism” (Ernst Mayr). He enjoyed considerable success during his lifetime; elected member of the Académie Française, named Compte de Buffon, admired by the great novelist Balzac who emulated him in his La Comédie Humaine. «Si Buffon a fait un magnifique ouvrage en essayant de représenter dans un livre l'ensemble de la zoologie, n'y avait-il pas une œuvre de ce genre à faire pour la Société? »

Lamarck: Léon Fagel. 1908

 The same level of success and esteem were not meted out to another grand savant whose statue is to be found at the other end of the gardens, not far from the entrance to the Galerie de Paléontologie. And yet this was a great man of science who was instrumental in the initial development of the Muséum National d’Histoire Naturelle and the Jardin des Plantes in 1793, and the classification of the collections. Jean-Baptiste de Lamarck (1744-1829), botanist, zoologist and professor of Histoire naturelle des Insectes et des Vers au Jardin du Roi was to have a key role in the development of the theories of evolution in the 19^th century. As Charles Darwin remarked in 1861, Lamarck “first did the eminent service of arousing attention to the probability of all changes in the organic, as well as in the inorganic world, being the result of law, and not of miraculous interposition.”

It was he who coined the term invertebrate and applied that of biology to refer to the study of living forms. Lamarck elaborated his notion of transmutation, based on his studies of invertebrate fossils, wherein he remarked that species were in a continual state of flux and progression. However his resultant theory of the inheritance of acquired characteristics was already widely refuted during his lifetime, and further rejected after his death, drawing particularly harsh criticism from his colleague Cuvier. Lamarck died in such a state of poverty that his body was finally disposed of in a paupers’ communal grave, his bones indistinguishable from those of all the others buried there; an ironic end for a man who had contributed so much to identification and classification. 

Cuvier: David d'Anger. 1833

 A bust of Georges Cuvier (1769-1832) stares out over the troop of animal skeletons on the ground floor of the museum, and rightly so since he was recognized as one of the founders of the disciplines of paleontology and comparative anatomy. Rejecting any notion of linear ancestry, Cuvier divided living creatures into four distinct categories – vertebrates/molluscs/arthropods and radiates. Any similarity between groups could simply be explained by common functions, but not put down to common ancestry. He was set against all the theories of transmutation privileged by Lamarck and Saint-Hilaire and enforced his own notion of the extinction of species, frequently due to catastrophic events. Cuvier himself proved to be a highly adaptable specimen since he managed to serve under three opposing governments (Revolution, Napoleonic and Monarchy) and met with great acclaim during and after his lifetime. 

Geoffrey Saint-Hilaire: Philosophie Anatomique. 1818

 At the far end of the comparative anatomy section of the museum we come across the afore-mentioned Cabinet de Monstres elaborated by Etienne Geoffrey Saint-Hilaire (1772-1844). In 1793 he was appointed as one of the twelve professors at the Muséum d’Histoire Naturelle and occupied the Chair of Zoology, also teaching this discipline at the faculty of science. Gradually he began to devote himself to the study of anatomy (he examined the Hottentot Venus in 1815) and in 1818 he published the first part of his Philosophie Anatomique. His studies gave rise to a theory of evolution which was based on the notion of the unity of composition, subject to a general plan, with all animals formed from the same elements. In this vision of analogues and connections any abnormality or malfunction in nature was born of imperfect evolution. With his theory of transformation Saint-Hilaire was closer to the ideas of Lamarck and therefore in opposition to Cuvier’s work based on invariability.

 Walking around the grounds today it is difficult to imagine the debate and controversy that many of these theories and counter-theories gave rise to. Many, if not most of these have been overshadowed by the work of a man they all served to inform and influence; Charles Darwin. My most recent visit to the museum has made me appreciate the grand naturalists even more and want to take up reading a book I bought a few years ago – an account of Darwin’s visit to South America. 

Make sure you visit the museum before it is renovated/modernized/sanitized as it surely will be – the façade of the building is undoubtedly in need of a vital facelift. I just hope that the skeleton and essence of the museum remains the same. Enjoy this trip back in time while you can – over the millennia and particularly back to the 19^th century!