During the second half of the 18th century, the great enterprise of sorting out the biological world was at its most dynamic and magnificent. Empire-builders were sending home animals, indeed entire faunas, of a strangeness that defied traditional taxonomies. Scientifically-minded farmers were calculating pedigrees and codifying breeds in the quest for improved stock; physicians and surgeons were giving names to the apparently infinite congenital abnormalities that came under their not always very skilful care. For men with a taste for the kind of intellectual order that natural history can provide, these were times in which it must have been heaven to be alive.

LRB 11 December 1997 | PDF Download