Scharf Sara T
Institute for the History and Philosophy of Science and Technology, University of Toronto, 91 Charles St. West, Room 316, Toronto, ON, Canada M5S 1K7.
J Hist Biol. 2009 Spring;42(1):73-117. doi: 10.1007/s10739-008-9161-0.
The origins of field guides and other plant identification manuals have been poorly understood until now because little attention has been paid to 18th century botanical identification guides. Identification manuals came to have the format we continue to use today when botanical instructors in post-Revolutionary France combined identification keys (step-wise analyses focusing on distinctions between plants) with the "natural method" (clustering of similar plants, allowing for identification by gestalt) and alphabetical indexes. Botanical works featuring multiple but linked techniques to enable plant identification became very popular in France by the first decade of the 19th century. British botanists, however, continued to use Linnaeus's sexual system almost exclusively for another two decades. Their reluctance to use other methods or systems of classification can be attributed to a culture suspicious of innovation, anti-French sentiment and the association of all things Linnaean with English national pride, fostered in particular by the President of the Linnean Society of London, Sir James Edward Smith. The British aversion to using multiple plant identification technologies in one text also helps explain why it took so long for English botanists to adopt the natural method, even after several Englishmen had tried to introduce it to their country. Historians of ornithology emphasize that the popularity of ornithological guides in the 19th and 20th centuries stems from their illustrations, illustrations made possible by printing technologies that improved illustration quality and reduced costs. Though illustrations are the most obvious features of late 19th century and 20th century guides, the organizational principles that make them functional as identification devices come from techniques developed in botanical works in the 18th century.
直到现在，野外指南和其他植物识别手册的起源一直鲜为人知，因为人们很少关注18世纪的植物识别指南。当法国大革命后的植物学教师将识别钥匙（侧重于植物间差异的逐步分析）与“自然方法”（相似植物的聚类，允许通过整体形态进行识别）以及字母索引相结合时，识别手册才开始采用我们如今仍在使用的格式。到19世纪的第一个十年，以多种但相互关联的技术来实现植物识别的植物学著作在法国变得非常流行。然而，英国植物学家在另外二十年里几乎一直仅使用林奈的性系统。他们不愿使用其他分类方法或系统，这可以归因于一种对创新持怀疑态度的文化、反法情绪以及将所有与林奈相关的事物与英国民族自豪感联系在一起，这尤其受到伦敦林奈学会会长詹姆斯·爱德华·史密斯爵士的推动。英国人反感在一篇文本中使用多种植物识别技术，这也有助于解释为什么英国植物学家花了这么长时间才采用自然方法，即使在几位英国人试图将其引入本国之后。鸟类学历史学家强调，19世纪和20世纪鸟类学指南的流行源于其插图，这些插图得益于印刷技术，印刷技术提高了插图质量并降低了成本。尽管插图是19世纪末和20世纪指南最明显的特征，但使其作为识别工具发挥作用的组织原则却来自18世纪植物学著作中发展起来的技术。
