Bru and Garriga, Descripcion del esqueleto de un quadrupedo muy corpulento y raro (Madrid, 1796)
A giant fossil skeleton dug from the banks of the river Lujan reached Madrid in seven crates in 1789, and the dissector of the Real Gabinete mounted it, drew it and described it. His description stayed unpublished until a notice by Cuvier, worked up in Paris from those same plates and a short second-hand report, arrived in Madrid. This 1796 volume prints the Spanish description and the French notice together, in that order.
Why this wins its question: The standard English telling of this episode is a sentence about Cuvier identifying a giant fossil from Madrid, with the Spanish side reduced to a supplier of bones; where Bru is mentioned at all he is a technician who drew some plates. This object opens the 1796 volume that carries both accounts and prints what is on the sheets: that the plates Cuvier's notice depended on were Bru's, that the notice itself was formed from those plates plus a short second-hand report and without sight of the skeleton, that Bru had written his description at the time of drawing and had let it lapse, and that the book exists because a third man bought that lapsed work and printed it. It gives the consignment date and crate count, the river Lujan find, the two further specimens from Lima and Paraguay, the mounting on its pedestal, Cuvier's own vertebral and rib counts and his conclusion of distinctness - and then, in the same voice, the publisher's stated motive of doing justice to the nation, the admission that the specimen could not be classified with certainty, and the two irreconcilable accounts of where it was dug up.
Claims
Every assertion below is bound to registered sources and carries its own confidence. Weight them; do not treat the page as uniformly authoritative.
The copy read here gives the work and its imprint on the title page: "DESCRIPCION DEL ESQUELETO DE UN QUADRUPEDO MUY CORPULENTO Y RARO, Que se conserva en el Real Gabinete de Historia Natural de Madrid. PUBLICALA DON JOSEPH GARRIGA, Capitan de Ingenieros Cosmografos de Estado. MADRID: MDCCLXXXXXVI. EN LA IMPRENTA DE LA VIUDA DE DON JOAQUIN IBARRA. CON LICENCIA." The copy carries the ownership stamp of the Real Escuela de Veterinaria de Madrid.
The book exists because a foreign publication arrived first, and its publisher says so in his first sentence. A friend passed him "la noticia que Gregorio Couvier ha publicado en Francia" about a large and rare animal's skeleton held by the Real Gabinete of Madrid. He thought it worth publishing in translation so that the notice of the animal should spread, the animal being of the Real Gabinete and yet "descrito antes por un Estrangero que por nosotros", or at least described in print sooner abroad than at home.
Examining the French notice more closely, he saw that it spoke of plates, procured them, and found that the plates themselves showed their author: "Don Juan Bautista Bru, Disector de dicho Gabinete". He then established that at the time of drawing them Bru had made a description of the skeleton, and sought out that description.
The publisher states what the French notice had been built from, and it is the crux of the whole affair. It "se habia formado por una corta relacion del Ciudadano Roume, la presencia de las Laminas de Bru y sin tener a la vista el Esqueleto" - a short report by Roume, the Spanish plates in front of the writer, and no sight of the specimen. On the same grounds he says the errors of the notice given in France will now be easier to see, "que se hizo teniendo presente estas mismas Laminas".
Bru's own work had been written and abandoned. He had intended at another time to publish it and "por varias circunstancias imprevistas sepulto en el olvido"; Garriga used their friendship to argue that the work was being wasted and the public defrauded of it for as long as it went unprinted, and Bru would sell the plates only with the whole, which Garriga bought. The judgement that decided the shape of the book is stated too: Bru's description, made by the author of the plates, seemed exact and detailed enough "para corregir quantas equivocaciones se habian padecido en la descripcion francesa", so that annotating Cuvier became unnecessary.
The motive is on the page, and it is two motives. Publishing the notice, he writes, does "la debida justicia a Don Juan Bautista Bru" and also to "nuestra Nacion", showing that the naturalists of Spain had not been so negligent as to have failed to describe this skeleton with the greatest prolixity. A priority claim advanced by the man who bought and printed the evidence for it is worth reading as such, and this object treats it so.
The provenance is recorded with dates and a place. The skeleton described was sent by the Marques de Loreto, viceroy at Buenos Ayres, and "se recibio en 29 de Septiembre de 1789 en 7 caxones", with a relation stating that it had been found in excavations being made on the banks of the Rio Luxan, which runs next to the villa of that name some thirteen leagues west-south-west of Buenos Ayres, in a bank ten varas high lying a league and a half south-west of the villa.
It was not the only one. The volume records that this was the first of its species received of the three then existing in the kingdom: another had come to the Gabinete the previous year from Lima, and a third, belonging to Padre Fernando Scio of the Escuelas Pias by the gift of a lady, had come from Paraguay - "lo que da idea de lo extendida que estaba esta especie".
The Spanish description is anchored in the physical work of mounting the animal. Its heading states that it describes the skeleton in particular "segun las observaciones hechas al tiempo de armarle y colocarle en este Real Gabinete", and the general description opens with the skeleton as it stands "armado sobre un PEDESTAL GRANDIOSO en una SALA de PETRIFICACIONES" of the Gabinete. The advertencia explains the naming convention adopted - human anatomical terms kept wherever a relation or resemblance is found - and concedes at once why the usual method fails: comparative anatomy vanishes here because the skeleton is "unico en su especie", no other being known to resemble it, the only quadrupeds with any relation to it being the elephant, the rhinoceros and the horse, from which it differs notably.
The volume then prints the French notice in Spanish, under a heading naming Gregorio Cuvier, and its content can be read against the Spanish account. The skeleton is fossil, found a hundred feet deep in sandy ground near the Rio de la Plata; it lacks only the tail and some paired bones, supplied in wood; it was mounted in Madrid, where "el Ciudadano Roume" examined it with care; its whole figure and each of its parts were engraved in Madrid on five folio plates, and the Institut national, having received proofs of those plates from "el Ciudadano Gregoire", used them and Roume's short description to form the paper. The measurements and counts follow: twelve feet long and six high, seven cervical vertebrae, sixteen dorsal and four lumbar, sixteen ribs, no pubis nor ischion, last phalanges showing very great pointed claws set in a bony sheath, and four molars on each side of each jaw, flat on top and transversely striated.
The conclusion drawn in the notice is the one that matters for the history of the science: "El conjunto de caracteres de este Animal le distingue de todos los conocidos", each of its bones differing from the corresponding bone of every animal seen until then, since no animal of comparable size has pointed claws, nor a head, shoulder blades, clavicles, pelvis and limbs of like figure.
The book stops short of naming the animal, and says why. The publisher records that the characters absent from the specimen are what "impiden el poderle clasificar con certeza", and that if the two later skeletons had been as complete, and had been mounted, described and compared with the first, that comparison might have supplied what was missing; until someone undertakes that useful work, the description is offered to naturalists as the light available. No page opened for this object assigns the animal a name, and this object assigns none.
Two cautions, both from inside the volume. The find is described twice and not identically: the consignment relation places it in a bank ten varas high on the river Luxan, the translated notice has it a hundred feet deep in sandy terrain near the Rio de la Plata, and nothing on the pages read reconciles the two figures - this object prints both rather than choosing. And the sequence of events, the dating of Bru's description before Cuvier's notice, and the judgement that the Spanish description is the more exact all rest on the prologue of the man who bought the work and printed it, with no third-party testimony beside it.