Instruccion for collecting natural productions for the Real Gabinete de Historia Natural
A royal instruction sent to viceroys, governors, corregidores, alcaldes mayores and intendants telling them how to choose, prepare and ship the natural productions of their districts to Madrid. It drops European nomenclature on purpose, lists the animals of the Americas under the names used there, and then teaches the practical trade - three pounds of each coloured earth, polished stone tablets, plants pressed one to a leaf, spirits changed after a fortnight, a lead tag tied to each animal.
Why this wins its question: Spanish natural-history collecting in the Americas is usually told through the great expeditions and their commanders. The instrument that reached every district officer instead of every famous naturalist is almost never quoted, and it is more revealing than the expedition narratives: it drops Linnaean nomenclature on the stated ground that it is unknown to many in America, requires the catalogue to record the name each thing bears in its own country, admits that European shell names would not be understood in the Indies, tells fishermen what to keep, and ends by conceding that where no skilled hand exists the rules need only be followed as far as possible. Every one of those is transcribed here from the printed sheets, with the one-way direction of the traffic on the record beside them.
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 document is a printed instruction whose head-title states its own purpose and audience: "INSTRUCCION Hecha de orden del Rei N. S. para que los Virreyes, Gobernadores, Corregidores, Alcaldes mayores e Intendentes de Provincias en todos los Dominios de S. M. puedan hacer escoger, preparar y enviar a Madrid todas las producciones curiosas de Naturaleza que se encontraren en las Tierras y Pueblos de sus distritos, a fin de que se coloquen en el Real Gabinete de Historia Natural que S. M. ha establecido en esta Corte para beneficio e instruccion publica." It runs to twenty-four printed pages in three parts, the mineral, vegetable and animal kingdoms.
No title page, printer, place or year appears anywhere in the copy read: the text begins at printed page 1 with the head-title, and the last page ends without colophon, carrying instead a British Museum accession stamp reading 23 JY 55. This object therefore asserts no date and no imprint for the piece. What the text itself dates is loose: it addresses "Intendentes de Provincias", an office extended through the American dominions in the later eighteenth century.
A footnote on the first page states a deliberate choice of language, and the reason is American. The compilers say that their intent being to name only the best known productions with all brevity, "no observaremos el metodo de los Autores, ni la nomenclatura conocida en Europa, e ignorada ciertamente de muchos en America, por evitar a cada paso definiciones que serian indispensables para la inteligencia de la materia." The instruction is written to be usable by a corregidor, not by a systematist.
The mineral section opens with quantities and dimensions rather than theory. Earths and sands of the different colours - white, black, red, yellow, blue - pure or mixed with ochres, salts, sulphurs or bitumens, with animal and vegetable parts, with dust or flecks of gold, are to be sent "en un saquito cosa de tres o quatro libras de cada una de las diferencias que se encontrasen en cada Pais"; of marbles, alabasters, granites, porphyries and jaspers found in masses and quarries, tablets a quarter long, a quarter wide and an inch thick, polished on at least one face.
The zoological list is American, and it is given in the names used in America. The pages read name the Ymansaca or Samarguge of the province of Jaen; the Vicuña, Guanaco and Llama of the Peruvian sierra; bats of the Indies more than a vara from wingtip to wingtip; a horned frog; the lizard the Mexicans call Tapayaxin; the Avestruz bred in the Pampas de Buenos Aires; the Quebranta-huesos alias Carnero de las Maluinas; the Condor at four varas across the wings; the Onocrotalo called Alcatraz in America; the Sopiloto or Rei de los Gallinazos; the red Cardenal of Nueva España and the black, white and red one of Buenos Aires called Dominicano.
The text states the naming problem outright rather than papering over it. On shells it observes that if the ones held rarest in Europe were cited here under the names given them "aca", they would perhaps not be well understood "en Indias de donde vienen las mas curiosas"; and since it is difficult to indicate the name given them in those lands, it will be necessary to explain some of them by signs and comparisons. A metropolitan instruction admitting that its own vocabulary does not reach the people who will do the collecting is worth more than a claim of universality.
Method is taught in the detail of a working trade. Shells fished alive are to be preferred to shells picked off the beach, which the tide has rubbed in the sand until they lose their colours and break their points; to get the animal out without damaging the testaceous shell, put it in good hot water and it opens. Fishermen should be asked to keep whatever curious thing comes up in their nets and to note the places where it is found, so that it can be fished for on purpose - "como hacen otras Naciones con utilidad", the motive of emulation stated in the document itself.
Plants are to be gathered in flower and in dry weather, laid between the leaves of a book or in coarse paper, spread out with great care without folding the leaves or disturbing their natural figure, pressed or weighted, dried in the shade, then returned to the book with one plant only to a leaf and its number matching the catalogue sent with the consignment; the catalogue is to explain the plant's qualities and uses, whether it lasts one year or more, in what kind of soil it grows, when it flowers, when the fruit or seed ripens, and whether the leaves stay green always or only for a limited time. Seeds are to be chosen perfectly ripe and dried in the shade.
The catalogue is the heart of the system, and the first thing it must record is local knowledge. Every item sent, animal, mineral or vegetable, is to carry a number matching the catalogue, "en el qual se especificara el nombre que cada cosa tuviere en el Pais, y todas las particularidades que se supieren": for an animal, the age and sex, the ordinary size, where it lives or is found, how many young it bears at a time, the period of its pregnancy, in what manner they are killed, what use they serve, at what season the males join the females, what they eat and what they live on.
Two practical notes close the instruction. Since the spirits in which fish and whole animals are put grows foul with their blood and impurities, it is to be emptied out at fifteen days and replaced, keeping the animals well submerged and the barrel full; and each animal sent in spirits is to carry its number marked on a small lead plate tied to it with a thread, to avoid mistakes.
The last paragraph is an admission of the limits of the whole scheme. If the instruction specifies the manner of preparing animals for conservation, it is so that those operations may be carried out "en los parages en que se halle sujeto habil, a quien se puedan encargar"; in places where there is no person competent for such operations, it will be enough that some of the rules be observed as far as may reasonably be done.
What this document establishes and what it does not is worth stating. It establishes what was asked for, in what quantities, prepared how, and described in which terms; it is an order, not a record. It gives no list of what was actually sent, no count of what reached Madrid, and no acknowledgement of what any American collector contributed by name. The traffic it describes runs one way: the specimens, the seeds, the shells and the local names of every one of them were to be gathered in the Americas and placed in a cabinet in the capital.