THE PARIS ZOO.
The Jardin des Plantes--Its Origin and History--Under Buffon--The Museum
of Natural History--The Tobacco Factory.
From caged men to caged beasts the transition is easy and natural. The
Jardin des Plantes is probably the most popular institution in Paris,
and, according to certain French writers whose eye by no means
diminishes the magnitude of native objects, the most popular in the
world. At all events, the names associated with this Parisian equivalent
of our Zoological Gardens are glorious enough, including as they do
those of Buffon, Cuvier, and other writers whose lustre is dimmed only
by juxtaposition with those of the two greatest naturalists who ever
lived. It is more to the names in question, whose reputation cannot
decline, than to the collections which the establishment contains, that
the Jardin des Plantes owes its fame.
The creation of this garden dates back to Louis XIII. It was two of this
monarch’s physicians, Hérouard and Guy de la Brosse, who conceived the
first idea of it. Having submitted their plans to the king, the two
naturalists soon obtained letters patent for the acquisition, in the
Faubourg Saint-Victor, of a suitable piece of ground. At its origin,
however, the institution which was one day to earn a European fame was
of very limited extent, and its collections were entirely botanical.
Royal Garden of Medicinal Herbs it was called; and the first design of
its founders had in fact been nothing more than the cultivation of
plants possessing curative properties. In this character the garden was
a mere supplement to the Faculty of Medicine. It served as a theatre of
study for students in pharmacy; and the royal letters patent, signed
“Louis,” provided that “no instruction in pharmacy shall be given at the
School of Medicine.” “In the said garden,” runs another clause, “a
specimen shall be preserved of every drug, whether simple or compound.”
Of the two founders of the Jardin des Plantes, one can only be said to
have taken part in the work; for Hérouard died prematurely. It was Guy
de la Brosse who did the planning and the classifying; and to him the
credit of establishing the garden almost exclusively belongs.
One of the first botanists of his time, Guy de la Brosse himself
furnished the garden with nearly every species of plant which was to be
cultivated there. At the same time it must be owned that Louis XIII.
showed himself, for the period, very munificent towards de la Brosse,
who received an annual allowance of 6,000 francs for his professional
services in connection with the institution.
During the first years of its existence the garden met with much
opposition, and sometimes fell into a state of neglect. The Faculty of
Medicine was jealous of this rival, and rebelled against the royal edict
because de la Brosse did not seek to enlist the sympathies of its
professors. For this exhibition of disrespect the Faculty suffered no
punishment but that of having its remonstrances quite ignored; and Guy
de la Brosse devoted all his energies to the enrichment of the botanical
collection. His death, however, occurred three years after the
inauguration, and his successors, as indolent as he had been
indefatigable, let the garden run almost to weed. At length one of the
professors of the Faculty imparted to it a new life. This was Fagon, one
of Louis XIV.’s physicians, who seemed fitted for the task no less by
his birth than by his studies; for he was a grandnephew of Guy de la
Brosse, and had first seen the light within the precincts of the Jardin
des Plantes.
Devoted to study, which he preferred to the distractions of a court
where he was nevertheless an oracle, Fagon, already celebrated by the
ability with which he had supported the theory of the circulation of the
blood--at that time rejected by the Faculty--proved himself, with his
natural passion for botany, an admirable director for the Jardin. In
1693 Louis XIV. conferred upon him the title of Superintendent.
Fagon’s period of service was indeed a prosperous one for the royal
garden. With a generous nature, and gifted with that _savoir-faire_
which is only acquired by contact with men, he was happy in the choice
of his professors, and contrived, by his influence and liberality, to
give a great impulse to the whole establishment. Besides grouping around
him an illustrious body of specialists, he despatched agents to various
foreign countries to discover specimens for his collection.
After the reign of Louis XIII. the superintendence of the Jardin des
Plantes had been considered as essentially the business of one or other
of the royal physicians. In consequence a succession of men filled the
post who were total strangers to natural science, and quite unfitted to
manage such an institution. Afterwards, incompetent directors removed
from the staff of specialists all those who were worth retaining, and
showed so little respect for the purposes of the garden that they
cultivated part of it as a vineyard for their own private use. Colbert,
when he visited the garden, was so indignant at this outrageous abuse,
that he called for a pickaxe and himself commenced a work of destruction
which he took care to have carried out forthwith.
[Illustration: BUFFON.]
Successive failures at length proved to the authorities that the
superintendence of the Jardin was no suitable perquisite for a royal
physician; and it was now that the illustrious Buffon was appointed
“intendant.” From this moment the aspect of everything changed; and the
institution rapidly earned a world-wide renown. Under Buffon it was
completely transformed. From a simple apothecary’s plantation it became
a depôt for all the riches of creation. He erased the inscription,
“Jardin royal des herbes médicinales,” from over the door of entrance,
and substituted for it the plain title of “Jardin du Roi.” Endowed with
immense energy, the great naturalist employed all his influence towards
enriching the establishment over which he reigned with the superiority
of genius. When he first set foot in it the chief treasures of the
museum were displayed in two little rooms of the edifice erected on the
grounds, whilst in a third room, carefully removed from the gaze of the
curious, were collected a number of inferior skeletons of men and
animals. It was during Buffon’s administration that the great
amphitheatre was constructed, which remains one of the most admired in
Paris, as well as the chemical laboratories which surround it. The
natural history galleries were, as might have been expected, by no means
overlooked. He even extended them at the expense of his own allowance
for lodging, which he reduced time after time, and ended by abandoning
altogether. Although his main passion was for animals, Buffon gave
earnest attention to the cultivation of plants. It was he who traced the
plan of the garden very nearly as it exists in the present day.
[Illustration: THE CARNIVORA SECTION, JARDIN DES PLANTES.]
[Illustration: ENTRANCE TO THE HOTHOUSES, JARDIN DES PLANTES.]
The intendant of the Jardin des Plantes, who rendered such incalculable
services to natural science, has been reproached with having written his
immortal pages in foppish attire, with a sword at his side and his hand
adorned with ruffles. This reproach, which has been so widely
reiterated, deserves refutation. When Comte de Buffon appeared in
society it was with the exterior of a gay cavalier; but in his study,
when he was at work, his costume was so plain that it shocked a
Franciscan friar of his acquaintance who saw a great deal of him at his
château. If he was extravagant at all, it was in the exercise of his
natural benevolence, which assumed quite a princely character.
The name of Buffon attracted from all parts magnificent presents to the
museum. The King of Poland sent him a splendid collection of minerals,
and the Empress of Russia, who had failed to entice him to her court,
nevertheless presented him with some of the richest products of her
country. Nor was this all. Pirates, who seized every cargo which came
within their reach, are said to have spared the cases which they found
addressed to so great a naturalist.
More fortunate than the human beings outside, the animals in the royal
garden were in no way affected by the Revolution. The hateful title of
their abode, however, was naturally changed; and the former Garden of
the King became the Museum of Natural History. In 1792 Bernardin de
Saint-Pierre, the author of _Paul and Virginia_, was made director of
the establishment; and the Convention, which with all its
destructiveness showed constructive tendencies in regard to all matters
of science, literature, and art, founded at the museum twelve chairs,
which were filled by professors of human anatomy, zoology, animal
anatomy, botany, mineralogy, geology, general chemistry, chemistry in
its application to the arts, agriculture, and iconography.
The number of some of the chairs has since been increased, and a few new
ones have been established; but, fundamentally, the organisation of the
establishment remains what it was at the time of the radical
transformation under the Convention. The professors appointed by the
Convention went to work with the greatest enthusiasm, and all the
invaders and explorers of the time were begged to supply the museum with
whatever specimens of natural history they could offer. The collection,
moreover, was increased by the activity and success of the French
troops, with a view to the greater glory of France, and especially of
Paris. The commanders of the French armies brought back with them, in
the form of booty, the most interesting objects from the museums of the
conquered cities. Holland having been overrun in 1798, a number of the
curiosities belonging to the Stadtholder’s Museum were forwarded to
Paris; and the celebrated naturalist, Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire, was sent
to Lisbon, occupied at the time by a French army, to choose from the
local collections whatever he might find suitable for the natural
history museum at Paris. After a time the collection became too rich for
the professors and officials who had to arrange it. Money and space were
alike wanting; and at last the established authorities formally
complained that the treasures forwarded to them by the victorious troops
were too abundant.
Among the most celebrated professors attached to the museum of natural
history may be mentioned Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire, already named, Lamarck,
Lacépède, and Cuvier.
The garden of the museum forms a spacious quadrilateral, bounded on the
east by the Quai Saint-Bernard, on the north by the Rue Cuvier, on the
south by the Rue Buffon, and on the west by the Rue Geoffroy
Saint-Hilaire.
Entering by the principal gate, the visitor finds himself opposite an
immense flower-bed enclosed between two long avenues which were planted
by Buffon himself. The avenue on the left leads to the school of
stone-fruit trees, the collections of botany, mineralogy, and geology,
the library, and the house inhabited by Buffon when he was
superintendent of the place. The avenue on the right is bounded by the
school of botany and the hothouses. Behind the botanical school a long
avenue of chestnut trees leads by the side of the bears’ den from the
hothouses to the quay. Between this avenue and the Rue Cuvier are the
menagerie, the school of fruit trees, the galleries of anatomy and
anthropology, the amphitheatre, the Administration, and, at the top of
the garden, behind the hothouses, the labyrinth and the Belvedere. A
number of exotic trees have been planted and cultivated in the Jardin
des Plantes, thence to be transplanted and naturalised in France. One of
the popular celebrities of the garden is the Cedar of Lebanon, which
Bernard de Jussieu was bringing from the East with other specimens,
when, made prisoner by the English, he was deprived of the whole of his
collection, with the exception only of the young cedar tree, which he
had sworn at all hazards to preserve. Keeping it in a hat, planted in
suitable mould, he succeeded, after many vicissitudes, in bringing it to
the haven where it has since so wonderfully thrived. The tree,
cultivated with only too much care, wears an aspect which is not
precisely that of its natural freedom, but which is not wanting in
grandeur. “The old Titan,” writes a French naturalist, “several times
decapitated by our icy climate, spreads more and more every year.”
Higher up, in an almost forgotten corner, in the midst of foliage,
stands a column supported by a pedestal of minerals. This simple
monument is in memory of a simple man. Beneath it rests the body of
Daubenton, the friend and collaborator of Buffon, the “learned shepherd”
to whom France owes its fine breeds of merino sheep, and the author of
the new plan of organisation adopted by the Convention in 1793. Narrow,
winding paths, overshadowed by yew trees, lead to the Belvedere,
constructed during the reign of Louis XV. The bronze cupola of doubtful
style, surmounted by a celestial globe, with a sundial and a motto,
tells plainly the period to which this fantastic conceit belongs. The
motto, however, is ingenious and charming: “Horas non numero nisi
serenas”; in English, “I note only the hours of sunshine.” Buffon had
here placed an apparatus which has disappeared. At twelve o’clock
exactly the lens of the dial burned a thread, causing a ball of metal to
fall with a sonorous clang.
Arrived at this point the visitor sees the garden stretching out at his
feet. It is in the spring that the full beauty of flower and foliage
reveals itself. On Sundays and fête days, when the weather is fine, the
garden teems with people. Masses of promenaders come to find, beneath
the shade of the avenues, verdure and fresh air; for not only is the
Jardin des Plantes a great scientific school, it is the joy and the life
of a populous quarter of the metropolis. It affords repose to fatigued
workmen, the families of local residences resort to it, and generations
of lighthearted children grow up in the midst of its charms.
[Illustration: MARABOUT STORKS IN THE JARDIN DES PLANTES.]
Descending the labyrinth, behind the hot-houses, the visitor finds in
front of him the door of the orangery, and to the left the entrance to
the grand amphitheatre, where so many illustrious voices have instructed
the world. Then, following the avenue which passes before the
amphitheatre, he descends the length of the Rue Cuvier, and making on
this side the tour of the menagerie, an enormous grampus, together with
its skeleton, comes into view, guarding the entrance to the galleries of
anatomy and anthropology. Farther on is the reptile menagerie, as well
as a school of fruit trees, which French writers on the subject
characteristically declare to be “without a rival in the world.”
At the angle formed by the Rue Cuvier and the quay, and following the
latter, one comes to the aquarium of fresh-water plants. Willows hang
their branches over the water, full of plants and sleepy fishes. All is
shade, freshness, and tranquillity in this nook, which is the most
picturesque and charming in the whole garden.
We have now returned to the principal entrance, facing the bridge of
Austerlitz. In the immense flower-beds which ascend to the galleries,
what chiefly strikes the eye is a square devoted to the cultivation of
gaily ornamental flowers, where they seem to have more than their
accustomed splendour. This particular effect is produced simply by means
of skilful arrangement, based on those laws relating to the simultaneous
contrast of colours which it was reserved for M. Chevreuil to discover.
Each flower owes more to its neighbour than to itself. Isolated, it
would lose that brilliant beauty which is lent to it by a clever
juxtaposition.
[Illustration: THE POLAR BEAR IN THE JARDIN DES PLANTES.]
Close at hand, in the great avenue to the left, is a modest café. The
tables are ranged around the peeled trunk of an old tree, the first
acacia planted in France, some hundred years ago, by Vespasian Robin,
after whom it is named--even as a certain beetle was named after another
famous naturalist, on whom his admirers thought thus to confer the
highest conceivable degree of honour. A little farther on, in front of
the building containing the collections of geology, stand other
venerable trees. Finally one reaches, at the top of the garden and
opposite the entrance in the Rue Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire, a large square
house built as the residence of Buffon, who, lodged at first in the
buildings of the galleries, had given up his apartments to the growing
collections. The name of Intendancy is still borne by this edifice. It
was here that Buffon died.
[Illustration: THE BEAR-PIT, JARDIN DES PLANTES.]
Along the street which bears his name the garden is to-day still
enclosed by the spiked iron railings which he himself caused to be
erected. They protected the garden on the side of the country; but the
country since then has retreated far away.
To come, however, to the menagerie, a noisy concert of parrots and
cockatoos forms a prelude to the show, as one advances from the side of
the amphitheatre. The birds of prey are enclosed in large cages with
iron bars. The monkeys have a “palace,” where they disport themselves in
the sunshine, to the great delight of sight-seeing crowds. The Rotunda
is devoted to animals from hot latitudes--the elephant, for instance;
the rhinoceros, and the hippopotamus. A striking peculiarity of the
female hippopotamus in the Jardin des Plantes is that she has given
birth several times to a tough-skinned baby, and always or nearly always
killed it immediately with her terrible teeth.
The carnivorous animals are confined in a series of dens. The bear is
the most beloved of all these formidable creatures. His pit is resorted
to by masses of people who regard him quite as an old acquaintance, and
call him by the name of one of his celebrated ancestors--“Martin.”
The reptile menagerie is contained in a low chamber, damp and narrow,
where these cold, creeping animals pass their lives in comparative
darkness. What to many forms the most curious spectacle in this
menagerie is the remains of a strange repast in which, some years ago,
one of the pythons indulged. This enterprising creature one fine night
swallowed the blanket which had been placed over him to keep him warm;
his digestion was excellent, but was not equal to blankets, and after a
fortnight’s indisposition he threw it up in the condition in which it is
now preserved.
In the long building which runs parallel to the Rue Cuvier are the
galleries of anatomy and of anthropology. They occupy two large rooms on
the ground floor, and the whole of the first storey round the courtyard,
known as the Courtyard of the Whale. In its centre is a fine skeleton of
an ordinary whale, and in one of the corners the skeleton of a
spermaceti whale--in French “cachalot,” which, according to a fantastic
etymologist, is derived from “cache à l’eau,” the animal being
accustomed when threatened with attack to hide in the water.
The first room in the gallery of anatomy is filled with skeletons of the
largest sea-animals. The adjoining room contains human skeletons, among
which will be remarked that of Soliman-el-Halir, the assassin of General
Kleber, put to death with frightful torture by the avenging French, who
barbarously adopted the mode of punishment of the barbarous country they
had invaded. Strange that the French, nearly a century after this
offence against humanity, should still preserve a monument to revive its
memory. To notice but one point, the finger-bones of the right hand are
wanting. The hand was burnt off before the final punishment was
applied--that of impalement, which the assassin endured for six hours
without uttering a groan.
A narrow staircase leads to the first floor, in which the ante-chamber
is full of animals’ heads. In the second room we are in the midst of
monsters, most of which formed subjects of study to the two Geoffroy
Saint-Hilaires, intent on finding immutable laws where science had
previously seen nothing but the sport and caprices of chance. “Ritta
Christina Parodi” was the name given to two heads on a single body born
at Sassari in Sardinia, March 12, 1827. The two heads lived about eight
months, one of them dying on the 20th of November, the other shortly
afterwards, but not until there had been time to make, in regard to this
strange being, some curious observations. Further on may be seen
Philomèle and Hélène, two bodies on one pair of legs. They also lived.
Finally, in the same order, are Olympe and Thérèse, joined together by
the top of the head.
In the third room are the great anthropomorphous or man-shaped apes,
arranged in an attitude not natural to them, since in nature they walk
on hands and feet, but which brings out more vividly their resemblance
to humanity. The broken teeth, the fractured limbs of these rangers of
the forests--orang-outangs, chimpanzees, and gorillas--are evidence of
their fights, their struggles, their adventurous life. The orang-outang
is a war trophy. It belonged formerly to the collection of the
Stadtholder of Holland, whence it was sent to Paris by the victorious
French army, without being claimed and sent back by the allies in 1815,
as undoubtedly would have been its fate had its history and its actual
position been known.
[Illustration: DROMEDARY IN THE JARDIN DES PLANTES.]
In the waxwork collection (eighth room) many of the anatomical
reproductions come from the château of the Duke of Orleans--known during
the Revolution as Philippe Égalité--at Chantilly. Others, executed with
rare perfection, are from Florence, always celebrated for this kind of
work. At the entrance to the ninth room are two figures, considered
marvels of ingenuity and of science in the last century, but now looked
upon as, for purposes of study, next to useless: an “arterial” man and a
“venous” man. Very curious, too, are the children’s heads, in which
skilful injections, even into the most delicate veins, have given to the
complexion the appearance of life. They have been furnished, according
to the taste of the period, with enamel eyes, and to render them
presentable to the public, each little head is enveloped in a lace cap.
In the eleventh room will be found the collection of Dr. Gall, including
the very heads on whose developments he formed his theory of localised
faculties and cerebral bumps. It may here be observed that the followers
of Gall have rendered his system questionable by giving to it in detail
a value which he attached to it only in a general way. The collection
contains, moreover, the bust of Dr. Gall himself, a cast of his head
taken after death, and his very cranium, on which may be sought the
special bump of phrenologism. Here, too, may be seen the masks of
Voltaire, Casimir Périer, François Arago, and Jean Jacques Rousseau.
This last was taken by the sculptor Houdon, at Les Charmettes, July 4,
1778--the day after Rousseau’s death. A bust of Cuvier is to be seen on
the ground floor, to which a staircase leads directly from the Gall
collection. It is the work of David d’Angers, and stands in front of
five skeletons of elephants, which seem to form for the great
comparative anatomist a guard of honour.
In the anthropological gallery, on the first floor, the visitor finds
himself on entering in front of a pleasing collection of human heads,
all severed during lifetime from the bodies to which they belonged:
those of Arabs and Kabyles, decapitated by the yataghan, and dried
beneath the African sun. This at least marks a progress since the days
when native malefactors were burnt and impaled. “Their narrow puckered
lips,” says a French writer, “exhibit their white teeth in a grin which
has been left significantly by a violent death.” Near these heads are
the skulls of the ancestors of the modern French, the Franks and the
Gauls, from whose tombs they have been taken. In this room is to be seen
a curious and picturesque ethnographical collection: a number of Russian
dolls, attired in the European, Asiatic, and American costumes of the
various nationalities included in the vast empire of the Tsar. In the
eighth room the ancient Peruvian mummies are well worth a glance. So,
too, are the strange little human heads prepared by this now extinct
race. From the head that was to be preserved the bones were first
removed. Then the skin was dried, which in contracting kept its original
shape. This, however much diminished, was still preserved. The head,
indeed, may have shrunk to the size of one’s fist: the proportions are
still the same, except that the hair is, by comparison, denser and in a
greater mass. In the next room is a cast of a once well-known Hottentot
woman who died in Paris, where she went under the name of the “Hottentot
Venus.”
On the first floor to the left are two large rooms full of reptiles and
fish. In these historic rooms Louis XV. placed the fine statue of Buffon
which is still there, and beneath which may be read the famous
inscription, which time has not falsified: “_Majestati naturæ par
ingenium_.” The majesty of Buffon’s genius shows itself, it has been
said, in his very style: an idea which may have been suggested by his
famous saying: “_Le style est l’homme même_”--and not “_Le style c’est
l’homme_,” as the phrase is generally quoted. All that Buffon meant, and
all that Buffon said, was that a writer’s facts, and even his arguments
and thoughts, are or may be made common property, whereas his manner of
expressing himself is exclusively his own. The idea that an author’s
personality necessarily reveals itself in his writings is contrary to
experience, few authors, indeed, exhibiting the same character on paper
as in ordinary life.
To return for one moment to the garden, and to those exotics which are
cultivated with so much success in the Parisian climate. The most
important of these--at least, in a commercial sense--is the
tobacco-plant, now naturalised over nearly the whole of France.
The tobacco-factory of Paris, where so much of the native as well as
foreign tobacco-leaf is prepared, consists of large buildings, five
storeys high, situated between the Quai d’Orsay, the Rue de
l’Université, the Rue Saint-Jean, and the Rue de la Boucherie des
Invalides. The large gate in the Rue Saint-Jean affords entrance to
tobaccos coming from all parts of the globe, of which the qualities have
been ascertained beforehand by experts buying on samples which are
preserved for comparison with each consignment as it arrives. The great
national factory receives from the United States--Virginia, for
instance, Kentucky, and Maryland--large shipments of tobacco packed in
casks; from South America vast quantities in bales composed of skins.
Java, too, and Manilla in the Pacific Ocean, Macedonia, Egypt, Greece,
Algeria, Hungary, Holland, and finally France itself, contribute their
share.
The anti-smokers of France naturally look with horror on the huge
tobacco factory of their metropolis; and more than a century ago Valmont
Bomare wrote the following lament: “I wish I had never known that in
1750 they estimated that Maryland and Virginia consigned each year more
than a hundred million casks of tobacco to the English, who only
consumed about half of it, exporting the rest to France, and thereby
enriching themselves annually to the amount of nine million two hundred
thousand francs.”
At present nineteen departments of France produce some fifty million
pounds of tobacco, worth twenty million francs. The native tobacco
growths are restricted by the often beneficial interference of the
administration, which has to be consulted by growers in choosing the
land for cultivation, and which even prescribes the varieties of tobacco
to be grown.
[Illustration: LLAMA IN THE JARDIN DES PLANTES.]
The sale of tobacco is a monopoly in France, the shop-keeping
tobacconists being really nothing more than Government agents for the
distribution of cigars, cigarettes, tobacco, and snuff. The tenancy of a
tobacconist’s shop is a privilege conferred by the Government sometimes
on widows and orphans whose husbands or fathers have deserved well of
the state, sometimes on less meritorious persons who have rendered
services at elections, or have in some other way earned the goodwill of
the Government or of Government agents.
All tobacco manufactories are Government property; and it was as such
that the tobacco manufactory of Dieppe was seized in 1870 by the
Prussians when they occupied that town. They declared their intention of
burning it--but only as a menace; and they obligingly allowed it to be
ransomed on payment of 75,000 francs.