It was the age that sought to "ransack all the globe" to know its "innermost secrets," as one zealot urged, the age that sought to crate all the world's creatures into boxes and box all the world's creatures into categories. It was the late 18th century, the Age of Reason. And, by treaty with the King of Spain, came South America. To him, in similar form, by agreement with Britain's Royal Society, came North America. To him from the Swedish consulate in Algiers came-in the form of abundant samples of flora and fauna-wide stretches of northern Africa. And in Sweden, Linnaeus, system-builder to the whole natural world, sat like a spider at the center of his web. Naturalists like Thomas Pennant were herbalizing the Hebrides and Cairngorms, or sending proxies where they could not go themselves. Out rounding the globe with Captain Cook, Joseph Banks was botanizing Tahiti and Australia. It was the late 18th century, no time for a naturalist to sit stuck in the ruts of a small town in the south of England.
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