Searching for botanical knowledge: The plant hunters of the Nova Scotian Institute of (Natural) Science, 1862-1902

Abstract

Accepting Suzanne Zeller’s notion that maddening historical and scientific enticements are lurking in the 150 years [now 162 years] of the Proceedings and Transactions of the Nova Scotian Institute of Science, this paper examines the botanical contributions of eight prominent Institute plant hunters who published papers on their findings between 1863 (volume one) and 1902 (volume ten). Some members of this varied group of clergy, naturalists, botanists, lawyers and physicians, whose interest in nature often transcended their professional and private lives, studied plants and assembled herbaria as leisurely indulgences; others viewed the natural world through a theological lens, but many considered the accumulation of botanical knowledge an essential science. Rather than a single narrative thread, this paper intertwines a series of brief biographies of each plant hunter, followed by summaries of published reports about important botanical questions that occupied the Institute during its formative years and contextually relevant commentaries to tell the wider story of the evolving and often controversial relationship between the Institute and the role of natural history to both science and society during its first four decades.