Botany and zoology in the late seventeenth-centuryPhilippines: the work of Georg Josef Camel SJ(1661–1706)

RAQUEL A. G. REYES

Department of History, School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS), University of London, Thornhaugh Street,

Russell Square, London WC1H 0XG.

ABSTRACT: Georg Josef Camel (1661–1706) went to the Spanish colony of the Philippine Islands as a

Jesuit lay brother in 1687, and he remained there until his death. Throughout his time in the Philippines,

Camel collected examples of the flora and fauna, which he drew and described in detail. This paper offers

an overview of his life, his publications and the Camel manuscripts, drawings and specimens that are

preserved among the Sloane Manuscripts in the British Library and in the Sloane Herbarium at the

Natural History Museum, London. It also discusses Camel’s links and exchanges with scientifically

minded plant collectors and botanists in London, Madras and Batavia. Among those with whom Camel

corresponded were John Ray, James Petiver, and the Dutch physician Willem Ten Rhijne.

KEY WORDS: Jesuits – medicine – John Ray – James Petiver – Hans Sloane – British Library – Natural

History Museum, London.

INTRODUCTION

Historians have long appreciated the contributions made by members of the Society of Jesus

(Jesuits) to European scientific knowledge during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries,

especially in such fields as mathematics, natural history, astronomy and geography. Prior to

the suppression of the Society by papal edict in 1773, the Jesuits matched their wide-ranging

interests with extensive travel, keen field observations and prolific writings. The Jesuit

missionary Francis Xavier journeyed to Portuguese trading posts, founded mission centres in

Goa and the Moluccas, and later entered Japan. His letters from India to the Society in

Rome, published in 1545, were amongst the first from the East to be printed in Europe

(O’Malley et al. 2000: 212). Missions were established in Florida in 1566, in Peru in 1568,

and in Mexico in 1572. In the two centuries that followed, the publication of a large corpus

of Jesuit travel and scientific writings attested to the energy and vitality of the Jesuit overseas

missions. Ignatius’s command to the Society’s missionaries to travel widely and send back

information about the remote regions of the world inspired men such as Bento de Goes, who

travelled on foot from the Indian city of Agra in 1602 to arrive in China in 1605 (Wessels

1924); Antonio de Andrade, who journeyed to the Tibetan kingdom of Guge at Tsaparang in

the 1620s (Brockey 2007: 99); and Jose de Acosta and Pedro Paez, who wrote vivid accounts

of the lands they explored and peoples they encountered from Peru and Mexico to Ethiopia

and the Himalaya (Harris 2000; Hsia 1998, 2007).

In recent decades, scholars have examined the scientific activities of Jesuit missionaries

from diverse perspectives. They have looked at transnational scholarly networks,

institutional structures and patronage, and the role of colonial enterprises and trade

(Boomgaard 2007; Canizares-Esguerra 2006; Bleichmar et al. 2009; Barrera-Osorio 2006).

Archives of natural history 36 (2): 262–276. 2009 # The Society for the History of Natural History

DOI: 10.3366/E0260954109000989

Harris (2005) has shown how Jesuit missionary activity outside Europe paralleled, and was

enabled by, the practices of colonialism. Although the Society of Jesus was not a colonial

power, it sought like the imperial powers to secure monopolies; its members established

mission posts far and wide and wielded significant influence; became intimately acquainted

with diverse cultures; and gathered information from indigenous peoples to advance the

Society’s goals. The acquisition of scientific knowledge, as Harris (2005: 215) noted,

enabled the Society “to operate with increased effectiveness in remote corners of the world,

either by understanding something about local climate, customs and natural productions or

by retailing this information to curious patrons back in Europe and winning their financial

support.”

But there are still considerable gaps in our knowledge. To what extent did scientifically-

minded Jesuits stationed overseas interact with other people of similar interest, or form

scientific networks in which knowledge was communicated and exchanged? How were their

ideas influenced by such contacts, or deepened by the knowledge of local or indigenous

informants? While research has thrown much light on the importance of travel and the

dynamism of Jesuit science, far less attention has been given to the work of Jesuit botanical

collectors, their motivations and practices, their efforts in developing botanical systems of

naming and classification, and more broadly, their contribution to the production and

dissemination of knowledge about the natural world (Anagnostou 2005, 2006; Egmond

2007; Schiebinger 2004; Schiebinger and Swan 2004). This paper explores such questions

by looking at the work of the Jesuit missionary Georg Josef Camel (1661–1706) in the

Philippines, then a colony under the flag of Spain.

GEORG JOSEF CAMEL

Camel1 was born in Brno, Moravia, in what is today the Czech Republic, and joined the

Society of Jesus in 1682 as a lay brother, attending first the Jesuit seminary in Hradec and

later the Jesuit College in Cesky Krumlov, where he studied pharmacy. He was sent to the

Philippines in 1687 with a number of other Moravian and Bohemian missionaries.2 Arriving

in the archipelago in 1688, Camel was assigned to the Jesuit College of Manila, where he

established the college pharmacy and provided free treatment to the city’s poor, whom he

personally attended. Beside the pharmacy he planted a garden that soon became renowned

for the rare and medicinal plants it contained (De la Costa 1961: 557).

Jesuit historians recount that Camel was known for his tirelessness in making and

administering remedies and his generous charity in caring for the sick, especially during

epidemics. His superiors valued his services and recognized his growing botanical expertise.

Camel first worked as an infirmarian, whose role was to protect the health of the members of

his own religious community, but was promoted to the position of apothecarius in 1695 and

accorded the title botanicus in 1699 (Cullum 1956: 324). In 1705 the college rector assigned

three lay assistants to Camel to work with him in the pharmacy and garden (De la Costa

1961: 557). Important people called upon Camel for cures, and he was often asked to correct

mistakes made by physicians or local healers in the preparation of medicines. Camel’s skill

won him renown not just in Manila but as far away as the Visayan islands in the central

Philippines, from where he also received requests for medicines and drugs (Murillo 1749:

393). Camel died at the age of 45 from an illness described by Murillo (1749: 893) as

diarrhoea.

GEORG JOSEF CAMEL SJ (1661–1706) 263

Though he lived and worked far from the intellectual centres of Europe, Camel made a

significant contribution to pre-Linnaean understanding of the natural world. Throughout his

years in the Philippines, he collected botanical and zoological specimens assiduously,

described them in detail and rendered them with skill in ink and watercolour. Writing not

long after Camel’s death, the Jesuit historian Pedro Murillo (1749: 394) observed how

Camel knew the medicinal properties of a great number of plants, experimented to ascertain

their effects, drew a great variety of “roots, leaves and fruits” and recorded their names in a

number of different local languages. His contemporaries, both in the Philippines and Europe,

held him in high esteem. No less a figure than John Ray saluted him as a “most famous man,

destined by nature to advance the history of botany, most deserving of immortal praise”

(Cullum 1956: 327).

In subsequent centuries, however, Camel’s contribution was acknowledged only rarely

and fitfully. In the late nineteenth century, Sebastian Vidal y Soler, the Spanish inspector

general and director of the botanical garden in Manila, paid tribute to Camel’s enquiries into

the transplantation of trees from the Americas to the Philippines. On a visit to London, he

saw Camel’s drawings and recognized many of the plants depicted, including Sapindus

saponaria (commonly known as the western soapberry). He commended (Vidal y Soler

1886: 10–11) Camel’s efforts to make Philippine plants better known to Europeans. In

general, however, Camel remains an obscure figure, and the literature on his life is both

scattered and fragmentary, confined mainly to superficial biographical notes (the majority

found in Czech publications and in Jesuit bibliographies, see for example De Backer 1869;

Sommervogel 1891; Kolacek 1983; Entner 1997; Novak 1992), brief remarks in botanical

journals (Winter 1974; Anonymous 1986), or to encyclopaedia and botanical dictionaries

(Backer 1936; Roldan y Buerrero 1955; Gunckel 1960; Gicklhorn 1960).

Various factors may have contributed to Camel’s relative obscurity. First, although some

of his notes on Philippine flora appeared as an appendix to the third volume of John Ray’s

Historia plantarum (1704), his drawings were not included, and he did not gain the kind of

fame as an illustrator enjoyed by other seventeenth-century naturalists such as Maria Sybilla

Merian. Secondly, neither Linnaeus nor his contemporaries based many binomials on

Camel’s references (Merrill 1926: 45). Despite naming the genus Camellia in his honour,

moreover, Linnaeus (1751: 156) was critical of Camel’s contributions in Ray’s Historia,

waving them away as “Descriptiones imperfectae. Florum nulla notitia.” When referring to

south-east Asian plants, Linnaeus made greater use of Herbarium Amboinense (1741) by

Rumphius, a botanist who had worked mostly in the Dutch East Indies. In the early twentieth

century, the American tropical botanist Elmer D. Merrill (1926: 45) acknowledged Camel’s

work to be “the only technical work prepared and published” about the Philippines during

the seventeenth century, but viewed its value, along with many other works on Philippine

botany predating Linnaeus, as being “practically nil”. In more recent years, various attempts

have been made to give due recognition to Camel’s contributions to botany and science

(Gicklhorn and Gicklhorn 1954; Entner 1997, 2006), but the effort has only been partially

successful.

CAMEL’S METHODS

In 1699, the London apothecary James Petiver reported to Hans Sloane that “George

Camelli, a learned Jesuit; hath been pleased to transmit to Mr Ray and me, the Designs of

264 GEORG JOSEF CAMEL SJ (1661–1706)

such rare Medicinal Plants, with a large account of their virtue, Use, etc. as he hath

experienced, and observed them to grow amongst the Philippine Islands where he resides”

(Dandy 1958: 146). By the time this note was sent, Camel had been studying, collecting and

drawing the flora and fauna of the Philippines for more than ten years. Recounting Camel’s

discoveries to Sloane in 1700, Ray wrote: “I cannot but look upon it as an effect of

Providence to stir up a man so well skilled in plants to apply himself to the inquisition,

delineation, and description of the plants growing in those remote parts of the world, and

giving an account of their virtues and uses” (Dandy 1958: 146). By this time, Camel had

already gained a reputation for botanizing. Pablo Clain (or Paul Klein), a German Jesuit who

had arrived in Manila ten years before Camel, was acquainted with the latter’s work and

observed (Cullum 1956: 328) that Camel “has scientific correspondence with European

savants and sends them his observations and collections.” Clain shared Camel’s interest in

ethnobotany, indigenous medicines and medical practices, and went on to publish an

acclaimed work on common illnesses and their local remedies in 1712.3

The history of botany in the Philippines (and indeed the history of science and medicine

in general) has as yet been barely explored by scholars (Anderson 2007). According to

Merrill (1926: 44), the first reference to a plant from the Philippines, a description of Anisum

philippinarum insularum (Illicium philippinense), appeared in 1601 in Rariorum plantarum

historia by Carolus Clusius. The first treatise on indigenous medicinal plants was written in

1611 by the Franciscan friar Father Blas de la Madre de Dios (1984). Botanical descriptions

were often included in medical books written for the lay person (for example, Colın 1663)

and in missionary chronicles (historias) notably that by Father Francisco Ignacio Alcina

composed in 1668 (Alcina 1975).

Camel’s detailed descriptions of the flora and fauna of the Philippine archipelago referred

to the work of many of his predecessors. His notes described a plant’s appearance, its

medical and therapeutic uses, and sometimes how it was cultivated. He gave Latin names to

many of the specimens and noted the names by which they were known in Tagalog and other

Philippine languages. Following the common practice of the times, he referred to the works

of Theophrastus, Pliny, Dioscorides and Galen in his effort to devise a classification scheme

that would make sense of the new species he had discovered, as well as to understand their

medicinal properties. But he also ranged beyond these classical works, referring frequently

to studies he had to hand from the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. His description of

ginger plants, for example, which he labelled variously as “zingiber Indus” and “curcuma”,

and provided with local synonyms “luiya”, “galangal”, “calauga” and “zuinambac”,

discussed information given by Carolus Clusius, Nicolas Monardes, Antonio Pigafetta, and

the Jesuit Father Francisco Colın.4

CAMEL’S CONTACTS WITH OTHER BOTANISTS

Camel’s most important scientific contacts elsewhere in Asia were Willem Ten Rhijne, a

physician employed by the Dutch East India Company (Vereenigde Oost-Indische

Compagnie, or VOC) in Batavia (now Jakarta), and Samuel Browne, an East India

Company surgeon stationed at Fort St George (Madras, now Chennai).

Ten Rhijne had previously served as a physician to the VOC in Japan where he learned

about acupuncture, cupping and moxibustion (the burning of herbal poultices called

moxa on the skin.) In 1673, he wrote “Frutice thee cui accedit fasciculus rariorum

GEORG JOSEF CAMEL SJ (1661–1706) 265

plantarum” which was published in 1678 as an appendix to Exoticarum aliarumque minus

cognitarum plantarum . . . by the Polish-German botanist Jacob Breyn. It is not certain

when Camel and Ten Rhijne began their correspondence. The two extant letters from Ten

Rhijne to Camel, both written from Batavia, are dated 20 July 1698 and 29 August 1699,

while the only extant letter from Camel to Ten Rhijne is dated 29 October 1700.5 Ten Rhijne

put Camel in contact with other Dutch botanists, obtained books for him, and generously

shared his knowledge and his contacts, including his experience with the Royal Society of

London.

Ten Rhijne’s letter to Camel in 1698 spoke of his familiarity with the latter’s work, and

talked of his own interests in acupuncture, arthritis amongst the Japanese, and “Lepra

asiatica” (leprosy, known today as Hansen’s disease).6 He acquainted Camel with the Dutch

intellectual and botanical milieux in Batavia, mentioning notable colleagues such as Andreas

Cleyer, the German Director of the Medicinale Winckel, the central VOC apothecary depot

in Batavia, and Paul Hermann, recommending the latter’s botanical research in Ceylon. He

also suggested that he take a look at the work of Hendrik Adriaan van Reede tot Drakestein,

a high ranking VOC official and aristocrat whose research in Malabar was published in

Hortus indicus malabricus.

The later letter from Ten Rhijne, sent in August 1699, discussed the high prices of new

and rare books, specifically mentioning that Van Reede’s Hortus indicus malabaricus cost at

least 50 Mexican pesos, and again commended to Camel the work of Hermann, who had by

then been awarded a professorship at the University of Leiden after ten years of tropical

research. The two men were evidently comfortable comparing notes on medical remedies

and discussed, for instance, snake poison as medicine for leprosy.

What opinion did Ten Rhijne have of Camel’s work? Clearly, Ten Rhijne appreciated the

Moravian Jesuit’s descriptions and drawings, which he acknowledged to be carefully

executed, providing accurate and “expert information that I deem useful as my guideline for

the examination of our Javanese plants.”7

Samuel Browne first wrote to Camel in 1696. At that time he had already been stationed

as a surgeon in Madras for several years, and had taken a keen interest in collecting

medicinal plants and studying Indian medical practices. Like Camel, Browne was an

attentive botanist, knowledgeable in the literature of the time and highly regarded by his

peers. He had sent seven volumes of specimens to James Petiver in London (Dandy 1958:

101). Hearing of Camel’s pharmaceutical expertise and botanical activities, Browne sent

copies of Petiver’s publications to Manila and asked Camel to collaborate with him in

sending botanical materials to London (Cullum 1956: 328). By this time, Camel had already

seen the first two volumes of John Ray’s Historia (1686, 1688), which had been brought to

his attention in Manila about 1694 by a friend who owned a copy (Cullum 1956: 328).

Motivated by Browne’s letter, Camel set about preparing work to be sent to England.

At the same time, Browne told Petiver about Camel and his work in Manila, information

which Petiver acknowledged most gratefully. Browne, wrote Petiver, “hath also procured me

a correspondence with divers Ingenious Persons residing in remoter parts” (Dandy 1958:

99). Camel proved to be an exciting discovery for both Browne and Petiver, and became

their regular correspondent. He sent specimens and seeds through Browne to Petiver and to

Browne himself, among which were vegetables and other plants from China that had

been introduced to the Philippines by Chinese immigrants.8 Browne had never been to

China, and all the Chinese plants that Browne sent to Petiver were in fact from Camel

(Dandy 1958: 102).

266 GEORG JOSEF CAMEL SJ (1661–1706)

CAMEL’S PUBLISHED WORKS

Ray and Petiver first published notes received from Camel in Philosophical transactions in

1699, and Petiver continued to place Camel’s materials in that journal on a regular basis

until 1711, five years after Camel had died. During that period, thirteen articles were

published in Philosophical transactions acknowledging Camel as the principal author in

which Camel described plants (Camel 1699a, 1699c, 1704a, 1704b, 1704c, 1704d); birds

(Camel 1702ab); “coralls, and other curious submarines” (Camel 1702b); fishes, molluscs

and crustaceans (Camel 1704e); quadrupeds (Camel 1706a); “monsters, quasi-monsters, and

monstrosities” and serpents (Camel 1706b); shells, minerals, fossils and hot springs (Camel

1706c); other animals (Camel 1708); and spiders and beetles (Camel 1711). Further notes by

Camel on Philippine fauna were included in an article published under the name of his

correspondent in Madras, the East India Company surgeon Samuel Browne (1707).

Through Samuel Browne, Camel sent John Ray and Hans Sloane lists of the material he

dispatched.9 But the journey of his notes and drawings to England and their eventual

publication was often fraught with difficulty and delay. In January 1698, Camel sent two sets

of volumes to Browne in Madras. The ship carrying them was attacked by pirates and the

drawings were lost. Camel recorded his distress in a letter to John Ray: “evidence of ten

years work was lost in a day, as I fear, in a day” (Dandy 1958: 146). Despite this setback,

Camel persevered and dispatched copies he had retained to Browne a year later. By the time

the volumes reached Madras, Browne was dead. Fortunately, Browne’s successor, Edward

Bulkley, forwarded the volumes, with Camel’s accompanying letter, which had been saved

by Browne’s widow, to John Ray, who received them in 1701.

In the Natural History Museum, London, there is a manuscript volume by Camel entitled

“Icones fruticum et arborum Luzonis” that appears to be a product of collaboration between

Camel and Ten Rhijne (Figure 1). Comprising 137 pages, the volume contains drawings in

Indian ink accompanied by detailed notes (with pages written on both sides).10 Camel

originally divided the descriptions and drawings into two books, on each of which he wrote

that they were sent by him to Ten Rhijne in Batavia in 1700 and to Petiver in 1701. Ray

published the notes contained in this tome, together with other notes by Camel, as the

appendix to the third volume of his Historia plantarum (1704). It is this appendix, entitled

“Historia stirpium insula Luzonis et reliquarum Philippinarum”, for which Camel is now

most often remembered (Cullum 1956: 328). The notes from “Icones fruticum . . .” volume

describe in turn “humiles” (low-growing plants), “volubiles et scandentes” (vines), and

“frutices et arbores” (shrubs and trees).

In addition to the material published by Ray in Historia plantarum and in Philosophical

transactions, a number of Camel’s drawings, mainly of insects, were reproduced by James

Petiver in his Gazophylacii, and Camel’s notes on Strychnos ignatii (St Ignatius’s bean)

(Camel 1699b, 1699c) were reprinted in German and Italian journals. Yet, the full extent of

Camel’s labours remains difficult to assess, because the published material is only part of a

much larger whole.

CAMEL’S MANUSCRIPTS

Some impression of the scale of Camel’s assiduous collecting, however, the breadth of his

scientific enquiries, and his botanical competency and method, may be gained from the

GEORG JOSEF CAMEL SJ (1661–1706) 267

manuscript volumes, numerous dried plant specimens and correspondence that survive today

in the British Library and the Natural History Museum, London.11

Among the Sloane Manuscripts in the British Library there are four volumes compiled by

Camel – volumes 4080, 4083A, 4083B and 4083C – that together comprise over 525 pages

tightly packed with drawings and descriptions. The majority of the botanical material is to

be found in volume 4080 which, in addition to illustrations of flowers, fruits and leaves,

Figure 2. Camel’s drawing of parts of the inflorescence of Areca catechu (areca nut,

betel nut palm), showing its local name “Bonga”. Johannes Burman, editor of

Rumphius’s Herbarium amboinense (1741: 44), in referring to the “pinang tree” or

Areca, drew attention to Camel’s description of the plant in Ray’s Historia plantarum.

(# Natural History Museum, London.)

Figure 1. This note, written by Georg Camel to James Petiver

illustrates Camel’s collaboration with Willem Ten Rhijne (# Natural

History Museum, London).

268 GEORG JOSEF CAMEL SJ (1661–1706)

includes detailed diagrams of cross-sections of stalks, leaves, and nuts such as those of areca

palm (Figures 2 and 3). Camel’s eye for the unusual and strange is manifest in his mention of

the so-called “coconut pearl”, a curious botanical conundrum. The coconut pearl, he related,

is a small, translucent pea-sized stone that is said to occur naturally, but inexplicably, inside

the coconut (Veldkamp 2002). Such quirks and fancies apart, the drawings in the volumes

are sufficiently accurate for it to be possible to identify the plants that he depicted. Camel’s

rendering of tamarind (Tamarindus indicus) and the mango fruit (Mangifera indica) are

immediately recognizable. But it is Camel’s incorporation of local names of Philippine

plants that often provides the best route towards identification. The recorded local names

that appear in Camel’s descriptions are largely in Tagalog, although in many instances

Camel indicates the names by provinces and frequently includes local names common to

the Visayas. Camel’s inclusion of foreign specimens, notably plants originating from the

Americas that were early introductions into the archipelago, provide good examples of the

ways in which the original Aztec name underwent modification or corruption. There are

numerous examples of plants of American origin known by a local variant of their Aztec

name, such as “cacaloxochitl mexicanoru”. A flower commonly planted in and around

cemeteries all over south-east Asia, cacaloxochitl (Plumeria rubra, frangipani) now bears

the indigenized name “calachuchi” in the Philippines, which is manifestly derived from the

Aztec one. Introduced into the colony by the Spaniards in the sixteenth century, calachuchi

Figure 3. Camel’s drawings of portions of the leaves of

four different “palms” (# Natural History Museum,

London.)

Figure 4. Camel’s drawing of Plumeria rubra

(frangipani) showing the Aztec (Mexican) name

“Cacaloxochitl” (# Natural History Museum, London).

GEORG JOSEF CAMEL SJ (1661–1706) 269

was depicted by Camel with fruits and seeds (Figure 4). There are instances, however, where

Camel is less than accurate. For example, a flower belonging to a species of the family

Apocynaceae is erroneously depicted with the leaves of Strychnos (which is a member of

Loganiaceae).

Volume 4083A focuses mainly on shells and volume 4083B contains drawings and

descriptions of spiders and a variety of insects – beetles, locusts and butterflies (Figure 5).

Here, in meticulous detail, Camel shows a range of insects in various stages of life – from

pupae to adults – and from different regions of the country. The fourth volume, 4083C,

describes and illustrates what Camel called “Monstrorum, quasi monstrorum et

monstrosorum”, animals in the order of the strange and the curious. Camel includes

sketches of “dragons” – a “small flying dragon” labelled “Dracunculus volans”; a winged

dragon, named “Draco Cristatus” by Camel; and a sample of a horn purportedly from a

Philippine unicorn. There is also a peculiar creature which Camel deemed fit to call

“Mustela”, an animal that is supposedly a weasel or a stoat. Camel’s Philippine “Mustela”

possessed an intriguing set of characteristics: it is distinctly furred, its ears lie snugly close to

its head which is elongated, almost resembling that of a camel; its limbs are jointed so that it

Figure 5. Camel called this beetle by the Latin phrase “Scarabaus Buceros Nasicornis, primus” and by the

Tagalog name “Hoang”. It is a rhinoceros beetle (Chalcosoma sp.: Coleoptera: Scarabaeidae: Dynastinae);

the genus occurs in Luzon and elsewhere in tropical Asia. Rumphius (1714: 13) wrote that “the general

pest of the coconut tree is a kind of large beetle that eats the ‘cabbage’ or terminal bud”. In the Philippines

the beetle is known as the coconut beetle and called by its contemporary Tagalog name “uang”. (Sloane

Manuscript 4083B; reproduced by permission of the British Library Board.)

270 GEORG JOSEF CAMEL SJ (1661–1706)

possesses elbows and knees; it has webbed and clawed forepaws; its hind legs are hoofed.

This unidentified animal is shown without Camel’s usual accompanying copious notes

(Figure 6).

In a series of sketches, Camel depicts a small monkey-like animal he named

“Cercopithecus luzonis minimus” (Figure 7). One drawing shows a mother with her

offspring tied securely to her body with vines. Camel’s depiction of this creature is the first

record of the primate known today as the tarsier. It possessed, he wrote, “facies leonine;

occuli rubri, magni, rotundi ut Noctuae”, and it was believed to eat charcoal, a belief that

persisted into modern times (Hill 1955: 120). Camel mistakenly reported that the tarsier was

found in Luzon, but the local names he gave for the animal – “magu” and “booot” – point to

its true place of origin, the island of Samar. Petiver communicated Camel’s description to

the Royal Society and it was published in Philosophical transactions in 1705, and he also

reproduced one of the drawings and the notes in his Gazophylacii. The first binomial name to

be given to any tarsier, Simia syrichta, was derived by Linnaeus from Camel’s notes on the

tarsier from Samar that were published by Petiver, and not, as it is still sometimes claimed,

to the description later given by Buffon in Histoire naturelle (1765) (Hill 1955: 119–120;

Cabrera 1923: 89–91).

Figure 6. In the accompanying manuscript notes, Georg

Camel referred to this unidentified animal by the name

“Mustela”. (Sloane Manuscript 4083C; reproduced by

permission of the British Library Board.)

Figure 7. The first known drawing of a tarsier:

Georg Camel employed the Visayan names “Magu”

and “Booot”, and the Latin name “Cercopithecus

Luzonis minimus” on this drawing of a tarsier.

(Sloane Manuscript 4083C; reproduced by

permission of the British Library Board.)

GEORG JOSEF CAMEL SJ (1661–1706) 271

CAMEL’s “HORTUS SICCUS ASIATICUS PLANTARUM” IN THE SLOANE

HERBARIUM

Further evidence of the scale of Camel’s labours is to be found in the Sloane Herbarium

(BM-SL) in the Natural History Museum, London, which comprises 265 volumes, mostly

large folios with irregular pagination (for details, see Dandy 1958). The specimens in this

collection represent the oldest Philippine herbarium in existence. Plants collected by Camel

and sent to Petiver and Ray are scattered through several volumes and are located within the

Sloane Herbarium in the Petiver Collection. To cite a few: BM-SL 163 contains mainly

cryptogams, ferns and grasses with labels written in Camel’s hand; BM-SL 165 consists

mostly of tree specimens; BM-SL 153 contains a mixture of Philippine plants collected by

Camel and those that were sent to him by Samuel Browne from Madras or by Edward

Bulkley from Bengal and Pegu (Burma); BM-SL 231, 233 and 240 contain the bulk of

Camel’s Philippine plants and the specimens have labels both in his own hand, that also

provide the local names, as well as labels in Petiver’s hand that indicate Camel’s name and

that of Luzon, the island on which the specimens were collected.

Specimens which had not been given names by Camel or Petiver carry instead the simple

label “Kam. Luzonis”. A comment by Petiver that appears alongside a specimen Camel had

labelled “Lupinus Luzonis” is also indicative of the way in which Camel would refer both

to the information indigenous people furnished and to additional information offered

by external informants or friends such as Browne. “Father Camel says it grows in Taytay

in watery places amongst rice. Browne says . . . the natives eat the leaves .. and build their

huts.”12 It is now well known that Camel sent a specimen of Strychnos ignatii, which he called

“Igasud seu Igasur”, the name by which it was known by the local inhabitants of Catbalogan,

Samar, in the Philippines where it grew in profusion. As already noted, Camel had dispatched

drawings and observations of this important plant (Camel 1699c) previously, but his dried

specimen appears to be the first appearance in Europe of this Philippine source of strychnine.13

Camel also sent Petiver a cache of minerals and zoological specimens that included 20

butterflies, various insects including a leaf insect, scarab beetles, spiders, a praying mantis,

35 birds, an assortment of fish, several crustaceans, the skin of a python, and “four-footed

monsters”.14

CONCLUSION

Georg Camel’s intellectual enterprise and philosophical enquiries may be seen to have

centred around three perspectives: pharmacology; Philippine medical knowledge, practices

and beliefs; and taxonomy. He was profoundly interested in the relationship and interaction

of plants and animals to each other, to humans and to the environment. While it is

appropriate to position Camel within the wider framework of Jesuit scientific activity, his

attentive observations, his gathering and collecting, his drawings, his desire to exchange

information through letter writing, and his willingness to send specimens of plants and

animals to museums, especially to London, one of the most important intellectual centres of

the early modern world, were the practices, strategies and conventions employed by many

early modern European naturalists. These practices were integral to the commerce in global

scientific knowledge throughout the period (Cook 2007). Far from working in solitude,

isolated from prevailing currents of scientific thinking, Camel strived to make contact with

others, to participate in debate and to publish his findings. The knowledge he conveyed about

272 GEORG JOSEF CAMEL SJ (1661–1706)

the natural world of the Philippine archipelago was a product of a multitude of interlinked

factors – of travel (people, texts and objects), of networks and connections established with

institutions, between like-minded people, between friends, and of dependence on local

informants. Camel’s life and work in the Philippines should therefore be seen within the

developing fields of medicine, botany and natural history in seventeenth-century Europe, to

which his labours clearly contributed, but also as a product of the revolution in scientific

knowledge that had begun during the previous century (Jardine et al. 1996).

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

This paper has its origins in lectures delivered in Brno, Czech Republic, at a conference on Georg Josef Camel in

June 2006 (http://www.cfs-cls.cz/Files/nastenka/page_2319/Version1/Sbornik_z_kongresu_s_mezinarodni_ucasti_

2006.pdf), and at an environmental history conference at the Ateneo de Davao University, Mindanao, Philippines,

in January 2007. I am grateful to the British Academy for providing financial support for the research for this paper

undertaken in 2007; to the staffs of the Natural History Museum, London, and the British Library; Bernard Deprez

at the Maurits Sabbe Jesuit Library, Leuven; M. M. J. van Balgooy and J. F. Veldkamp of the National Herbarium

of the Netherlands, Leiden University, Leiden, Netherlands, for their kind assistance in the identification of plates;

Albert Alejo SJ (Ateneo de Davao University, Philippines), and Peter Boomgaard (Royal Netherlands Institute for

the Study of Southeast Asia and the Caribbean (KITLV), Leiden). Finally, in revising this paper, I owe special

thanks to Jim Richardson (independent scholar) and J. F. Veldkamp for their valuable comments and suggestions.

I am especially grateful to Professor Jan Krikken, Emeritus Associate Director of Collections and Research at the

Nationaal Natuurhistorisch Museum ‘Naturalis’, Leiden, for identifying the rhinoceros beetle.

NOTES

1 Camel’s name has been variously spelled as Cameli, Camelli, Camello, Camellus and Kamel. I have used

Camel throughout this paper, the variant with which he himself signed his name.2 Backer (1936: 98) noted that Camel first worked in the Marianas before travelling on to the Philippines.

Camel’s name appears in a list of passengers as number 20, from Moravia, in embarkation records: original

mss in Archivo General de Indias, Seville (see boxes Pasajeros, L.13, E.2366/09.06.1687 and Filipinas, 83,

N10/05.05.1687 [SUP]/ Peticion del jesuita Luis de Morales de aprobacion de lista).3 Scholars have speculated that Clain (1712) borrowed much of his data from Camel’s findings; see, for example,

Ondrej Pokorny, “Ethnobotanika v zivote a dıle J. J. Kammela”: unpublished conference paper delivered in Brno,

Czech Republic, June 2006. Clain (1712) did not acknowledge Camel’s work in his preface, which he wrote in

1708, two years after Camel’s death.4 Sloane Manuscripts (hereafter BL-Sloane), 4081, f. 146: The British Library, London.5 W. Ten Rhijne (Batavia) to G. J. Camel, 20 July 1698 and 29 August 1699; G. J. Camel (Manila) to W. Ten

Rhijne, 29 October 1700; original ms in BL-Sloane, 4083A, ff 128; 130. I thank Peter Boomgaard for his assistance

with the Latin translations.6 BL-Sloane 4083A, f. 128.7 BL-Sloane 4083A, f. 130.8 BL-Sloane 4062, ff 294–296.9 BL-Sloane 3321, f. 51.

10 G. J. Camel, “Icones Fruticum et Arborum Luzonis”; original ms in Botany Library, Natural History Museum,

London. The entry for this work in the online catalogue adds “. . . quas G. J. Camel; W. ten Rhyne Battaviam

mittebat Ano 1700; Nune vero D. J. Petiverio . . . mittit Ano 1701.”11 Sloane Herbarium (hereafter BM-SL), volume 153, f. 71.12 BM-SL, volume 153, f. 159.13 BL-SL 3321, f. 151; 4083, ff 132–135b.14 Letters from G. J. Camel to J. Petiver, 1700–1704; original mss in BL-Sloane 3321, f.151; BL-Sloane 4083A,

ff 132–135b.

GEORG JOSEF CAMEL SJ (1661–1706) 273

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Received 15 December 2007. Accepted 10 March 2009.

276 GEORG JOSEF CAMEL SJ (1661–1706)