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Classifying nature: Constantin W. L. Gloger's (1803-1863) tapestry of a “Natural System of the Animal Kingdom ”

2010; Pensoft Publishers; Volume: 86; Issue: 1 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1002/zoos.200900015

1860-0743

Matthias Glaubrecht, Jürgen Haffer,

Species Distribution and Climate Change

There has been no shortage of attempts to develop classification systems in order to capture the diversity of living forms in nature. One unpublished proposal (thus, largely unknown alternative method) was devised by Constantin Wilhelm Lambert Gloger (1803–1863), an ornithologist and zoologist from Upper Silesia who worked in Berlin for many years. Gloger described important phenomena of the geographical colour variation of birds and mammals (Gloger's Rule, 1833) and he combined as “climatic varieties” of polytypic species many representatives that had been described previously as independent species. During the early 1830s, Gloger started several large ornithological book projects which he abruptly discontinued when, in January 1834, an “enlightening inspiration” deviated his scientific endeavours towards work on a natural system of animals based on natural philosophical principles. He failed entirely in this attempt but continued work on it until the end of his life as a poor and lonely private scholar in Berlin. Gloger planned to publish this zoological classification system, which resembles a modern dichotomous identification key, under the title “Gloger's Natural System of the Animal Kingdom ”. However, his systematic tables, albeit printed and distributed “as manuscripts” by the author, were never published in coherent fashion. Five of these tables from 1834–1836, comprising his system of mammalian genera as interconnected folios of a 2.4 meter long tapestry, have recently been re-discovered in the Berlin Natural History Museum. They are here described in detail and illustrated for the first time, together with another folio depicting his system of mammalian families and one folio of Gloger's universal table of the world system. It remains unclear, though, how exactly Gloger intended to apply his “numbering system according to natural philosophy”, as he called it. Nevertheless, Gloger's approach illustrates alternative classification schemes representing the systematists' continuous endeavour to bring order into the seemingly chaotic nature, while highlighting the danger of fatal error and complete failure. (© 2010 WILEY-VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, Weinheim)