This past week’s study was a foray into the Jardin du Roi and how it, and many of its staff, managed to weather the French Revolution and come out as the Muséum national d’Histoire naturelle.  E.C. Spary’s 2000 work is highly developed and pretty involved with the politics and poetics of natural history from Count Buffon and the Old Regime into the Republic, the Terror, and the annoying redating of things during the period that make it more difficult to follow the historical narrative. Thankfully Spary gives the regular dates in parenthesis. I will also give an early warning that there are sentences in here that have higher word counts than some of my students’ essays.