J H Balfour and the Nachet connection with the Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh

摘要

The Archives at the Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh hold a series of letters written 1853- 55 by the Parisian optician Nachet to J H Balfour, Regius Keeper at the Garden. They pre-date the earliest extant catalogues issued by Nachet, and cover the period when Balfour was equipping his botany classroom with compound microscopes. The models ordered have to be inferred because none of them has survived, nor has any other documentation. The correspondence is considered here in the broader context of the teaching of microscopy at the University of Edinburgh 1840-1860.