David Maddison

@bembidion.bsky.social

It was in that volume of 1802 that Latreille gave the generic name to my beloved beetles of the genus Bembidion. Perhaps this coin went through his hands at some point that year. [The coin’s year is marked as 11, as it was the 11th year of the French Republican Calendar.]

And here is a French coin that was minted in September 1802, a couple of months before Pierre André Latreille's third volume of “Histoire naturelle, générale et particulière des crustacés et des insects” was published.

Bild

Here are two Swedish coins from 1758, which I recently acquired. I like to think that there is a possibility, however slim, that Carl Linnaeus had one of these in his pocket on the day that the 10th edition of Systema Naturae (the starting point of zoological nomenclature) was published.

Bild