{"id":10177,"date":"2015-08-14T03:10:56","date_gmt":"2015-08-14T10:10:56","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/birdaz.com\/blog\/?p=10177"},"modified":"2015-07-12T11:22:15","modified_gmt":"2015-07-12T18:22:15","slug":"leblonds-birds","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/birdaz.com\/blog\/2015\/08\/14\/leblonds-birds\/","title":{"rendered":"Leblond&#8217;s Birds"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Today we celebrate the 200th anniversary of the death of one of the real characters in French\u00a0natural history, <a href=\"https:\/\/ahrf.revues.org\/1573\">Jean-Baptiste Leblond<\/a>, a physician, utopian\u00a0politician, and the most restless of explorers.<\/p>\n<p>Starting at the age of 19, in 1766, <a href=\"http:\/\/issuu.com\/scduag\/docs\/gad12018\">Leblond spent nearly 20 years walking the South American continent<\/a>, from Grenada to Peru. On his return to France in 1785, he brought with him 250 pounds &#8212; pounds! &#8212; of platinum, along with a rich collection of natural history specimens.<\/p>\n<p>No rest for the weary, though, and shortly thereafter he was <a href=\"http:\/\/www.biodiversitylibrary.org\/item\/163187#page\/154\/mode\/1up\">ordered back to Cayenne<\/a>, in search of new sources of quinine.<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>After all the\u00a0effort, exhaustion, and\u00a0suffering devoted to acquiring his collections, M. Leblond has made the exceedingly generous sacrifice of donating\u00a0the specimens to the Paris Society of Natural History and certain of its members.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><a title=\"White-necked Jacobin\" href=\"https:\/\/www.flickr.com\/photos\/rickwright\/11313900385\/in\/photolist-j82qAi-j8o5eC-j8gJXH-j8iTtq-j8iTvQ-j8gJUX-if2Cox-ieLpK7-ieMqNX-ieVGTB-ieMaPQ-ieM2Hb-ieMibT-ieM26E-ieM2v7-ieM9cb-ieLTxJ-ieUpf5-ieLGq2-ieMn33-9FPmc4\" data-flickr-embed=\"true\" data-header=\"true\" data-footer=\"true\"><img decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https:\/\/farm6.staticflickr.com\/5479\/11313900385_32bfbc1cc7_z.jpg\" alt=\"White-necked Jacobin\" width=\"640\" height=\"320\" \/><\/a><script src=\"\/\/embedr.flickr.com\/assets\/client-code.js\" async=\"\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script><br \/>\nAmong the donated objects were <a href=\"http:\/\/www.biodiversitylibrary.org\/item\/163187#page\/150\/mode\/1up\">111 South American birds<\/a>, listed in the <i>Actes\u00a0<\/i>of the Society for 1792. Most are identified with their Linnaean names and a citation to Buffon or Brisson, but not a few are brought down only to the genus level, with a brief description in hopes that someone someday might recognize them.<\/p>\n<p>I don&#8217;t know where those specimens are now, or how many of them were eventually identified. It&#8217;s not easy, but if you want to try your hand at it, let us know how you do.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.biodiversitylibrary.org\/item\/163187#page\/151\/mode\/1up\"><img decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-10178\" src=\"http:\/\/birdaz.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/07\/Screenshot-2015-07-12-14.18.47.png\" alt=\"Screenshot 2015-07-12 14.18.47\" width=\"577\" height=\"414\" srcset=\"http:\/\/birdaz.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/07\/Screenshot-2015-07-12-14.18.47.png 577w, http:\/\/birdaz.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/07\/Screenshot-2015-07-12-14.18.47-300x215.png 300w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 577px) 100vw, 577px\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Today we celebrate the 200th anniversary of the death of one of the real characters in French\u00a0natural history, Jean-Baptiste Leblond, a physician, utopian\u00a0politician, and the most restless of explorers. Starting at the age of 19, in 1766, Leblond spent nearly 20 years walking the South American continent, from Grenada to Peru. On his return to &hellip; <\/p>\n<p class=\"link-more\"><a href=\"http:\/\/birdaz.com\/blog\/2015\/08\/14\/leblonds-birds\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> &#8220;Leblond&#8217;s Birds&#8221;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/birdaz.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10177"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/birdaz.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/birdaz.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/birdaz.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/birdaz.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10177"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/birdaz.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10177\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10179,"href":"http:\/\/birdaz.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10177\/revisions\/10179"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/birdaz.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10177"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/birdaz.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10177"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/birdaz.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10177"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}