Joachim Barrande (1799-1883) - His life, work and heritage to world palaeontology

His life, work and heritage to world palaeontology

"This is what I have observed"

Radvan Horný & Vojtěch Turek

Youth

Joachim Barrande was born on 11 August 1799 at Saugues, département Haute-Loire, in a region called La Margeride, which formed a part of the Provencal province (Languedoc). His native town is situated in a mountainous granite country 930 m above sea level, with the surrounding mountains of the Massif Central reaching over 1400 m. The region is covered with spruce and beech woods, while the mountain summits are bare. The climate is rough, which is particularly reflected in agriculture: cattle and sheep are bred, main plant products are rye, potatoes, barley, and oats. In Barrande´s times, Saugues had about one thousand inhabitants. Many of them were craftsmen engaged in textile production based on wool, hatters and drapers; then there were blacksmiths, belt-makers, rope-makers, shoemakers, and other provincial professions. The little town also was a religious centre. Important is St. Jacob´s hospital, founded already in the 16th century.
Barrande´s birth has been recorded in the documents of the civil court at Saugues as follows:
« Aujourd´hui vingt-quatre thermidor an sept de la République française devant moi agent municipal de la commune de Saugues s´est présenté le citoyen Augustin Barrande assisté de Jouachim Barrande son frére âgé de trente huit ans et de Médard Molinier âgé de cinquante deux ans tous dud. Saugues nous a déclaré que Charlotte-Louise Torrant son épouse légitime s´est accouchée ce jourd´huy d´un garçon qu´il nous a présenté et auquel il a donné le prénom de Jouachim Barrande delaquelle déclaration certiffiée véritable jay rédigé le présent acte jay signé avec les S. Barrande et Molinier les d. jour et an. »

Today, on the fourth of thermidor of the seventh year of the French Republic, I, the acting secretary of the Saugues council, was visited by the citizen Augustin Barrande, accompanied by Jouachim Barrande, his brother, aged 38, and Medard Molinier, aged 52, all from the said village of Saugues, who declared that his legitimate wife, Charlotte-Louise Torrant, had given birth to a boy on that day, who was shown to us and whom he named Jouachim Barrande; I have made this record about that declaration, signed by myself and by messieurs Barrande and Mollinier, on the above mentioned day and year.

Joachim Barrande´s family

    The Barrande family were been documented in Saugues since the end of the 16th century. The father, Augustin Barrande, was a well-to-do land owner and textile-merchant. Besides two daughters, he had three sons who he sent to be educated at the College Stanislas in Paris. The mother, Charlotte-Louise, born Torrent, came from a family of royal officers, known in Saugues since the 16th century.
Joachim´s brothers were:
    Louis Barrande, born on 15 April 1809, graduate from the École Polytechnique, commander of the guards, died on 25 August 1880.
    Joseph-Chrysostomos, born on 25 August 1810. He attended École Polytechnique in Paris, after leaving it in 1830 he served in the forces. After coming to Russia he acquired Russian and became a member of the headquarters and adjutant the Czar Nicolas I. As a colonel of the engineering corps of the imperial army he became famous for his work on the project of construction of the Russian railway network in Asia. He took part in the campaign to Poland in 1834. Later he returned to France and occupied himself with a project of a railway line across the Pyrenees. In 1859 he left for Ukraine and became member of the army headquarters in Kiev. In 1863 he returned to Saugues and since 1871 he lived in Paris. He published studies on Russian Central Asia, for which he was decorated in Russia by the Cross of the imperial and royal Order of St. Stanislaus. In 1876 he published the year-book Calendrier catholique, in which he defended the Catholic calendar against the non-Catholic ones. In 1883 he came to Prague to settle matters connected with the death of his brother Joachim; he died in Prague on 26 January 1884. His funeral was conducted from the house in the Chotek (now Vítězná) Street where Joachim Barrande lived, on 29 January 1884.

A less well known portrait of J.Barrande, about 1821-1822

His Prague mission was remembered by Professor Jan Krejčí in 1884: "Barrande´s brother Joseph, who came from Paris to Prague as an executor of Barrande´s last will, ... after my Czech welcome uttered in Czech, replied with touching thanks in Russian language, which he acquired during his service in the Russian empire, where he attained the rank of colonel in the military engineering corps. - Unfortunately, even this venerable old man succumbed to difficulties of his mission and died - similar to his brother - of pneumonia, at the time of getting ready for a journey back to France. - The ceremonial transport of the deceased to the railway station before the conveyance to his French home country was organised by the City of Prague."

In Bourbons´ employ

    At first Joachim Barrande studied at College Stanislas in Paris. In 1819 he was admitted to the École Polytechnique. We can read in the school register that he had brown hair, blue eyes, uncovered forehead, a big nose, and was 172 cm tall. Graduated from the École Polytechnique with distinction, he studied bridge and road engineering at the École des ponts et chaussées in 1821-1824, where he gained the certificate of a civil engineer. At the same time, Barrande intensively studied natural history, attending lectures a studying works of G. Cuvier, J. B. Lamarck, A. d´Orbigny, A. Brongniart, C. Prévost, A. L. Jussieu, H. de Blainville, E. Geoffroy-Saint-Hilaire, G.-P. Deshayes. He was particularly influenced by Cuvier and Brongniart. For several years since 1824, Barrande worked in the towns of Decize, Bordeaux, and Saumur. Among other activities, he was also engaged in the construction of a bridge at Decize.
    Of crucial importance for Barrande was his meeting the royal prince the Duke of Angouleme, who was strongly impressed by the young engineer. It was him who proposed to Charles X Bourbon to engage Barrande as a science tutor for his grandson Henry, Count of Chambord. Joachim Barrande accepted this proposal with a great pleasure, and thus he was introduced to the royal court in 1826.
    To make the lessons amusing, Barrande established a physical and chemical laboratory for the young prince in Tuileries. Barrande was an exacting and strict teacher. The lessons which he gave to the prince were public. Marquis de Cubieres, present at one of the lessons, recorded how Barrande reproved the boy: "Once more, Sir, I can´t comprehend you well; express better your train of thoughts. No idle talk: correct sequence, facts, clarity."

A portrait of J. Barrande in the period of his tutor activities

    The July revolution in 1830 tied Barrande with the royal family. On 2 August he attended the proclamation in the Rambouillet Castle, delivered by young Henry. Then the royal court with a large attendance left for the port of Cherbourg and emigrated first to the old Lulworth Castle in the County of Dorset in England and then to Scotland. The royal residence Holyrood in Edinburgh became their temporary refuge. During his two-year stay in Scotland, Barrande´s English improved and he probably became acquainted with the initial research of the Lower Palaeozoic rocks of Great Britain, the main representative of which was Sir Roderick Impey Murchison.
    In summer 1832 Barrande visited, together with Henry and his sister, several memorable places in Scotland. Besides several lakes, it was the Loch Leven Castle, where Mary Stuart lived and was later imprisoned, the place of the battle of Culloden (1746) in the deserted peatbogs east of Inverness where Prince Charles Edward, the Jacobite candidate for the British throne, was defeated, and the town of Fort William recalling memories of his life. It seems that this excursion was initiated by the interest in the history of the Scottish royal dynasty. Charles Edward (1720-1788) spent most of his life in France and Italy and close contacts with the Bourbons and personally with Charles X cannot be overlooked. Mary Stuart (1542-1587), whose mother descended from the French family de Guise, had been educated in catholic spirit in France, and her first husband in the years 1558-1560 was the French king François II.
    Shortly after, the royal family decided to leave Scotland, and moved to Bohemia. The Austrian-Hungarian emperor Franz II (Czech Franz I) enabled Charles X to stay at the Prague Castle, where he arrived at the end of October 1832.
    In 1833, Barrande finished his tutor´s function at the court. First he was replaced by two Jesuits, and later by the famous mathematician and physician, professor of the École Polytechnique Augustin Louis de Cauchy (1789-1857), called from Torino, who provided further scientific education of the Prince. Soon afterwards, however, Prince Henry charged Barrande with administration of his Austrian-Hungarian estates including financial affairs and settled in Frohsdorf near Vienna, where he bought a castle with a country estate. A close friendship bound the two men for the whole life; before his death in 1883, Henry appointed Barrande executor of his last will.
    The French royal court left Prague in 1836 and moved, after a short stay in Linz and at an imposing castle of Kirchberg, to Gorizia near Trieste, where Charles X died in the same year.

Beginnings of scientific work

First years in Prague

    Soon after coming to Prague, Barrande became acquainted with the prominent representatives of Czech science and culture - Josef Dobrovský, František Palacký (who taught German to Henry Chambord) and Kaspar Maria Count Sternberg, palaeobotanist and founder of the Czech Patriotic Museum in 1818 (Museum Regni Bohemiae, the present National Museum). Kaspar M. Sternberg undoubtedly enlivened and stimulated Barrande´s interest in Palaeontology, aroused already in Paris and during the stay in Scotland. Barrande developed contacts with the Museum through the custodians Franz Xaver Maxmilian Zippe and Václav Hanka.
    Fürstenberg councillor František Nittinger (1768-1839), a keen propagator of technical progress, ironworks and railways in Bohemia, was familiar with Palacký and Hanka. When Charles X came to Prague and made his visits to the Tuscan castle at Buštěhrad, Nittinger was introduced to him. He invited the king on behalf of Duke Fürstenberg for a chase in the Lány deer park, where he accompanied him even during the following years. At the French court he became acquainted with Barrande, whom he enlisted as an engineering specialist for the intended project of horse-railway from Lány through Křivoklát forests to Sternberg´s black-coal mines around Radnice and further on to Plzeň. When considering the project, Barrande - according to tradition - discovered the today world-famous trilobite finding-places near Skryje and Týřovice. Nittinger also recorded that ”the notable French engineer Mr Barrande carried out all the technical preparatory work for the proposed Radnice-Plzeň-Budějovice horse-railway”. Professor Jaroslav Perner reported in 1933 that in Barrande´s personal estate notes were found showing that he also worked on the calculation of costs and profitability of the horse-railway from Budějovice to Linz, which was supposed to transport mostly salt and timber.
    There existed so many motives which stimulated Barrande´s interest in palaeontology, evoked already by Cuvier and Lamarck during his studies in Paris, that Barrande was unable to resist. Let us remember at least his first recorded encounter with Czech fossils. According to tradition, he found several trilobites when walking along the Dívčí hrady hill near Zlíchov in Prague. His housekeeper Barbora Nerudová, mother of the famous Czech poet and writer Jan Neruda, whom Barrande called ”Mrs Bábinka”, is said to throw the fossils on a rubbish heap, because ”they were lying about on a desk among nice books”. Nevertheless, she had to find them and bring them back. In his obituary of 1884, professor Gustav Laube presumed that the first Barrande´s fossil was probably cephalopod, found in a meadow near Herget´s brick-yard close to Smíchov. Barrande was undoubtedly also influenced by the collection of fossils kept in the Museum, which was at that time based in the Sternberg Palace at Hradčany.
    At that time there already existed several short published reports on Czech fossils, particularly trilobites. The oldest descriptions and illustrations of fossils found in the environs of Prague were published by the Jesuit Franciscus Zeno in two papers as early as 1770. Palaeozoic fossils were mentioned also by I. Born, J. T. Lindacker, A. Brongniart, E. F. Schlotheim, J. V. Dalman, Ch. P. B. Beck, J. C. Zenker, and H. F. Emmrich. The founder of the Czech Patriotic Museum (the present National Museum), the palaeobotanist Kaspar M. Sternberg, published even three short but important trilobite papers between 1825-1833.
    Barrande was on good terms with František Palacký, who introduced him to members of the nobility such as Albert Count Nostic or Kaspar M. Count Sternberg. Palacký also probably acquainted him with F. X. M. Zippe, from 1824 to 1849 the custodian of the Natural History collections in the Museum. Professor Zippe (1791-1863) published many important papers on geology and mineralogy, and was the author of the survey of geology of Bohemia (”Übersicht der Gebirgsformationen in Böhmen”). Palacký included this ”Übersicht” in the first part of his History of Bohemia (”Geschichte von Böhmen”), issued in 1836. There is no doubt that Barrande used this work as one of the first sources of general information about the geology of the central part of Bohemia. Barrande had good relations also with Václav Hanka, the Museum librarian, and acknowledged his help and assistance during the research in the first volume of his fundamental work ”Systême silurien du centre de la Bohême”. Barrande also undoubtedly welcomed the Czech edition of Cuvier´s ”Discours sur les révolutions de la surface du globe et sur le changements qu´elles ont produit dans le regne animal”, translated by Jan Svatopluk Presl and issued in Prague in 1834.

Beginning of the systematic research

    ”The Silurian System” by Sir R. I. Murchison, published in 1839, had an inherent influence on the beginnings of Barrande´s scientific path, and deeply inspired his ”Système silurien du centre de la Bohême” (originally written ”Systême”). The first results of Sir Murchison´s investigations, published in London between 1831-1834, were known to Barrande partly as early as during his stay in Scotland. It is almost unbelieveable how much energy Barrande showed when entering his research activities. Professor Krejčí wrote in 1884 that during the years 1840-1846: ”... Barrande travelled on foot through the whole system of the Czech transition mountains [at that time the term used for the complex of beds between Archaic (Urgebirge) and Carboniferous (Flözgebirge) systems], discovered and stratigraphically determined the main localities of fossils, where he investigated in detail succession of all beds. Finally he established and trained at a big expense a large group of rock workmen who, in places by him designated, and if necessary from the land-owners rented, for many years exploited an unsuspected quantity of old organic creatures.”
    Of the subsidiary but for his subsistence essential activities Barrande retained only the function of administrator of the estates and economic adviser of Henry Count Chambord.
    Already at the beginning of his research work, Barrande had to form his own opinion about the succession of Palaeozoic rocks, at that time still totally unknown. He discovered new localities, he drew geological outcrops and carefully measured the inclination and direction of beds. Professor F. Počta noted in 1918 that a schematic geological section of central Bohemian Palaeozoic formations appeared for the first time in Barrande´s field notebook in 1844, demonstrating that already at that time Barrande had a clear idea of geological structure and stratigraphy of the territory. As to the Precambrian and Palaeozoic sediments, Barrande determined their succession (”étages”), designated A to G (the ”étage” H was added as late as in 1846). Now these ”étages” represent the Precambrian (A), and the Cambrian (B, C), Ordovician (D), Silurian (E), and Devonian (F, G, H) systems.
    In 1842, F. M. X. Zippe informed Barrande about fossils found during the construction of a road near Bruska in Prague, not far from the place where the statue of the Czech writer Julius Zeyer is placed nowadays in the Chotek Park. According to the contemporary records, a limestone lens was uncovered here surrounded by older (Ordovician) beds but containing younger, Silurian fauna. The material collected was deposited in the Museum at Hradčany. The report intrigued Barrande´s attention and became the impulse for the formulation of his theory of so-called colonies. Barrande assumed that the occurrence of a younger (Silurian) fauna among older (Ordovician) fauna in marine environment can be explained by temporally limited immigration of younger fauna from other provinces. Here it did not find favourable conditions and thus became extinct. Barrande´s theory was supported by numerous similar field discoveries, and therefore he advocated his ”colonies” till the end of his life. The heart of the matter and origin of these ”colonies”, however, consist in the tectonics (dislocations and faults of the Earth crust).
    Certain obscurity of the circumstances concerning the find at Bruska was unfortunately still multiplied in 1848. When being transported from the Museum at Hradčany to the newly acquired building in the street Příkopy, the material has been damaged during street skirmishes.
    Barrande became noted abroad already prior to publishing his first papers. Together with Sir R. I. Murchison and F. M. X. Zippe he made an excursion to the surroundings of Dvorce, Malá Chuchle, Hlubočepy and Slivenec (nowadays parts of Prague) in 1843. In 1846 he accompanied the American geologist, C. Rominger, to the environs of Beroun. In the meantime, Barrande undertook several journeys - e.g. to Wróclaw, Kraków, and Besançon. He also visited Liége, Bonn, Krefeld, and Halle.
    At the same time he was building his large collection of fossils, which he completed with rich comparative material from abroad, obtained in exchange for Czech finds. Preserved documents bear witness of its extent. For instance, in 1847 he sent 240 fossils to professor L. Agassiz to the Museum of Comparative Zoology at Harvard University, and in 1875 followed 4867 more specimens. The second consignment was accompanied with an interesting note that the majority of fossiliferous localities were either exhausted or inaccessible, so that a similar collection now cannot be acquired any more.
    In 1847 general Alberto La Marmora, brother of the famous general Alfonso La Marmora, informed Barrande about a locality of Palaeozoic fossils in Sardinia, which he discovered already in 1826. Barrande visited that locality, found another one, and there collected fossils resembling ones he knew from Bohemia.
    Beyrich´s papers on Bohemian trilobites published in 1845 and 1846 appeared when Barrande had already elaborated his large trilobite collection. He felt any delay might be dangerous, as even other foreign authors had similar intentions. Thus he decided to come out with his hitherto accumulated knowledge in two papers, published in 1846 in Leipzig and in Prague, and containing descriptions of 152 species. Both preliminary papers meant a great progress in the research of this group of extinct arthropods, and were highly appreciated abroad.
    It is interesting to note that Barrande did not publish these scientific first-fruits before being 47 years old, and that only thirteen years of research preceded this moment. Thirteen years of research in geologically unknown territory, without good roads and without railways, without detailed and correct maps and conception of a detailed stratigraphy (succession of beds) and at the beginning without a good knowledge of Czech language...
    Only a year after trilobites, in 1847, a brachiopod monograph was issued, describing 175 species. During this year, Barrande organised several excursions to the Bohemian and Moravian Palaeozoic localities, accompanying famous geologists - Sir R. J. Murchison, P. E. P. de Verneuil and A. Keyserling.
    Scientists living in Prague - A. C. J. Corda, F. X. M. Zippe and the young J. Krejčí - accepted Barrande´s debut with displeasure. The Museum botanist Corda joined Ignaz Hawle, a Beroun councilman and a keen collector, owner of a relatively large collection of fossils, and they published a monograph on Bohemian trilobites. This paper bears all signs of hasty work, both in the content and illustrations. In spite of that, Hawle and Corda secured for themselves - from the point of view of modern nomenclatorial rules - the priority of many of their new trilobite names. Naturally, Barrande immediately published a crushing but justifiable criticism of this monograph.
    A short time after publishing this discreditable paper, Corda tragically died when returning from Texas. As reminded by Josef Kořenský in 1879, Barrande even on this occasion showed his noble broad-mindedness, mentioning Corda in the preface of his first volume of Systême silurien du centre de la Bohême (1852):
    ”Nous ne voulons point clôre cette liste, sans offrir nos sincere regrets a la mémoire de M. Corda, qui a si malheureusement péri, victime de son zele pour la science, dans le mers Atlantiques. Nous nous plaisons a reconnaître, que son ouvrage sur les Trilobites de Bohême, abstraction faite de toute considération personelle, en nous excitant a étendre nos recherches, a été réellement profitable au volume que nous publions.”
    At the first session of the Imperial Academy of Sciences in Vienna, founded in 1846, a letter from Barrande was presented, containing a request for help in editing his work. Barrande mentioned there that only for the excavation work, travels and rewards for collectors he had paid more than 25 000 guldens. Supported by the distinguished Austrian geologist and member of the Academy, W. Haidinger, Barrande obtained an allowance of 1500 guldens for the first volume of ”Systême silurien”.
    During the several last years before the publication of this volume Barrande undertook many field excursions and journeys both in central Bohemia and abroad. We should mention at least his journey to England in 1850, where he accompanied Henry Chambord as his secretary. On this occasion he visited Sir Murchison in London, the famous Silurian locality in Dudley, and the University in Cambridge. He noted in his notebook the results of his palaeontological studies and various working instructions for the preparation and casting of fossils.
    Close contacts between Barrande and the Museum in this period, as well as his excellent knowledge of the Czech language, can be demonstrated by his letter to František Palacký dated 22 May 1848, concerning Václav Hanka and a loan of certain books from the Museum library.

Top productive period (1852 - 1883)

”Systême silurien”

In the course of the following 31 years Barrande published 22 tomes in quarto of his monumental and unique work ”Systême silurien du centre de la Bohême”, which has had no parallel in the world palaeontology. He described and figured 3560 species of fossil animals from the Lower Palaeozoic (Cambrian, Ordovician, Silurian, and Devonian) of Bohemia, all on 6887 pages and 1078 lithographic plates. According to the zoological system, he gradually elaborated individual groups of animals, with the biggest attention being paid to trilobites and cephalopods, contained in the first and second volumes. The intensity of his research is really admirable, as we can see from the succession of the issued individual tomes.

1852	Trilobites	Vol. I/1	text
1852	Trilobites	Vol. I/2	1-51 plates
1865	Céphalopodes	Vol. II/1	1-107 plates
1866	Céphalopodes	Vol. II/2	108-244 plates
1867	Céphalopodes	Vol. II/3	text
1867	Ptéropodes	Vol. III	text, 1-16 plates
1868	Céphalopodes	Vol. II/4	245-350 plates
1870	Céphalopodes	Vol. II/5	351-460 plates
1870	Céphalopodes	Vol. II/6	text
1872	Trilobites, Splt. 1	Vol. I/1	text
1872	Trilobites, Splt. 2	Vol. I/2	1-35 plates
1874	Céphalopodes	Vol. II/7	text
1877	Céphalopodes	Vol. II/8	text
1877	Céphalopodes	Vol. II/9	text
1877	Céphalopodes	Vol. II Splt.1	text, 461-544 plates
1877	Céphalopodes	Vol. II Splt.2	text
1879	Brachiopodes	Vol. V/1	text, 1-71 plates
1879	Brachiopodes	Vol. V/2	72-153 plates
1881	Acéphalés	Vol. VI/1	text, 1-48 plates
1881	Acéphalés	Vol. VI/2	49-154 plates
1881	Acéphalés	Vol. VI/3	155-254 plates
1881	Acéphalés	Vol. VI/4	255-361 plates

The motto of each volume is: ”C´est ce que j´ai vu”, which is to be translated as ”This is what I have observed”. Barrande wanted to express that all his efforts had been centred on concentration of facts, verified by his own research. His task was, as he said, ”to ascertain the reality, not to create ephemeral theories; the future genius should grasp what our age has prepared, and cast all light of science on the Earth as Newton, armed with observation of the past ages, had cast on the firmament”. This was also the main reason why Barrande did not concern himself with the research and theories of his contemporary, Charles Darwin (1809-1882). Darwin, on the contrary, quoted Barrande several times in his ”Origin of Species” (1859).

    In his obituary, Gustav Laube presented a truthful characteristic of Barrande:
    ”Conservative in his entire being, as required by his relations to the legitimist French party, and also in science; he remained a pupil and devotee of Cuvier till his death and, therefore, a natural opposer of the evolutionary teaching and the theory of evolution”. Nevertheless, Barrande not once used the term evolution, when describing a succession of faunas, as they appeared in a sequence of beds of sedimentary rocks.
    Barrande paid extraordinary attention and care to the preparation and the final appearance of the plates, even from the art point of view. He carefully prepared and set out the layouts, and as a capable draughtsman directed the lithographers´ attention to important morphological details. In case he found a new, better preserved specimen, he did not spare expenses and did not hesitate to correct even a finished lithographic plate at the last moment. The lithographic plates were made of Solnhofen lithographic limestone, and prominent European graphic artists from Prague (J. Fetters), Paris (M. Humbert) and Vienna (A. Swoboda) participated on their preparation.
    Josef Kořenský (1879) characterised ”Systême silurien” as follows: ”The arrangement of his magnificent arch-work deserves all commendation, particularly the layout of the text, clear surveys, comparisons and excellent lithographic plates. The first volume was published by Haas, the others by K. Bellmann in Prague. The lithographs of trilobites and pteropodes were prepared by J. Fetters in Prague (printed by F. Sandtner). The cephalopod illustrations were made, mostly under Barrande´s supervision, by Humbert in Paris in Lemercier´s printing house, partly in the printing house of the imperial court.”

Barrande´s portrait from his sixties.

    The highly developed state of description of most groups of fossils from Bohemia and the enormous interest in them abroad inspired Barrande to send in advance to J. Bigsby extensive lists of his Lower Palaeozoic fauna with data indicating stratigraphy and localities. Barrande believed that this will guarantee him nomenclatorial priority. Bigsby´s work was published in London in 1868, containing many Barrande´s names. However, the modern Rules of zoological nomenclature consider such publication of names, lacking description or figure, invalid.
    When naming new fossils, Barrande mostly respected the rooted conventions and often derived the generic and specific names either from mythology or distinct morphological characters, locality names, and the like. An interesting story are the bivalves, described in the VIth volume of ”Systême silurien” in 1881. Here Barrande used Czech names for various genera, for example Kralovna (queen), Panenka (lass), Synek (little son), Babinka (diminutive for grandmother), Vlasta (woman´s name). Attempts of some foreign research workers, namely the German, to latinise them, however, didn´t succeed, being valid according to the Rules of zoological nomenclature.
    ”Systême silurien” contains not only descriptions of species but also a very carefully prepared survey of research done until then on the world scale, chapters concerning morphology and stratigraphy, transposed into many correlation tables showing the occurrence of the mentioned genera, species and varieties (subspecies).
    Except for negligible exceptions, all specimens published in Barrande´s plates have been deposited in the collections of the Department of Palaeontology, National Museum, Prague. Their identification has been enabled, besides realistic illustrations, also by the fact that Barrande marked each figured specimen with the number of the relevant plate and figure.
    According to the data concerning ”Systême silurien”, published in the American journal ”Science” of 30 November 1883, ”...the sums expended were large, since, as we are assured, the average cost of each of the twenty-two volumes [= tomes], as estimated by Barrande himself, was not less than twenty thousand francs, making a grand total of nearly ninety thousand dollars for the parts published up to the present time.”
    J. Krejčí noted that the market price of the whole set of volumes published till 1881 was 1575 francs.
    Barrande´s research, however, was not concentrated only on the Lower Palaeozoic of central Bohemia. Together with de Verneuil (1855, 1860), he published studies about the Lower Palaeozoic of Spain; in 1855 he studied the Lower Palaeozoic of south Norway, and in 1856 appeared his important paper ”Parallele entre les dépôts siluriens de Bohême et de Scandinavie”. In 1860, 1861 and 1863 he contributed - on the basis of his own investigations in Bohemia and Great Britain - to the solution of the question of age of the Cambrian deposits in North America (the so-called Taconian Question). In 1862 he wrote about the presence of the ”second” [Ordovician] fauna in Belgium and a year later described the Lower Palaeozoic fauna near Hof in Bavaria, the research of which was completed in 1867 and 1868.
    Joachim Barrande´s extraordinary contribution to the world science was acknowledged by full or honorary membership in many geological societies, academies and other scientific institutions, such as the Imperial Academy of Sciences in Vienna, Geological Society of France, Royal Society of Sciences in Prague, Society of the Czech Museum, London Geological Society, and several American geological societies.
    In 1857, at a session of the London Geological Society, Barrande received a high assessment proposed by Charles Lyell, being awarded the Wollaston Prize.

Barrande´s field notebooks

F. Počta stated in 1918 that there existed some 30 Barrande´s notebooks with field records in his estate. Part of them, according to Počta, were lost being lent to Vienna; only 15 were returned. These remaining notebooks cover the years 1841-1882. Besides geological and palaeontological observations, Barrande was interested, as an engineer, in constructions, bridges, machines, as well as mine trucks. Between 1842-1848 the notebooks are filled with price data concerning field and forest husbandry, in connection with the administration of Henry Chambord´s estate. From the point of view of geology the most important are the realistically drawn geological outcrops, complemented with local topographic names and notes about the occurrence of fossils.
We can even find there records on people collecting fossils or at least interested in them - such as the carpenter F. Marek from Beroun (with a note ”intelligent”), whom Barrande later engaged as a collector, Mrs Hynková with her three daughters from the Beroun hotel U tří korun or several people from Karlštejn - F. Zmíral, Nejepsa from No 61 and J. Nejepsa from No 6, where Barrande stayed for six days in October 1864.

A surprising find of fossils near Rokycany

After the publication of Trilobites in 1852, based on extremely large collections, it seemed that no other big and fundamental discoveries might be expected. Barrande was, therefore, very surprised on receiving, in 1853, from J. Gross, owner of the Krušná hora mine, two trilobite fragments coming from Osek near Rokycany, and to date unknown from Bohemia. Beginning with 1840, Barrande travelled on foot for several times through the Rokycany area, was given there some fragments of fossils, but did not find anything himself. The new specimens aroused his attention and he sent his collectors to the environs of Rokycany, but even this attempt failed. Barrande thought it was caused by his absence from the expedition. Nevertheless, in summer 1855 new finds appeared in siliceous concretions, called by the collectors ”Rokycany balls”, which were full of fossils. They were discovered by Antonín Katzer, technology teacher at a secondary school in Rokycany. Barrande obtained the new material from professor A. E. Reuss from Vienna, together with several earlier finds by A. Katzer, who sent them to the Imperial Geological Institute in Vienna. Soon Barrande organised new collecting excursions; they were successful and were ended only with the coming of snow.
Immediately in the next year, 1856, Barrande published a preliminary report about the new fauna found in concretions from the environs of Rokycany. Detailed descriptions of the trilobites, however, were published in the Trilobites Supplement, which appeared as late as in 1872.

The ”colonies” controversy

    In 1858-1859 the Imperial Geological Institute in Vienna accepted the help of professor Jan Krejčí with the geological exploration of Bohemia. Krejčí continued his previous research, and during these years investigated in detail also the territory between Prague and Beroun. In his report he explained Barrande´s ”colonies” (see p. XX) tectonically, as a consequence of faults and dislocations.
    The problem of Barrande´s ”colonies”, raised in 1844 in the connection with the enigmatic find of fossils in Bruska in Prague, passed in the following years into a long-lasting cause, in which many personalities of European geology had been involved. In the course of years, several more analogous occurrences of blocks of Silurian shales had been found wedged into old, Ordovician beds. The significance attributed by Barrande to this phenomenon is clear from the five comprehensive volumes of his ”Défense des colonies” (published in 1861, 1862, 1865, 1870, and 1881; the last, sixth volume remained in manuscript). Although defending an incorrect theory, Barrande concentrated enormous quantity of valuable data in this work which contributed to the progress of our knowledge of the Czech Silurian and Devonian. Except for several important adherents of his hypothesis, he had many opposers, such as J. Krejčí, W. Haidinger, M. V. Lipold, E. J. d´Archiac, B. Cotta, J. E. Marr, Ch. Lapworth, and others. To commemorate the scientific controversies, Barrande most of them ”honoured” by naming individual ”colonies” after them (e. g. ”colony Marr”, ”colony Haidinger”, ”colony Krejčí” etc.). Jan Krejčí, perhaps through fear of the fate of Barrande´s collections, later disclaimed his originally negative attitude to Barrande´s hypothesis. In his important book ”Geologie čili nauka o útvarech zemských se zvláštním ohledem na krajiny českoslovanské” (”Geology or a science of the formation of the Earth with special regard to Czechoslavonic countries” - 1860-1863 and particularly in 1877) admits that he lacks enough facts to explain the origin of ”colonies” convincingly by a tectonic ”overturn of beds”.
    The topic of the manuscript of the last volume of ”Défense des colonies” is very interesting, as evidenced by Jan Koliha in 1933: ”When gathering materials for the commemorative Barrande exhibition in the National museum, I have found also manuscript papers for the unpublished sixth volume of »Défense des colonies«, written between 1881-1883. Among others even a nice dedication of this work, addressed - »to all Czech people engaged in science or literature«. We can see here names Palacký, Sternberg, Šafařík, Presl, Purkyně, Jungmann, Hanka, and others. Subsequent lines contain a careful synopsis of Czech-French relations during the history”.
    During August and September 1862, Sir R. I. Murchison visited Bohemia and, accompanied by A. Frič, made excursions to various geological localities. When preparing the itinerary, Sir Murchison said, as recorded by Frič, that ”...he had no intention to visit the enigmatic localities of the so-called colonies, because he couldn´t spend enough time with this matter, and that he did not want to participate on the dispute which concerns his old friend Barrande”. Sir Murchison stayed for two days with J. Barrande and he also visited the beautiful abbot Zeidler´s collection.
    Of the Czech palaeontologists, Barrande entertained the friendliest sentiments towards the young and hopeful Ottomar P. Novák (1851-1892), by right regarded as his only pupil, not mixed up in the ”colonies” controversy. Later, in his last will, Barrande appointed him as one of the successors of his unfinished scientific work.

Posthumous volumes of ”Systême silurien”

In Barrande´s last will, O. P. Novák and W. H. Waagen had originally been appointed to continue and publish the unfinished volumes of the ”Systême silurien”. The accomplishment of this last will in full extent, however, was not possible for various reasons. The promising, young professor O. P. Novák died already in 1892. Unfortunately, he didn´t even succeed to finish the prepared second Supplement to the first volume of the ”Systême silurien” dealing with trilobites and other crustaceans. Professor Waagen was supposed to finish the uncompleted fourth volume containing the gastropods, but eventually he published the first tome of the seventh volume (echinoderms) prepared by Barrande, and joined professor J. J. Jahn for the completion of the second tome of this volume. The eighth volume, including particularly bryozoans and corals and originally intended for O. P. Novák, was completed by professor F. Počta. As the last appeared the fourth volume, the gastropods, compiled by professor J. Perner.
The individual volumes and tomes were issued as follows:

1887	Vol. VII/1	Echinodermes	text, 1-39 plates
1894	Vol. VIII/1	Bryozoaires etc.	text, 1-19bis plates
1899	Vol. VII/2	Echinodermes	text, 40-79 plates
1902	Vol. VIII/2	Anthozoaires etc.	text, 20-119 plates
1903	Vol. IV/1	Gastéropodes	text, 1-89 plates
1907	Vol. IV/2	Gastéropodes	text, 90-175 plates
1911	Vol. IV/3	Gastéropodes	text, 176-247 plates

The posthumous part of the ”Systême silurien” consisted of three volumes in seven tomes, containing 2035 pages of text and 446 plates and describing 1005 species of Bohemian Lower Palaeozoic fossil invertebrates.
All told, the complete ”Systême silurien du centre de la Bohême”, published between the years 1852-1911, consists of eight volumes in 29 tomes in quarto, 8224 pages of text and 1606 lithographic plates. It contains descriptions and figures of 4565 species, with a few exceptions all coming from the Lower Palaeozoic marine beds of Bohemia.

Barrande´s heritage

Concern about the fate of Barrande´s collection

    Barrande´s advanced age and even controversies with some important representatives of the Czech science raised great concern about the fate of the unique Barrande´s collection. The worries even increased in 1881, after the death of one of the prominent collectors, J. M. Schary. His heirs sold his collection, the second largest after Barrande´s, for 27000 guldens to Cambridge, USA, as the Czech Museum was unable to satisfy their financial demands. His collection was a result of many years of work, and contained more than 100000 specimens. It had been well known to Barrande, who based several tens of species on specimens from this collection.
    The strained atmosphere was well described by professor Perner (1933). In 1881, professor Frič very actively endeavoured to keep Barrande´s collection in Bohemia. Barrande sometimes also visited geological collections in the Museum, at that time placed in a special, large wooden pavilion presented by Ringhofer factory and built in a garden behind the palace of Zemská banka [Provincial bank] in Příkopy Street. During one visit, Frič mentioned to Barrande that the Museum was not able to buy the famous Schary collection, and that it could, for lack of money, only very modestly collect and buy the Czech Silurian [= Palaeozoic] fossils. Perner recorded, according to his teacher and uncle professor Frič, that Barrande answered: ”Soyez tranquille, je connais mon devoir envers la nation tcheque”. This probably was a stimulus for Barrande that he, as Perner also noted, ”having obtained an agreement from his friend and supporter in scientific work, Count Chambord, bequeathed his collections to the Museum”.
    During 1881 and 1882, the old man Barrande no longer went for excursions alone, but accompanied by his secretaries - either Thierot or Oudin, or, sometimes, by his housekeeper. In summer 1883 it was well known that Barrande´s health was rather unstable. Professor Josef Kořenský, natural historian and Barrande´s friend, wrote in 1899:
    ”During his life, Barrande had never been ill. Except for cough, he probably never met any illness. About a year before his death he began to decline, although he himself did not see and did not want to see it. But those who knew him from earlier years, noted that his figure was becoming somewhat stooping and his walk difficult. Also first symptoms of deafness appeared. Once, returning back from his usual walk, he was struck with giddiness and collapsed in Újezd at Malá Strana, so that a policeman had to lead him home. Nevertheless, immediately as he stepped on the stairs and saw his housekeeper coming down, he freed himself from the policeman´s arm and ran up to the third floor as a young man. He assured the frightened housekeeper that he was well, that it had only been a momentary weakness. But it was the beginning of the end.”
    On 31 August 1883, A. Frič wrote another letter to Barrande in the name of the Czech country discussing the possibility of obtaining his collections for the Museum. Barrande, however, went to Frohsdorf in the meantime to visit Henry who fell ill. He answered Frič from Frohsdorf as late as on 17 September to inform him about his decision:

”Tres honoré Professeur et ami,
J´ai reçu tardivement ici votre lettre confidentielle du 31 Aout 1883.
Je conçois tres bien vos préoccupations au sujet de mes dispositions relatives a ma collection.
Mais, en conservant toute ma liberté, je puis vous répéter, qu´elles sont tres bienvolantes pour le Musée Bohême.
Dans tous les cas, je vous engage a vous reassurer.
Agrées, tres honoré docteur, l´expression de ma considération tres distinguée.
                     J. Barrande”

    This letter is probably one of the last being sent to Prague. Nevertheless, fourteen days before Barrande´s death, the Austrian geologist F. Hauer met him fresh and talking about his further scientific and publishing projects.
    Count Henry Chambord died shortly after. In connection with the demanding organisation of the funeral and during the execution of Henry´s last will, Barrande fell ill with pneumonia and died on 5 October 1883 in Frohsdorf.
    He was buried at Lanzenkirchen cemetery on 8 October at 9.00 a.m. The tomb slab and the bordering stone are made of sandstone, the tombstone at the head of the grave is of white Sterzing marble.

Barrande´s heritage

    Fears concerning the fate of Barrande´s collection dwindled away on 17 October, when lawyer S. Prachenský, entrusted with the legal aspect of Barrande´s last will, informed Museum representatives that it became the universal heritor of Barrande´s collections, relevant manuscripts, scientific books and 10000 guldens intended for completing the unfinished work. O. P. Novák and W. H. Waagen were appointed to continue with the unpublished parts of the ”Systême silurien”.
    A paragraph from the last will, translated by Josef Kořenský, illustrates best Barrande´s life creed and his attitude to the Czech nation and country:
    ”I made it my aim to explore the ancient Bohemian fauna. Admittedly, I had to deny myself many things, only to be able to extend my collections. But I was very pleased to do that. Now I bequeath them to the Czech Museum: they come from the Czech country, let them belong to the Czech country.”
    All collections, the library and papers, which Barrande bequeathed to the Museum, had been deposited in several rooms of his large flat in the present Újezd, former Chotek´s Street. To ensure security of this bequest and also for the reasons of reverence for Barrande´s memory, the Museum established a special custody of the collections and entrusted it to O. P. Novák and to a custodial commission, members of which were K. Kořistka, A. Frič, and J. Krejčí. O. P. Novák, together with A. Frič, director of the geological and palaeontological collections of the Museum, then organised the transport of Barrande´s collection to the newly finished building of the National Museum on the present-day Venceslas Square.

The Barrande Foundation

The Barrande Foundation was established on professor Frič´s initiative, to support the research of the Silurian of Bohemia. According to the annual reports, in particular younger scientific workers were supported who took part in the research of the Lower Palaeozoic of central Bohemia, even as late as after World War I.

In honour of Barrande

    Barrande was acknowledged many times already during his life. Professor Frič, with a feeling of sincere gratitude for the scientist´s grand bequest to the Czechnation, initiated placing of a large commemorial plate with his name on the present-day Barrande rock on the left bank of the river Vltava in Prague. Soon after Barrande´s funeral, this proposal was discussed and approved of at a session of the Natural History Board of the Czech Museum. Here is an excerpt from Frič´s speech:
    ”We have a duty to express our deep respect to the honoured personality. I propose to set a huge plate with the inscription BARRANDE in gold letters on the Chuchle rocks, there where the famous face towers with folded beds of the Silurian stage Ff1. At the same time I can inform you with pleasure that the Czech-Moravian factory in Libeň will deliver the plate free of cost, happy to participate on the celebration of Barrande´s name. Our board will surely willingly undertake the job of putting the plate up.”
    The plate had been unveiled on 14 June 1884. Josef Kořenský described the celebration in detail:
    ”Professors Frič and Krejčí and the invited guests embarkedted a big steamboat at 4 p. m., to get to the Chuchle rocks. The plate was unveiled without any pretension, quite in accord with the life and work of the scientist. When the steamboat stopped in front of the memory plate, fixed 20 m high, the chairman of the board, professor Krejčí, invited the guests and emphasised with heart-felt words the importance of Barrande´s activity:
    »Executing my honest commission, I welcome all of you with a cordial salutation in the name of the Natural History Board of the Czech Museum, which built otherwise modest, but by its placement important memorial in honour of a genius of science, Joachim Barrande. We have set a plate with his bright name on an excellent rock of the system so celebrated by his research. It was more than fifty years ago that Barrande came to Bohemia, and in the course of this whole half-century stay in our country, by investigating the ancient animals contained in the rocks in the centre of which we are just standing, he developed magnificent scientific work, by which he not only opened a new era of natural historical research of Bohemia, but also lightened all the most ancient creation of our Earth with bright rays of his learning.
    Delivering with an uplifted heart, in the name of the Czech Museum, the warmest thank and expressing the greatest respect to the memory of the glorious man, I recall his magnificent intellectual and moral character by which, due to the ingenuity of his intellect, due to the generosity of his purposes and due to the delicate sentiment of his heart, he presented himself as one of the most noble paragons of his nation, the great and glorious French nation.
    The memory of him will not decline in our Czech country, untill the surrounding rocks become dilapidated. I call from the depth of my heart: eternal glory and imperishable thanks to Barrande!«
    And then professor Frič continued:
    »We are celebrating the memory of a man who devoted his entire life to research in our country. As quietly as a genius he proceeded for many decades through gorges and plains which were hiding for us previously unknown evidence of the history of primeval times of the Czech country. Let our present celebration be quiet and serious as he was, the same as his work. He brought for us from France, the cradle of noble ideas, a ray of light of the geological science, a ray, which enabled us to browse through the leaves of history of ancient ages, through the Earth´s beds in which a fossil speaks as writing. Barrande carried out the research of the Silurian system in Bohemia splendidly and honestly. Honestly, because his motto was: ‘C´est ce que j´ai vu’. He did not let himself be misled by high-spirited imagination or confuse with attractive theories, but he always kept to the golden path of modest truth. He was a paragon of a serious man of science for us, whose pure activities are directed neither by personal vanity, nor by rush for gains. He is a paragon of a patron, bequeathing to our Museum all his collections and literary requisites. He did not allow to remove and carry these treasures away from the Czech country, and disperse them behind the boundary of our country over the vast ocean. Every upright son of the Czech country, therefore, will remember with respect and gratitude the name Barrande, glittering there in golden letters on the rocky wall above the silver-foaming river Vltava. Imperishable glory to his memory!”
    The cast-iron plate is 4.82 m long, 1.4 m wide, and its weight is 16 q.
    It has been fixed 20 m high on an almost perpendicular rock built by strongly folded Lower Devonian Lochkov Limestone. The cost of its placement reached 572.40 guldens. The American natural historians contributed on its installation with 72 dollars (= 175 guldens and 60 kreutzers).The contributors were C. Chamberlin, J. Collett, C. E. Dutton, E. Emmons, Ch. G. Gilbert, A. Hyatt, J. Marcou, J. B. Marcou, J. W. Meyee, A. C. Peale, J. W. Powell, C. Rominger, S. H. Scudder, Ch. D. Walcott, and C. A. White.
    The oldest bust of Barrande, made by B. Schnirch in 1900, was located on the second floor of the main building of the National Museum in Venceslas Square, next to other significant figures of the Czech science and culture.
    On the occasion of the 23rd International Geological Congress in 1968 two works of art devoted to Barrande originated - a memorial in Skryje near Křivoklát by V. Dobrovolný and a bust by K. Lidický on the house in the Na Újezdě Street in Prague where Barrande lived.
    A beautiful portrait of Barrande was created in 1977 by our prominent medallist L. Havelka. On the obverse of the medal there is the peaceful and noble Barrande´s profile, on the reverse one of the Ordovician trilobites described by Barrande.
    Barrande´s name has been perpetuated in several places. One of the largest rooms in the main National Museum building in the Venceslas Square where fossils of the Lower Palaeozoic of Bohemia, which Barrande studied, are exhibited, has been called Barrandeum. Following the proposal of professor F. Pošepný, a Czech geologist, the territory in the central and western parts of Bohemia, which thanks to Barrande´s investigations gained a world renown, has been called Barrandian or Barrandian area.
    Perhaps no other palaeontologist of the world was so much honoured as to have a rock named after himself, or, what is more, even a city quarter and a bridge. Barrande rock, Barrandov (a town quarter) and the Barrandov bridge - all are located in the southern part of Prague. A small street was named after Barrande even in the town of Beroun.
    On the occasion of this year´s anniversary, the Czech post emitted two postage stamps and two first-day envelopes by J. Kavan.
    Because Barrande was a famous palaeontologist, several tens of fossil Palaeozoic species have been named after him, e. g. Drahomira barrandei. Even more important are the generic names: Barrandeina (plant), Barrandeites (mollusc), Barrandella (brachiopod), Barrandeoceras (cephalopod), Barrandeocrinus (crinoid), Barrandeograptus (graptolit), Barrandeophyllum (coral), Barrandia (trilobite), Barrandicella (gastropod), Barrandina (brachiopod). Even one mineral bears his name - barrandite.

Barrande and France

    ”He remained French, proud of his origin and his country; but he became attached by love to our nation.”
J. Neruda in Barrande´s obituary of 27 October 1883

    Barrande was born in France, he passed his boyhood in France, and there he met with extraordinary education; world authorities of natural history, Cuvier and Lamarck, influenced his knowledge and philosophy for his whole life. He was permanently linked with France through the mediation of the royal family in exile, namely by means of his devoted relation to count Henry Chambord. Although he spent more than fifty years in Bohemia, probably every year he visited his native country for various reasons, at least for some time. According to Neruda, ”...He always lived several months in Prague, several again in Paris, where he had his refuge in a back-street near the St Sulpice Square.”
    During these sojourns he was mostly engaged with the estate of the royal family, but also acquired information about politics in France and maintained the contacts of the exiled court with France. Later, during these occasions, he participated in sessions of the French Geological Society of which he was a member, and this purpose finally predominated. Barrande always acted with an imposing broad-mindedness and cool and benign respectability. Visitors who used to see him in his Paris flat in the Méziere Street No. 6 and later in the Odéon Street No. 22, accepted with a great modesty. He retained the Paris flat for the whole life.
    Barrande was deeply devoted to the Bourbons and to his country. He did not want to accept official title from any government, which ascended after Charles X. As Daubré noted, when reporting about Barrande´s death in the French Academy, ”his considerateness prevented him to become an academician”. This sterling trait of Barrande´s character was mentioned in Science (30 November 1883):
    ”He belonged to that illustrious body of men who acknowledged Cuvier as their teacher of science; and, in order to understand him, one must recognise this, and also realise that to him loyalty was inseparable from faith and truth. The chivalrous side of his character is best illustrated by the reason which he gave for refusing peremptorily the high honour of an election to the French academy. He said simply that he had no desire for membership in a society with such avowed aims, but which had refused admission to some of his masters in science, - Alcide d´Orbigny, Deshayes, and Edouard Lartet, who had taught him all that he knew.”
    Since 1852, when publishing of the ”Systême silurien” started, Barrande gradually dedicated all volumes and other important papers to his relatives, but also to the library in the administrative centre of the département Haute Loire Le Puy. Each of these consignments has been filed in Annales de la Société d´Agriculture, Sciences et Commerce in Le Puy. In the record of a session of 3 June 1853, we can read a note about the receipt of the first volume (Trilobites) of ”Systême silurien”.
    Barrande was in frequent and close written contacts with many scientists in France. We can mention at least E. J. d´Archiac, Ch. Barrois, M. Bayle, E. de Beaumont, A. Brongniart, E. Dupont, A. Gaudry, E. Hébert, L. Lartet, P. Lebesconte, D. Oehlert, M. Rouault, and P. E. P. de Verneuil. Numerous trilobites and other fossils, described by Barrande, bear species names after the French scientists, like Prionopeltis archiaci, Metacalymene baylei, Encrinuraspis beaumonti, Paralejurus brongniarti and several others.
    Also the correspondence concerning the printing of ”Systême silurien”, e. g. with the Lemercier´s printing house in Paris, is very extensive. Most of his shorter papers were published in the Bulletin de la Société géologique de France.
    Barrande´s patriotic relation to France was truthfully characterised by J. Kořenský in Barrande´s obituary of 1883:
    ”Joachim Barrande as a serious scientist did not seek fame and worldly reward. Hardly anybody knows that probably there does not exist any European order with which Barrande would have not been honoured. Our Prague, wanting to pay due homage of courtesy to its scholarly resident, already some years ago wanted to elect him a honorary citizen. A delegation consisting of professor Krejčí, professor Kořistka and Mr Šáry, was sent to Barrande to inform him about that decision. Being much moved by the offered honour, Barrande answered: »Venerable sirs, I love Prague as my second native country and I would pride myself on this honour. Nevertheless, according to the French law, to become a citizen, though only honorary, in another country, I should first relinquish the French state citizenship. But I want to remain French and die as a French«.”
    The town of Saugues remembers its native, one of the greatest personalities of world science, by a granite boulder with a bronze plaque with a portrait of J. Barrande sculpted by Massia. The memorial was unveiled on 25 September 1966. Besides representatives of the town, also Barrande´s relatives participated on the celebration, and a delegation from the National Museum in Prague.

Barrande´s human face

    The most detailed memories are those of Josef Kořenský, published on the occasion of the 100th years birth anniversary of J. Barrande in 1899:
    ”Barrande wore old-fashioned cloth. He covered his head with a grey cylinder, in summer with a grey, broad-brimmed hat. Round his neck, he used to wear a white or spotted scarf. He also wore a long-tailed overcoat; if the weather was cold, he put on a top-coat with long sleeves which served him for about thirty years, since the time he had come to Bohemia from France. He never went out without gloves. Being very cleanly, he washed himself several times a day. He had his hair cut only at home. He wore sidewhiskers.
    Barrande´s life was strict and regular. His characteristic features were restraint and devoutness. He got up early and worked from the crack of dawn. According to a certain weekly order, he had soup or coffee for breakfast. At 11 a. m. he took a piece of bread and butter or apples. At noon he went for a walk from which no visit or bad weather would deflect him. He returned at 2 p. m., and had dinner at 3 p. m. Fruit was never missing on the table. He liked to eat it both fresh or dried, such as figs, raisins, or nuts. He drank beer mixed with water, with a lump of sugar added. He also used to drink wine, but both in very limited quantities. After dinner he drank black coffee, and afterwards he took a short nap at the table. Then he continued his studies till the evening. All the year round he took just milk and a roll for supper. During his excursions, when passing the nights in the country, he often lived only on milk and bread. This diet was often his lunch, and it did him good.
    He used to speak to himself aloud about his work for the next day, saying what he will do tomorrow. He worked after supper only in his younger years, later he left off all work by lamp-light and went to bed soon. He neither smoked nor took snuff. He spent a lot of time in his modest kitchen, in spite of having a large flat with several rooms. At the end he lived for many years in No. 419 in the Řetězová Street [the present Vítězná Street] in Prague´s Lesser Quarter. All his rooms on the third floor were filled with fossils and books. Disregarding his own comfort, he never took a rest on the sofa, but preferred to sit at the small table in the kitchen, to bend his bald head and cogitate his planned work. So he did even in the evenings. A simple lamp stood on a reversed metal mug, like in a room of the poorest student; all attempts of his housekeeper to offer him a new one were in vain. The decoration of the rooms was also very simple. The windows in his favoured kitchen were embellished with several pots with cacti; between them his dog used to have its place; this creature, having no voice, never barked at the new visitor.
    Barrande, as a true Christian, was very devout. He celebrated every Sunday according to the Commandment, and at half past eleven regularly went to Sv. Mikuláš [St Nicolas] Church. On St Jan´s Day he had a little statue of the patron saint of the Czech Lands ornamented with ribbons and he lit little lamps around it. After coming back, he told his housekeeper: »Today I was sitting among women again«. His bearing to women were always courtly and gentle; he could not conceal his French origin in this respect. - He became so used to his housekeeper that he suffered from her absence. Whenever she left home to go shopping, he regularly reminded her: »Do come back soon, otherwise I would feel lonely!« His housekeeper accompanied him on all walks, even during his sojourns in Paris, where he liked to go to recover in his native country. He went there every second year, and had a permanently rented flat in this world city.
    Barrande was a quiet tenant, as if he weren´t in the house. The neighbours said that he was that French who was all the time buried in books and who collected stones. He was not interested in people in the house, and did not enter into conversation with anybody. If saluted, he thanked politely but shyly, and quickly disappeared. His gait was firm, soldier-like but not noisy, with his tall body being carried straight. He would not hurt a fly, and he could smile if necessary, but all his behaviour was stern and strict. No beggar left him without being given a present. He was favourable namely to young tinkers. On Saturdays each of them regularly got a four-kreutzer piece. He did a lot of charity; he lent money to needful people »till St Tib´s Eve«. In spite of all his learning he was very modest, with no pride and conceit.
    During his field excursions, he put the fossils into a net, and having in addition to it also a bag with hammers over the shoulder, he carried a lot of burden on his loins. On the excursions he provided himself with coffee-essence from Paris, then a wee of wine, a roll and a piece of roast meat. When walking he used a stick of Spanish cane (rattan). The stick was bent so thet he could hang it somewhere on his body during work. He wore his old-fashioned dress even on his excursions.”
    Barrande kept up his field research and interest in geology even in advanced age. On his 80th birthday he went down 1000 m deep in the Příbram mine. A memorial plate recalling this event is placed on the 30th level of the Vojtěch pit at Březové Hory near Příbram (today flooded).
    Barrande sometimes wore non-dioptric glasses, the French lunettes, tinged with green-violet colour. He probably used them as sun-glasses.
    The famous scientist was so modest that he didn´t allow publishing his portrait in illustrated newspapers - although often asked for permission. Nevertheless, he liked to read even Czech newspapers, namely at that time common ”Pražský denník”.
    He never married. Because of his enormous activity and work load, it was necessary for him to employ a housekeeper. At first, after his arrival to Prague, it was Jan Neruda´s mother, Mrs Barbora Nerudová, who kept care of Barrande till 1953. There exists an evidence that it was her who taught him Czech. Her duty then was then taken over for more than thirty years, till Barrande´s death, by Miss Fanny Myslivečková, no less dutiful than ”Mrs Bábinka”.
    In his extensive activities, namely those connected with publishing and correspondence, Barrande was helped by his personal secretaries, Mr A. S. Oudin and Mr A. Thiérot. A special reliance during the last years of Barrande´s life enjoyed Miss A. Girardeau and Dr E. Bellot.
    During the about fifty years which Barrande spent in Prague, he changed several flats. At first he lived with the French royal court at the Prague Castle, but soon he moved to the Keiserstein palace called also U tří hvězd, in the Lesser Town Square. Approximately the last thirty years he spent in a large flat in the second floor of a corner house between the Újezd and Chotkova (now Vítězná) Streets.
    Barrande´s generosity was well known. In connection with his field work he was fond of giving wedding gifts to villagers. He was condescending even to his workers who sometimes secretly sold fossils from his research or tried to confuse him as far the locality was concerned in an effort to get higher remuneration. His goodness was a spontaneous token of his sensitive nature, disguised by austerity and respectability, as well as a result of a deep religious feeling. As J. Kořenský remembered, ”nobody left Barrande´s house without getting a present, and when the generous donator himself passed away, he endowed the Czech nation with his legacy. Thus have been accomplished, also in our benefit, the words which Barrande accepted as his motto when defending his opinions about the colonies: Nemo inadonatus abibit” (nobody will leave without being donated; Vergil). (Barrande originally understood as a ”present” the naming of individual ”colonies” after his opposers.)

Barrande and Neruda

    Barrande knew Jan Neruda, the famous Czech writer and poet, since Neruda´s early childhood, because his mother, Barbora Nerudová, was Barrande´s housekeeper till 1853. Their relations were very close. Neruda, as a child, spent a lot of time with the scientist. Barrande supported him during his studies, namely in Paris, where Neruda stayed in his flat. Neruda thus had an extraordinary opportunity to make himself familiar with Barrande´s collections and library and absorb the atmosphere which existed in the home of this scientist - including the knowledge of French. According to O. Matoušek (1934), nobody as yet seriously analysed how Barrande influenced Neruda. He wrote that ”Neruda has so many French features that it could hardly be without Barrande´s influence”.
    Nevertheless, Neruda experienced even a certain lack of understanding when he dedicated his first collection of poems ”Hřbitovní kvítí” [”Graveyard flowers”] to Barrande (1858). He also remembers this experience in the newspaper ”Národní listy” (1883). After several days, Barrande told him: ”Well - I have read them and I liked some of them. But you know, - writing poems, this is nothing for your nation. Your companions will perhaps toast you with Champagne (Barrande thougt this in a French way); if you really want to do your nation a service, stop writing verses and take up some serious science.”
    In this connection it should be mentioned that not even non-scientific literary activity was strange to Barrande. He himself tried to write a play, the incomplete manuscript of which has been deposited among his papers in the Archive of the National Museum.

Quarrymen and collectors

    When Barrande employed Czech workers - diggers and quarrymen for gathering fossils, he became acquainted with their families and with villagers in the neighbourhood of palaeontological localities. He even learned enough Czech to come to an understanding with them. The quarrymen, working in quarries, were the most frequent Barrande´s suppliers of fossils and he always very well remunerated their finds. He trained some of them to search for fossils and to dig in the places indicated. Under the condition that they would not take any other job, he paid them regular weekly wages. For exceptionally interesting or important finds they received a special premium.
    The extent of Barrande´s exploration was remarkably large. In certain years he employed up to thirty workers. In cases where he intended to study individual growth stages of some species, he tried to get as much material as possible. Thus with the trilobite species Aulacopleura konincki he had about 6000 specimens at his disposal, and for getting a similar series of Sao hirsuta, he employed four to five workers for several years. That fact that he he paid well can be documented by a note by professor J. Krejčí: ”...the brighter one acquired even some wealth during this employment, since he bought a cottage and even a field...”
    The well-known quarrymen and folk collectors included Tomáš and František Marek, Václav Svoboda, Josef Šťástka, the Zika brothers, then Karýzek, Hons, Škoda, and Srpek.
    J. Kořenský wrote in 1899: ”As time went by, the hobby of collecting fossils spread among other educated people in Prague, and the folk collectors sold them their finds underhand. For this reason Barrande released his workers from regular wages and paid them individual finds according to specimens needed. The capital which Barrande paid for fossils reached many thousand guldens. Rare trilobites were expensive, for five or even ten guldens. An idea occurred to some workers to fake them and sell them as genuine. They casted the original specimen and from the mould they made a desirable number of copies. The casting mash was prepared from a corresponding shale or limestone, giving the artificial fossils a natural appearance. Less experienced collectors often used to be cheated out of money by this method.”
    V. Plas wrote about his meeting one of Barrande´s folk collectors Tomáš Marek from the Marek family who collected fossils for several generations:
    ”I met him in about 1930 in an old dilapidated game-keeper´s lodge on the Děd hill near Beroun, where I happened to come while strolling and looking for palaeontological localities round Beroun. The geological hammer in the hand of Mr Marek immediately corroborated my interest. He was an old, still vigorous man. We got to know each other and Mr Tomáš Marek, who was an occasional worker and local road-mender and game-keeper at the Děd, and above all a collector of fossils, started to speak about his Master - the unforgettable Barrande. In the game-keeper´s lodge he showed me a small room where Barrande used to spend nights and where he, Marek, had his bed just in the opposite corner of this small room. He remembered they often talked and had long discussions about palaeontology and spoke even about nice girls they met on their strolls when looking for the fossilized ”crayfish”.
    My old friend spoke about Barrande whenever we met. His memories gave me a lively picture of the scientist´s personality.
    When 11 years old, Mr Marek accompanied Barrande on his excursions in the surroundings of Beroun and they collected ”veseláky”, ”acidaspisy”, ”metláky”, ”eglinky” and other fossils amusingly renamed by him. The past was constantly present in Mr Marek´s mind.”
    Tomáš Marek worked for Barrande since 1861. After Barrande professor Jan Krejčí and then professor O. P. Novák employed the young collector. Mr Marek also witnessed the unexpected Novák´s death in Liteň. The last Marek´s ”chief” was professor A. Frič, whom Mr Marek called his last ”bread-giver”.
    The folk collectors for whom scientific Latin was a strange language, named the most conspicuous and most demanded fossils with their own, Czech names. Most of them were recorded by professor A. Frič in his article published in 1863 where he vividly described even the customs of some collectors as well as relations between the Museum and some owners of larger collections.

Barrande´s rival collectors

    One of Barrande´s rivals in collecting fossils was the abbot of the Strahov convent and chancellor of the Prague University, Hieronymus Zeidler (1790-1870), about whom professor Frič noted in 1907: ”...he became attached with such love to trilobites that he used to buy 40-50 identical specimens for a high price (being often swindled by the workers). After his death, the Museum bought this collection of trilobites, with big difficulties, for 4000 guldens.
    Another important personality interested in fossils was the arch-duke Prince Stephan, who visited the Beroun area in 1841. In an effort to get Palaeozoic fossils, he ordered the Beroun councilman and district administrator, I. Hawle, to make a collection for him. Since that time Ignaz Hawle (1783-?1868) became a keen collector of fossils and together with A. C. J. Corda published the well-known monograph on Bohemian trilobites (1847).
    Another collector, owner of the second largest collection of Palaeozoic fossils after Barrande, was an owner of a brewery, industrialist and deputy J. M. Šáry (Schary, 1825-1881), who also employed several field workmen. He promised to bequest the collection to the Museum, but his heirs sold it to the USA (see p. xxx).
    Fossils from the surroundings of Beroun were also collected by M. Dusl (1847-1908), a wealthy Beroun citizen, whose collection contained many unique specimens. Professor A. Frič wrote about this collection in 1907 that it should become the basis of the local museum in Beroun. Its fate is unknown.

Barrande´s localities

During the extensive research of the Lower Palaeozoic of Bohemia, lasting almost half a century, Barrande obtained fossils from several hundreds of localities. Some of them yielded only a few specimens, but in others he ordered to make large excavations, in which thousands specimens of different species have been uncovered. Remarkably big were the diggings near Skryje, Loděnice, Děd near Beroun, Zahořany, Koněprusy (from here J. Marr quoted over 100 localities), on Damil near Tetín, in the surroundings of Karlštejn, Kosoř and Praha-Lochkov or Praha-Jinonice. Many of Barrande´s localities became exploited already during his life, others disappeared in built-up areas or large quarries. The majority of those which are still accessible is located in protected areas or have been decreed protected localities. Some of them are preserved just as small outcrops, in some others Barrande followed a bed rich in fossils for many tens of metres.

Barrande´s successors

Research

    Thanks to his extensive geological and palaeontological research Barrande won world attention for the Lower Palaeozoic of Bohemia to, particularly because of the unique preservation of the record of life. Although he had in fact only one pupil, who was considered to be Ottomar P. Novák, he initiated wide and many-sided research, which, in fact, has proceeded continuously since his death till now.
    His Silurian system, however, represents now large, separate units - the Precambrian, Cambrian, Ordovician, Silurian, and Devonian eras. This, naturally, does not change anything on his exact information about the enormous complex of animals which succeeded in the Lower Palaeozoic seas in the central part of the Bohemian Massif.
    The present palaeontology is no more a narrowly specialised descriptive science, directed on describing of new genera and species; in due course there originated new, additional scientific branches, derived both from biological and geological sciences. The modern palaeontology endeavours to show living organisms behind the petrified remains, organisms in an interaction with their environment and between themselves, to record their transformations in time, their dependence on the changing climatic conditions and also reactions on global and less extensive events in the history of our planet.
    The detailed investigation of various geological sections and plant and animal communities in different parts of the world led to the development of a scientific branch resolving definition of age of the rocks on the basis of fossils - the biostratigraphy. A tradition was founded here by Barrande which continues to the present time, namely wide international co-operation. One of its result is the enunciation of several geological outcrops in the Barrandian area as basic profiles of international importance - the so-called stratotypes, on the basis of which boundaries between the systems or their parts, e. g. stages, are defined. The first of them, and at the same time the first one in the world, was the profile on the Klonk near Suchomasty, defining the boundary between the Silurian and Devonian systems.

Popularisation of palaeontology and scientific reconstructions

Since Barrande´s time, palaeontology in the Czech Republic has many supporters, particularly collectors and other nature lovers. Just for them books were intended which, in a form accessible to the public, acquainted with new scientific information.
Life in the Lower Palaeozoic era is most vividly elucidated by scientific palaeontological reconstructions. The most popular ones have been painted by the academic painter Zdeněk Burian (1905-1981). Since that time, however, the palaeontological research notably progressed. Therefore, a comprehensive collection of reconstructions made by the painter Jan Sovák (*1953) recently originated under the guidance of a team of palaeontologists from the National Museum, showing various biotopes in the Lower Palaeozoic seas on the territory of the Barrandian area.