Seite - 222 - in Maximilian Hell (1720–92) - And the Ends of Jesuit Science in Enlightenment Europe

Chapter 5222 edition. In letters from Vardø, Hell shared some details of his observations in this domain;39 we may surmise that further details were communicated di- rectly to the bishop by Borchgrevink. Hell also collected some specimens that were certainly delivered to Gunnerus, among them the littoral red algae then known as Fucus alatus and Ulva caprina, which “inhabits the sea of Finnmark, whence the highly famous astronomer, Mr. Prof. Hell, brought it to me, along with numerous other rarities from Finnmark,” as Gunnerus recorded in the concluding volume of his Flora.40 Collections in the domain of zoology were exposed to unexpected hazards. In a letter from Vardø, Hell relates how Sajnovics augments every day his collections of natural objects, but the mice of Vardø have dealt serious damage: all hermit crabs (a kind of small marine sea crayfish, living in mussels) that he so meticulously collected during our voyage and boiled red, have been completely eaten and de- stroyed by the mice.41 The second part of the Tomus physicus, on the decrease of the sea level in the Far North, was not published either. In an elaborate summary in the call for subscriptions, Hell promised to treat “signs and arguments in favor of the de- crease of the sea level in the northern sea” and also to provide “geometric di- mensions” of this development.42 In one of his manuscripts from Vardø, Hell took notes from a conversation with a thirty-year-old soldier at the fortress: As a fifteen-year-old, he had seen with his own eyes how during high tide the water rose so high from the two bays that it became connected [i.e., 39 Hell to Pilgram in Vienna, dated November 12, 1768; to Gunnerus in Trondheim, Novem- ber 12, 1768; to Schöller in Trondheim, January 12, 1769; to Pilgram in Vienna, January 15, 1769; to Christian Horrebow in Copenhagen, January 15, 1769; to Gunnerus in Trondheim, January 15, 1769; to Mercier in Copenhagen, April 6, 1769; to Gunnerus in Trondheim, April 6, 1769; to Niebuhr in Copenhagen, April 6, 1769; to Öder in Copenhagen, April 6, 1769 (drafts for all letters are kept at wus; many of them have been published by Pinzger, Hell Miksa, vol. 2). 40 Gunnerus, Flora Norvegica, 2:91, 2:127. The synonyms of the plants in modern taxonomy are Membranoptera alata and Palmaria palmata. Further evidence of sea algae and other plants that were delivered by Hell and Borchgrevink to Gunnerus can be found in Gun- nerus’s correspondence with von Linné. Johan Ernst Gunnerus and Carl von Linné, Brev­ veksling 1761–1772, ed. Leiv Amundsen (Oslo: Universitetsforlaget, 1976), 101–6. 41 Letter from Hell to Pilgram in Vienna, dated Vardø, January 15, 1769 (draft, wus), paren- theses are also found in the original. Printed in Pinzger, Hell Miksa, 2:50–55 (quotation on 53–54). 42 Hell, call for subscriptions, translation in Aspaas, “Maximilianus Hell,” 373.