Besson

Jacques Besson

b. Colombières, France, 1530?; d. Orléans, France, 1573.

Besson was an engineer and mathematician with no formal training in the natural sciences (Romero and Lomax 2000). Besson published in 1569 his book L'art et science de trouver les eaux et fontaines cachees soubs terre ('The art and science of finding underground waters') (see cover on the right). On page 41 he reported little eels (‘petites anguilles’) in a cave stream (see box below). Although Shaw (1992, p. 227) claims that such observation took place ‘in a cave stream in France’, Besson did not give a locality of where he made that observation. Besson did not describe the fish as being blind and/or depigmented (extraordinary characteristics even to the casual observer). He may have seen common eels, Anguilla anguilla, or a species of some of the European freshwater fishes with eel-like bodies that are sympatric with the areas he used to travel (France and Switzerland). Those fish families include Petromizonidae, Cobitidae, Siluridae, and Clariidae (Blanc et al. 1971).

Transcript of the origin al French version (1569) and its transtation into English

Les entrees sont comme portaux voustez & estroits, ainsi que le tout on experimente en entrant en semblages chasteaux natureles soubs terre, lBB ojj lon trouue auec torches de fort grands lacs, & courans d’’eaux viues, mesme qui bien souuLLt produisent des petites anguilles qui n’’ont guere affaire de l’’air pour leur nourriture.

The entries are like narrow arch portals, so all the people coming into this virginal natural subterranean marvels, need to use torches to see big lakes and currents of lively waters, from which one can see small eels for which there is nothing to eat but air.