From Field and Study Article Swipe
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· 1951
· Open Access
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· DOI: https://doi.org/10.2307/1364588
· OA: W4250415763
Note on Scopoli.-Reading the article hy Todd on White-fronted Geese (Condor 52, 1950:63-68)) I was shghtly startled by the reference to Scopoli as an Italian.Perhaps the underlying reason was that I have usually seen his name as Johann Anton Scopoli and recalled the statement by Gilbert White of Selhourne that Scopoli was physician to the cinnabar miners in Carniola, from which I supposed he was an Austrian.Having looked him up in the more obvious sources (Encyclopedia Britannica, Poggendorf, and Enciclopedia Italiana), the story becomes more complicated and of some interest.Giovanni Antonio Scopoli (so given by Poggendorf) was horn June 3 or 13, 1727, at Cavalese in Venesia Tridentina, about 30 miles northeast of the city of Trento.The province of Trento was a German bishopric from 1027 to 1803.It has only been Italian (politically) from 1810 to 1814 and since 1918.Scopoli took two medical degrees, one at Innsbruck (1743) and the other at Vienna (1753).From 1754-1770 he was (as noted above) a physician at Idria in Carniola.Idria is about 30 miles northeast of Trieste.This region had long been Austrian hut was Italian from 1918 to about 1945.Since then it has been Yugoslavian territory.,While at Idria (1769) Scopoli described his Brenta dbifrons.Scopoli then went as professor of mineralogy and metallurgy to Schemnitz in Hungary and was imperial and royal coinage and mines councillor.He stayed here from 1770 to 1776.Schemnitx is now Banska Stiavnica in Czechoslovakia, about 70 miles east of Bratislava.Scopoli made his last move in 1776 and became, apparently for the first time, a geographical Italian.He went to Pavia in Lombardy where he was professor of chemistry and botany and died there May 8, 1788.Pavia was Austrian from 1746 to 1796 and did not become Italian until 1870.
