24-8-2015 Paris

24-8-2015 Paris

Raining heavily and my raincoat is not really up to it. Managed to get supplies during a break in the storms but it is pretty miserable. The Cite Cafe my refuge, was packed with lost souls waiting for a break in the weather. I headed off to the bus stop and the Museum in the rain and got off the other end in the rain. The MNHM was fairly empty, I was the only researcher and the staff seemed thin on the ground. I went through MS1738 as the next in the sequence from 1737, which had been so successful but there was no chronological connection. There were few if any textural or notation references to Australis or New Holland.

I discussed the problem with the MNHM librarians and asked if they had the Peron and Lesueur book on Jelly Fish. They located a book written by one of the Museum curators on this study of "Medusae", which had colour photographs. I did not get to see the original study but they had a copy of the review of it and all of the history surrounding it. When we got it from the (recent) archives it was obviously based on MS1737 and used a number of the plates that I had photographed, but it also used the images held in the Le Havre archive that I had not seen. Written in French, a limited edition with a low circulation, I was not going to find it on an Australian library shelf so I will go through it carefully tomorrow.

The old adage regarding research; "you never work in a vacuum".

I ordered the Peron Report Atlas (with drawings/etchings by Lesueur and Petit) for tomorrow as well. Again this was mentioned in the Bonnemains et al book.

House keeping note. My planned grand birthday dinner was swamped in the rain. I got off the bus into a downpour so made for a local shop were I killed time and bought a cheap bottle of wine. When the rain slowed I headed for a little restaurant I had chosen but they were closed on a Monday. I then headed for the Cite' as the rain was getting heavier. I was soaked by the time I got to my room so dried-off and changed clothes but the rain had not eased. My grand dinner turned out to be a micro-wave and a glass of cheap red in the communal kitchen, then go down and watch TV in French.

[Actually this was not a bad idea as the A$ had dropped in overnight trading, because of the international share-market crash. Euros are now very expensive relative to the start of my journey. I have all my major costs pre-paid and I still have a couple of hundred dollars spending money in Euros on my cashcard so I will make it through the next 3-4 weeks without a major budget blow-out. A bit more expensive than planned but two thirds of the research is complete. ]