The first biogeographical map

Unbeknownst to many historians of biology, the first biogeographical map was published in the third edition of the Flore française by Lamarck and Candolle in 1805, the same year in which Humboldt's famous Essai sur la Geographie appeared. Lamarck and Candolle's map marks the beginning of a descriptive or classificatory biogeography focusing on the study of biota rather than on the distributional pathways of taxa. The map is relevant because it heralds the beginning of the creation of biogeographical maps popularized by zoogeographers in the mid‐ to late nineteenth century together with the study of biogeographical regions.