(Born: The Hague, The Netherlands, April 1714; Died: Maastricht, The Netherlands 21 August 1803) Dutch military officer.

He was the son of Louis Bosc de la Calmette and Marie Marguerite Hardy. He owned a cabinet of fossils and minerals, and is mentioned by Carl Magnus Blom, a Swedish student of Linnaeus, in a letter to Linnaeus dated 4 December 1760 as an entomologist collector. (See The Linnean Correspondence, Letter L2836.)

He was a colonel in the 8th infantry regiment of the Dutch State Army, and in 1793 achieved the rank of Major-General of his own regiment, just before the disbanding of the Dutch Army by the French in January 1795. He was then already in his early eighties.

Alas, we still do not know very much about his years as a fossil collector in Maastricht. He sold his collection at the age of 63. A copy of his collection catalog is in the Coins & Medals Department of the British Museum (2108 lots).

Biographical references: Engel, Dutch Zoological Cabinets, 1986: no. 272.

Museum Calmetianum, 1778

1. English, 1778 [Sale catalog].
Museum Calmetianum. | [tapered rule] | A | Catalogue | Of A | Capital Collection | Of | Natural and Artifical Curiosities: | Consisting Of | An exquisite Veriety of Gold, Silver, Tin, Lead, | Copper, Iron and all Sorts of Ores; | Fin Petrefactions and Ambers; | Beautiful Marbles, Pebbles, Porphyries, Jaspers, | Agates, Mocoas, Crystals, Precious Stones, | And other choicest Subjects of the | Mineral Kingdom; | Rare Shells and Corals; Insects and Animals | Dried and in Spirits; | Exotic Plants, Mosses and Woods; | Gold, Silver, and Copper Medals, various Antiquities, | And many foreign Rarities: | Including the entire and valuable Museum of | Colonel Bosc de la Calmette, | of Maestricht; | With | Many fine Specimens form Davila'a Hedlinger's | and other celebrated French, German and Dutch | Cabinets. | Which will be sold by Auction, | By Mr. Paterson, | At the Great Room, No. 6, King-Street, Covent-Garden, | On Monday, 23rd of March 1778, and the Sixteen following | Days (Sundays excepted) to begin exactly at Twelve o'Clock. | [rule] | To be viewed on Thursday, the 10th of March, and the the Time | of Sale. | [rule] | Catalogues may be had, gratis, at the Place of Sale.

8°: 99 p.

Rare. Auctions sale catalog of Colonel Bosc de la Calmette natural history collections, which contained a large amount of material related to mineralogy and crystallography.

Bibliographical references: Wilson, History of Mineral Collecting, 1994: 206.

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