394 The History of Ichthyology 



tionship. To this confusion much was added through love of 

 novelty. Different authors changed names to suit their per- 

 sonal tastes regardless of rights of priority. Amia was altered 

 to Amiatus by Rafinesque in 1815 because it was too short a 

 name. Hiodon was changed to Amphiodon because it sounded 

 too much like Diodon, Batrachoides to Batrictius because 

 fiarpdxos means a frog, not a fish, and other changes even more 

 wanton were introduced, to be condemned and discarded by 

 the more methodical workers of a later period. With all its 

 abuses, however, the binomial nomenclature made possible sys- 

 tematic zoology and botany, and with the "Systema Naturae" 

 arose a new era in the science of living organisms. 



In common with most naturalists of his day, the spirit of 

 Linnaeus was essentially a devout one. Admiration for the 

 wonderful works of God was breathed on almost every page. 

 "O Jehovah! quam ampla sunt opera Tua" is on the title-page 

 of the "Systema Naturae," and the inscription over the door of 

 his home at Hammarby was to Linnaeus the wisdom of his 

 life. This inscription read: " Innocue vivito: Numen adest" 

 (Live blameless: God is here). 



The followers of Linnaeus are divided into two classes, ex- 

 plorers and compilers. To the first class belonged his own stu- 

 dents and others who ransacked all lands for species to be added 

 to the lists of the "Systema Naturae." These men, mostly 

 Scandinavian and Dutch, worked with wonderful zeal, endur- 

 ing every hardship and making great contributions to knowl- 

 edge, which they published in more or less satisfactory forms. 

 To these men we owe the beginnings of the science of geographical 

 distribution. Among the most notable of these are Pehr Osbeck 

 and Fredrik Hasselquist, already noted; Otto Fabricius (1744- 

 1822), author of an excellent "Fauna of Greenland"; Carl 

 Peter Thunberg (1743-), successor of Linnaeus as rector of 

 the University of Upsala, who collected fishes about Nagasaki, 

 intrusting most of the descriptive work to the less skillful hands 

 of his students, Jonas Nicolas Ahl and Martin Houttuyn; Mar- 

 tin Th. Brunnich, who collected at Marseilles the materials for 

 his "Pisces Massiliensis " ; Petrus Forskal (1736-63), whose 

 work on the fishes of the Red Sea ("Descriptio Animalium," 

 etc.), published posthumously in 1775, is one of the most accu- 



