1O GENERAL PRINCIPLES OF ZOOLOGY. 



has, was debated in many contentious writings, which 

 would have led to bloodshed if one of the authors had not 

 taken occasion to look into a horse's mouth. Significant 

 of this mental bias which prevailed throughout the entire 

 Middle Ages is the Pliysiologus or Bestiarius, a book from 

 which the authors of zoological writings in the Middle 

 Ages drew much material. The book in its various edi- 

 tions and reprints names about seventy animals, among 

 them many creatures of fable: the dragon, the unicorn, 

 the phoenix, etc. Some of the accounts given of various 

 animals are fables, intended to illustrate religious or ethical 

 teachings. In a similar way the religious element played 

 an important role in the many-volumed Natural History of 

 the Dominican Albertus Magnus, and Vincentius Bellova- 

 censis, and of the Augustine Thomas Cantipratensis, 

 although these used as a foundation for their expositions 

 the Latin translation of Aristotle, the works of Pliny and 

 other authors of antiquity. 



Wotton. Under such conditions we must regard it as 

 an important advance that at the close of the Middle 

 Ages, when the interest in scientific investigation awoke 

 anew, Aristotle's conceptions were taken up and elabo- 

 rated from a scientific standpoint. In this sense we can 

 call the Englishman Wotton the successor of Aristotle. 

 In 1552 he wrote his work " De differentiis animalium," 

 in which he essentially copied the system of Aristotle, ex- 

 cept that he admitted the new group of flower-animals 

 or zoophytes. However, the title, " On the Distinguish- 

 ing Characters of Animals," shows that of the rich treasury 

 of Aristotelian knowledge the systematic results had ob- 

 tained the chief recognition, and thus Wotton's work in- 

 augurated the period of systematic zoology, which in the 

 Englishman Ray, but even more in Linnaeus, has found its 

 most brilliant exponents. 



Linnaeus, the descendant of a Swedish clergyman, 

 whose family name " Ingemarsson " had been changed 

 after a linden-tree near the parsonage in Lindelius, was 

 born in Rashult in 1707. Pronounced by his teachers to 



