16 ANNALS NEW YORK ACADEMY OF SCIENCES 



It is not, however, just to judge Linnseus's work by the standards of 

 to-day. The above comparison of the zoological part of the "Systema 

 Naturae" with our present knowledge of animals is not to be taken as a 

 disparagement: we merely note the progress of zoology during the last 

 century and a half of the world's history. Linnaeus was a born systematist; 

 his energy and industry were enormous ; his isolation promoted independence 

 and originality. He devised new classifications, and thoroughly systema- 

 tized not only the knowledge of his predecessors, but the vast increment 

 he himself added. He inspired his students with his own enthusiasm, 

 taught them his own advanced methods, and influenced a goodly number 

 of them to undertake natural history explorations in distant and zoologically 

 unknoTvn parts of the world. 



In special lines of research he was far behind several of his contempo- 

 raries, notably Brisson, in respect to both mammals and birds. But he 

 nearly doubled the number of known forms of reptiles, amphibians and 

 fiishes, and increased many fold the number of species of Coelenterates, on 

 the basis of wholly new material gathered through his own efforts. 



Disgusted with the needlessly detailed accounts and repetitions that 

 characterized the writings of most of his predecessors, he unfortunately 

 adopted the extreme of condensation, thereby adding greatly to the diffi- 

 culties of his successors in determining to just what forms the thousands of 

 new names he introduced really belonged. Many of his species, based on 

 the accounts given by pre\'ious authors, were also composite, often con- 

 taining very diverse elements. But this detracts little from his credit. As 

 one of his appreciative biographers has tersely put it, "He found biology a 

 chaos; he left it a cosmos." 



Linnasus's beneficent influence upon biology was hardly less as a nomen- 

 clator than as a taxonomist. He not only invented a descriptive tei-minology 

 for animals and plants, but devised a system of nomenclature at once simple 

 and eflScient, and which for a hundred and fifty years has been accepted 

 without essential modification. 



Linnaeus divided the three kingdoms of nature into classes, the classes 

 into orders, the orders into genera, the genera into species, under which 

 latter he sometimes recognized varieties. Of these groups, as he understood 

 them, he gave clear definitions, but they were in most cases much more 

 comprehensive than the limits now assigned to groups of corresponding 

 rank. His genera correspond in some cases to groups now termed orders, 

 and frequently to the modern idea of family; in some cases they contained 

 species now placed in separate orders. Prior to Linnaeus, these groups had 

 less definite significance, and were often designated by a phrase instead 

 of a single word. Species were indicated only by a cumbersome diagnosis 



