24 ANNALS NEW YORK ACADEMY OF SCIENCES 



The Renaissance Epoch. 



Biological science, and especially zoology, did not respond fully to the 

 impulse of the Renaissance movement until literature, politics, astronomy 

 and geographical discovery had made the most signal advances. Hence in 

 Aldrovandi (1522-1605) and Gesner (1516-65) the superstitions and myths 

 of the middle ages still linger, while the systematic work of future genera- 

 tions is initiated in the extensive illustrated catalogues and descriptions of 

 plants and animals. On the philosophical side of zoology, the Englishman 

 Wotton, in his "De Differentiis Animalium" (Paris, 1552), "rejected the 

 legendary and fantastic accretions [of medieval zoology] and returned to 

 Aristotle and the observation of nature" (Lankester^). One of the con- 

 temporaries of Gesner and Wotton was the founder of anatomy, Andreas 

 Vesalius (1514-64), who boldly broke with tradition, and declared that the 

 source of knowledge of the human body should be, not Galen, but the 

 human body itself. 



Near the end of this period, the botanist, Cesalpino (Csesalpinus) of 

 Arezzo (1519-1778), a celebrated scholastic pliilosopher, published his volu- 

 minous work "De Plantis" (1583). In this work, which was inspired by 

 the new idea of direct observation, the confused arrangements of plants of 

 the earlier herbalists were replaced by an orderly classification suggested 

 by the brigades of an army, and founded upon the number, the position 

 and the figure of the reproductive parts. He divided plants into ten great 

 classes, which were again subdivided; to these assemblages he gave mono- 

 mial names in substantive form. Linnseus himself says of him, that, 

 "though the first in attempting to form natural orders, he observed as 

 many as the most successful later writers" (Whewell, Op. cit., pp. 282, 

 283). 



A reason for this precocious development of a natural classification of 

 plants may be sought in the very multiplicity of kinds and the large herbaria 

 and horticultural gardens in existence, which necessitated some sort of orderly 

 arrangement and which would assist the eager student to recognize related 

 series. We note in contrast the delayed progress of the classification of the 

 mammals due to the comparative fewness of known forms, the greater 

 complexity of organization and the difficulties of observation. 



The Raian Epoch, the Dawn of Modern Zoology. 



Among tho.se who contributed the data for Linnjeus's generalizations, 

 no name is more important, at least in the history of vertebrate zoology, than 



' E. Ray Lankester, The History and Scope of Zoology, In The Advancement of Science 

 London, 1890, p. 293. 



