26 ANNALS NEW YORK ACADEMY OF SCIENCES 



Ray further set the standard for Linnseus in his concise descriptions of 

 European and foreign mammals, especially those described by travelers in 

 America and in the East. Ray often used the term "species" merely as 

 the equivalent of the middle English "spece," which survives in our word 

 spice," and meant "kind:" it was also equivalent to the logical "species" 

 (c/. the Greek etSos) of the schoolmen, and is exemplified in Ray and Wil- 

 lughby's "Historia Piscium" in such phrases as "clarias niloticus Belonii 

 mustelse fluviatilis species," "bagre piscis barbatiac aculeati species." But 

 Ray also used the term " species " in quite a Linnsean manner, as in the 

 names Ovis laticauda, Ovis strepsiceros and Ovis domestica. In form, at least, 

 this foreshadows the binomial system of nomenclature and the recognition of 

 the species in general as a supposedly objective reality and the unit of classifi- 

 cation. The form of Ray's specific definitions seems, however, to imply that 

 the term "species" in Ray's mind was often more a "differentia," or specific 

 adjective modifying the generic concept than a fully developed substantive 

 name, and Ray did not apparently realize the convenience of applying the 

 binomial method of nomenclature universally. Even Linnaeus at first intro- 

 duced the specific, "trivial," or common name, merely as a marginal 

 index or symbol of the full specific phrase. Ray recognized the considerable 

 variability of species, but believed also in their separate creation and fixity. 

 He frequently adverts to the internal characters of animals; and his book 

 shows, that even by his time a considerable number of observations on 

 the soft parts of animals had already accumulated. 



The Linn^an Epoch. 



The work of Ray in botany and zoology fully prepared the way for 

 Linnseus, whose epoch may be characterized as the Legislative Epoch, be- 

 cause his methods of description and classification, and especially his nomen- 

 clature exerted such profound formative and regulative influence upon the 

 work of his contemporaries and successors that he was called the " lawgiver 

 of natural history." 



LinncBUs's Broader Contributions to tJie Class Mammalia. 



One of the most enduring claims of Linnseus upon the grateful memory 

 of posterity arises from his felicitous coinage of the word "mammalia" 

 (animals with mammae or breasts after analogy with Latin words like ani- 

 mal ^) as a class name for the forms characterized by Ray as "viviparous 

 hairy animals." Thus not only the terrestrial hairy oviparous quadrupeds, 



I Theodore Gill, /. c. 



