BICENTENARY OF LINNAEUS 29 



This definition was clearly insufficient to exclude all extraneous genera 

 from this really natural order; for (1) under Lemur Linnceus included, not 

 only all the then known forms now recognized as the suborder Lerauroidea, 

 but also the "Flying Lemur," Galeopithecus, which properly either forms 

 an order by itself with no near affinities with the Primates, or is at most a 

 suborder of the Cheiroptera; (2) the definition also included " Vespertilio," 

 i. e., the bats, excepting Noctilio, an order more nearly related to the Insecti- 

 vores than to the Primates. 



Many of the characters selected by Linnaeus for his ordinal diagnoses 

 were of the "adaptive" or superficial kind, which are now known to have 

 been most easily modifiable by changes in the external or internal environ- 

 ment. The reason for this mistake was, that Linnseus regarded the mode 

 of sustenance of a group as one of its most deep-seated attributes and most 

 surely indicative of more or less hidden affinities with other groups. Lin- 

 naeus was constantly searching for natural groups, but he did not realize 

 that the natural affinity of the members of the larger groups was due to 

 descent from common ancestors, just as in the case of members of the same 

 species. An example of his reliance upon sustenance is seen in his defini- 

 tion, in the tenth edition of the Systema, of the order Ferse, the Carnivora 

 of later authors. Here "sustenance by rapine, upon carcasses ravenously 

 snatched" is evidently felt to be connected with "front teeth in both jaws: 

 superior vi, all acute," with "laniariform teeth [canines] solitary," with 

 "claws on the feet acute." 



One of his dicta in botany was, that a character of great systematic 

 importance in one group may be ver}' variable in another; consequently he 

 did not mention " sustenance " under Bruta, but contented himself with the 

 two characters "front teeth none either above or below" and "gait awkward 

 {incessus meptior)." As this order included the elephant, the manatee, 

 the sloth, the great ant-eater and the scaly ant-eater, it has been ju.stly cited 

 as a grossly unnatural assemblage, and the grouping accounted for by 

 Linngeus's ignorance of the animals composing it. 



Now it is possible that Linnaeus himself did not regard this assemblage 

 as natural, but merely as a convenient artificial grouping. But I am more 

 disposed to attribute its existence to his habit of searching for hidden affini- 

 ties below the most obvious external differences, as when he placed the seals 

 in the order Ferae, joined the bats with the Primates, the horse and the 

 hippopotamus, the rhinoceros with the Rodents, and the pig with the Insecti- 

 vores (in the order Bestiae). 



Linnaeus recognized that the ordinal classification of the mammals was 

 a difficult problem, as is shown by the conspicuous changes (not always 

 improvements in our eyes) and redistributions which he made between the 



