DEVELOPMENT OF BIOLOGY 



457 



First and foremost a botanist, Linnaeus published a practical 

 classification of the Seed Plants which afforded a great impetus 

 to plant study, particularly because he insisted on brief descriptions 

 and the scheme of giving each species a name of two words, generic 

 and specific, thereby establishing the system of binomial nomen- 

 clature. Linnaeus' success with botanical taxonomy led him to 

 extend the principles to animals and even to the so-called mineral 

 kingdom : the latter showing at a glance his lack of appreciation of 

 any genetic relationship between species. Although Linnaeus be- 

 lieved that species, genera, and even higher groups represented 



Fig. 296. — Carolus Linnaeus. 



distinct acts of creation, nevertheless his greatest works, the Species 

 Plantarum and Sy sterna Naturae, are of outstanding importance in 

 biological history and by common consent the base line of priority 

 in botanical and zoological nomenclature. (Page 352.) 



2. Comparative Anatomy 



Owing to the less marked structural differentiation of plants in 

 comparison with animals, plant anatomy lends itself less readily 

 to descriptive analysis, so that an epoch in the study of comparative 

 anatomy is not so well defined in botany as in the sister science, 

 zoology. 



Comparative anatomy as a really important aspect of zoological 

 work, in fact as a science in itself, was the result of the life-work of 



