198 THE HISTORY OF BIOLOGY 



in time, there will be no fruit, while fruit will certainly develop if the pistils 

 of the female flowers are provided with pollen. These proofs had undoubtedly 

 a convincing effect, if not on all his contemporaries, at any rate on succeeding 

 ages. Linnasus in particular has acknowledged the contribution he made to 

 the development of plant physiology. 



Animal system neglected 

 While, then, during the first two centuries of the new era plant classification 

 was splendidly reorganized, during the same period animal classification on 

 the whole made no progress. The zoography of the Renaissance period has 

 already been described (Part I, pp. 31-8); it was, generally speaking, not very 

 systematic; in the best event one adhered to Aristotle, and in the latter's 

 Historia animalium zoology had, in fact, an old and sound foundation, which 

 contemporary botany lacked — a careful comparison, based on unique pow- 

 ers of observation and sense of form, between the individual animal forms, 

 the value of which is manifest from the fact that most of the groups into 

 which animals are there divided still hold good in the present system of 

 classification. Particularly in regard to vertebrate animals, which have for 

 obvious reasons been of primary interest to humanity, Aristotle had, as has 

 already been pointed out, a keen eye for the natural affinity between the 

 different forms, which is based upon agreement in the general structure and 

 functions of the body. Thus there was opened up to animal biology during 

 this period an important and fruitful field for research in the anatomical 

 and physiological sphere-, and this, again, caused the comparison between 

 the life-forms in the animal kingdom to receive a different character from 

 that between the life-forms in the vegetable kingdom; in the former a com- 

 parison between internal organs, the complex structure of which it was pos- 

 sible to make out only after exhaustive investigations; in the latter, a study 

 for the most part of problems of the purely external form. In zoology, too, 

 however, it was absolutely necessary to develop form classification, mainly 

 owing to the fact that the different categories into which the known animal 

 world is divided required a more definite determination than that given it 

 by Aristotle and his successors. And this undoubtedly demanded co-opera- 

 tion between zoology and botany in order to find a common ground of com- 

 parison and valuation for all the forms in which life on earth manifests 

 itself. The very first to make an attempt to deal with vegetable and animal 

 classification on similar principles was Ray; the scientist who finally worked 

 out a uniform system for all living creatures was Linn^us. 



John Ray was born in 16x7 or i6x8 at Black Notley, a village near Brain- 

 tree, in Essex. His father was a well-to-do blacksmith who could afford to 

 send his eldest son to college. In 1644 young Ray went up to Cambridge 

 and at first studied the classical languages and theology; but he was also 

 interested in mathematics and natural science. He gave lectures to the under- 



