LINN^AN MEMORIAL ADDRESS 27 1 



of recent decades, those reforms are thought to be the most 

 important service that Linnaeus rendered to botany. Several of 

 the most commonly received opinions about him as nomenclator 

 are absolutely groundless. Several principles of nomenclature 

 now almost everywhere approved were under his severest repre- 

 hension. Inasmuch as I myself was the prime mover in the 

 direction of what has now come to be well known abroad as the 

 Neo-American school of nomenclature, I may be permitted to 

 say that during more than twenty years past I have steadily 

 and unwaveringly been of the opinion that, to attempt to legislate 

 upon nomenclature is but futility, if not folly, until every par- 

 ticipant in every nomenclatorial conclave shall have familiarized 

 himself with all that Linnaeus said, and said with such com- 

 manding authority, upon this subject. So, then, the discussion 

 of Linnaeus as nomenclator, at least in my understanding and 

 appreciation of him, could not alone be done within the time 

 allotted us to-night. To omit it altogether was imperative. 



The same limitations have precluded my calling attention 

 even briefly to Linneeus as evolutionist, as ecologist, as medical 

 botanist, or as one who contributed much to the advancement of 

 what is now commonly spoken of as applied botany in general. 



Of the real merits of Linnaeus they know little who, observing 

 that his classes and orders are become obsolete, and that neither 

 his idea of a genus is that of more recent botany, nor his con- 

 ception of a species, conclude that his figure must by and by 

 grow dim on the horizon of botanical history. I say, they who 

 know little of his real merits may give place to such forebodings. 

 But they who fully realize what he accomplished in so many dif- 

 ferent directions to the great and lasting advantage of our science, 

 will be rather disposed to wish that an equal of Linnaeus might 

 soon be born ; and might think it well that the natal day of the 

 matchless Swede should be held sacred not only once in each 

 century, but a hundred times in every hundred years. 



