46 I'EOCEEDINaS OP THE 



orthodoxy imposed upon them, elevatinj^, as it did, to an article 

 of faith tlie claim tliat the Bible and the writings of the Fathers of 

 the Church should be considered as documents of Natural Science. 

 Equally diflicult was it to loosen the restraining bonds which 

 scientific men had forged for themselves by attributing to the 

 old Greek and Eoman authors such infallibility and complete- 

 ness that, for a right knowledge of nature, it was considered less 

 necessary to study licr works than those of Aristotle, Dioscoridcs, 

 Galen, Pliny, and others. But slowly they worked forward to 

 a truer conception, and there were not a few men, worthy of 

 admiration, who during the 16th and 17th centuries produced in 

 ponderous volumes the fruits of their assiduous work in the field 

 of natural history and who, in various ways, may be regarded as 

 the worthy precursors of a reformer soon to come. As brighter 

 days appeared and existing defects were brought to light, ever 

 greater became the longing after one who should bring all into 

 order and quicken life. 



At last this reformer came — Carolus Linnceus. Born in a 

 lowly hut, on that little bit of land then recently crushed and 

 despoiled by the bloody battles and final fall of the hero-king 

 Charles XII., he appeared, and, although but a poor, and as yet 

 unknown, youth, the world almost immediately paid homage to 

 him as to a master of the extensive dominion of natural history. 

 To-day, more than a hundred years after his death, his name is 

 mentioned with the highest respect in all lands upon which cul- 

 ture has shed its benign rays. 



It is concerning him that I have been honoured with a request 

 to speak to you, Fellows of a Society worthily bearing his uauie, 

 on tliis the hundredth anniversary of its foundation. The subject 

 is altogether so vast that I shall be unable in the short space 

 of time allotted me to dispose of it in a satisfactoiy manner. 

 May I therefore be allowed to pass over in silence the story of his 

 eventful life, however alluring that appears, even if we take 

 away from it some of its poetical glamour, the invented legends 

 with which it has been adorned by the fancy of his less accurate 

 biographers r' Let us instead make a hasty survey of the part 

 taken by Linnaeus in the development of those sciences to which 

 his penetrating activity extended itself. 



First and foremost comes Botani/, on which Liuna)us's systema- 

 tic mind for all time stamped his impress ; for it is here that the 

 words of his contemporaries, " Deus creavit, Linnceufi disjjosuit,'' 

 are in the highest degree appropriate. Industrious naturalists 

 had, indeed, already, as well as they could, described the plants 

 which were found in different parts of Europe and brought 

 from newly discovered countries on the other side of the mighty 

 ocean ; but the work thus brought together may be compared to 

 a shapeless mass of material from which, indeed, later on, a temple 

 might be raised when the foundations had been firmly laid, but 



