48 PROCEEDINGS OP THE 



it complete or cvcu being able to agree on a ground-plan. In 

 one pai'ticular, however, they are all in accord, namely, that Lin- 

 naeus was the first who, to use the words of a prominent natura- 

 list, "against the artificial system set forth in a clear light 

 the character and form of the natural one, marked out the way 

 for its further development, and secured its supremacy." As gene- 

 rally it is admitted also, that those contributions left by him, his 

 " Ordines Naturales," are of lasting value and give evidence of a 

 keen penetration, rarely manifested. Hence, in the field of sys- 

 tematic botany Liuntous appears at once as the man through whom 

 the Artificial System was brought to its perfection, and as the one 

 wlio laid the chief ground-work of the Natural System. 



The general applause, however, that greeted Linuccus on his first 

 a})pcarauce, and was continually increasing, did not merely de- 

 pend on his merits as a systematist. Continuing the figure already 

 used, picturing the system as an edifice, it is easy to see that it is 

 not suflicient to prepare the drawings and plans, but that every 

 portion of the material must also be adequately tested. No little 

 material, as already indicated, had been gathered for this great 

 structure in times gone by ; but in this very fact lay great danger, 

 because amidst the good and useful was also much that was 

 useless, which had first to be taken out, and other material put 

 in its stead. It meant, consequently, no less a task than that 

 of verifying critically, fearlessly, and thoroughly, all that his pre- 

 decessors had accom2)lished in the field of botany. AVith as- 

 tounding rapidity he produced one work after another ; already, 

 at the age of 30, he had published Si/stema NaturcB, Fundamenta 

 hofanica. Flora Lajjponica, Bihliotlieca hotanica, Genera Plantaruni, 

 Corollarhim (jeiieruut, Critica hotanica, Museum Cliffortianum, 

 Ilortus Cliff or tianus, Classes Flantarum, not to mention minor 

 writings. Even to-day most of these are regarded as possess- 

 ing a classical finish, and any one of them would have been suffi- 

 cient to secure its author a name of renown in the history of 

 botany. By these writings he reconstructed descriptive botany 

 in aluiost every detail, and that in such a manner that the opinions 

 he expressed, and the laws he established, are even to this day 

 a})p roved of as in all essentials correct. He sAvept away from 

 botanical language itsinrooted barbarism, and gave proper stability 

 by accurately limiting every botanical idea, and furnishing it 

 with definite, appropriate nomenclature ; for describing plants 

 and naming ihem, he set up simple practical rules based on a 

 careful analytic examination of the structure of many thousand 

 species, especially their flowers and fruits, and thus laid a proper 

 foundation for generic limitations. In opposition to all his pre- 

 decessors he drew a sharp line between what should be regarded 

 as a species or as a mere accidental form (variation). To all the 

 then known 8000 species he not only gave new and appropriate 

 names, but also new definitions, and added to them critically 

 tested statements of their nomenclature by prior authors, to- 



