4 SVEX liOVKN. ON THE ECllINOIDEA DESCRIBED BV LINN/EUS. 



wav, lind now resumcd from the beginning, Avliilc materials 

 in marvellous abundance poured in from all parts to his far- 

 famed stiidy at Upsala. At the same ti me the long-meditated 

 design of freeing the movphological nomenclatiire from tlic 

 cumbrous burden of the »nomen specificum», always subject 

 to losinir in distinctiveness throneh the continnal discoverv of 

 new speeies, stood forth in all its urgency, and the master in 

 the art of describing, af ter years of consideration, in laying 

 down its rulcs resolved on another mode of naming speeies, 

 at once simple, constant and universally applicable, and de- 

 stined almost alone to inaugurate a new science. The Philo- 

 sophia Botanica, the crowniug development of the Funda- 

 menta of 1736 and the Critica of 1737, went to the press in 

 tlie month of September 1750 and Avas published in the be- 

 oinniuo- of the followinff vear. 



A few months låter Adolphus Fredertc, of the House of 

 Holstein-Gottorp, and Louisa Ulrica, a younger sister to 

 Frederic of Prussia, succeeded to the throne of Sweden. 

 Followino- a fashion then in vooue amono- crowned heads 

 they desired to see their royal rcsidences adorned by cabinets 

 of curiosities and collections of natnral history, and two of 

 their country-palaces were each to receive a Muscnm. At 

 LTlriksdal, to the north of the capital, the King's Museum was 

 established, chielly cousistiug of Vertebrates, while the Queen's 

 ■Museum, comprising Insects, Crustacea, Shells, Echinoderras 

 and Corals, was formed in her palace Drottningholm, on the 

 lake Mälaren. Some beoinniucjs of a collection, made bv Queen 

 Ulrica Eleonora the vounjver. sister to Charles the twelfth, 

 are said to have existed there previously. ') 



In those days Holland was tlie land of Museums, where 

 the Avealthy and cducated af all classes vied with each other 

 in possessing the choicest among the many rarities that poured 

 in from all parts of the then known world, from Amboina 

 near its castern limit as well as from Curacao and Surinam 

 in the far west.-) »Her Majesty», said Linn/EUS in his enthu- 



') Olof Swabtz, Tal om Naturalhistoriens \ipphof och framtid i 

 Sverige (On the rise and progress of Natnral History in Sweden), Head 

 to the R. Acad. of Sciences on the 8th of Sept. 1790. Stockholm 1794, 

 p. 40. This collection is said to have been originally formed at Ulriksdal. 



-) >Tout le monde le doit céder aux Hollandais> says d'Aröenville 

 ill his review of the principal cabinets of Europé, Conchyliologie, ed. 

 1742, p. 214. — See also Valenttn, Beskr. v. Oostindien, Amsterdam 

 1726, III. II, p. 560. 



