SYSTEMATIC ZOOLOGY: ITS PROGRESS AND PURPOSE. 
By THEODORE GILL. 
It is most fitting that in this year, when the scientific world is 
commemorating the natal centenaries of two naturalists who have 
been regarded as the chief systematists of their times, consideration 
should be given to the subject and object of their old pursuits. Carl 
Linné, whose bicentenary has been celebrated, was the man who first 
provided an elaborate code of laws for the nomenclature of all the 
kingdoms of nature and set an example to others by provision of 
concise and apt diagnoses of the groups and species he recognized. 
Louis Agassiz, who was born during the centenary year of Linné, 
gave a grand impulse to the study of nature in his adopted country. 
raised it in popular esteem, taught new methods of work, and directed 
to new lines of investigation. 
Of all the students of nature from the time of Aristotle to the cen- 
tury of Linné, none requires present notice as a systematic zoologist 
except John Ray, who was the true scientific father of the Swede. 
Born in 1627, he flourished in England during the last quarter of the 
seventeenth century, and died only two years before the birth of 
Linné. 
JOHN RAY. 
It was long ago truly affirmed by Edwin Lankester that “ Ray has 
been pronounced by Cuvier to be the first true systematist of the 
animal kingdom, and the principal guide of Linné in the department 
of nature.”® He, indeed, made a pathway in the zoological field 
which Linné was glad to follow, and to some extent he anticipated 
the brightest thoughts of the great Swede. He, for example, in a 
dichotomous systematic table of the animal kingdom,’ first combined 
the lunged fish-like aquatic and hairy quadruped viviparous animals 
in a special category (Vivipara) in contrast with all the other ver- 
@ Address before the Section of Systematic Zoology, Seventh International 
Zoological Congress, August 20, 1907.—Reprinted from Science, Oct. 18, 1907, 
with verbal modifications and additional notes. 
+ Lankester, Edwin, ‘‘ The Correspondence of John Ray,” 1848, p. 485. 
¢ Ray, John, “ Synopsis Methodica Animalium Quadrupedum et Serpentini 
Generis,” 1698, p. 53. 
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