16 Bulletin American Museum, of Natural History. [\'ol. XX\'II, 



most philosophical men of his time, profoundly skilled in the Aristotelian lore 

 Avhich was then esteemed, yet gifted with courage and sagacity which enabled 

 him to weigh the value of the Peripatetic doctrines, to reject what seemed 

 error, and to look onwards to a better philosophy. .. .His book, entitled 



' De Planti.s',' libri xvi appeared at Florence in 1583 After speaking of 



the splendid nndtijilicity of the productions of nature, the confusion which 

 had hitherto jirevailed among writers on plants, the growing treasures of the 

 botanical workl; he adds, 'In this immense multitude of plants, I see that 

 want which is most felt in any other unordered crowd : if such an assemblage 

 be not arranged into brigades like an army, all must be tumult and fluctua- 

 tion.' " His classification was founded upon the number, the position and 

 the figure of the reproductive parts of plants. He divided plants into ten 

 great classes, which were again subdivided. To these assemblages he gave 

 monomial names in substantive form. 



A reason for this precocious development of the classification of plants 

 may lie in the very multiplicity of kinds and in the existence of large herbaria 

 and horticultural gardens which would assist the eager student to recognize 

 related series. In contrast with this is the delayed progress of the classifi- 

 cation of the mammals, due to the comparative fewness of known forms and 

 the greater complexity of organization. 



Csesalpinus thus anticipates Linnaeus in the construction of a system 

 and in the use of monomial names instead of descriptive phrases for the 

 ''natural" orders. 



2. The Raian Epoch. 



Ray the father of modern systematic zoology. 



Recognition of the warm-blooded, viviparous, hairy quadrupeds, as a class 

 very distinct from the cold-blooded, oviparous and scaly quadrupeds. 



Recognition of the Cetacea, as aquatic relatives of the viviparous quad- 

 rupeds. 



Summary and analysis of characters of mammals, especially those de- 

 scribed by Marggrav, Seba, and other travelers in America. 



Brief descriptions of genera and species. 



Adoption of the traditional criteria of ordinal classification of the mammals, 

 i. e., characters of the extremities (whether hoofed or clawed, divided 

 or undivided), number of the digits, number of the front teeth. 



Adoption of many systematic phrases and names used by later authors. 



Use of the descriptive phrase, as well as of monomial names. 



Dichotomous classification of mammals. 



