FOREWORD 
Several years ago one of us, (HAD) was preparing a manuscript on higher category 
systematics and discovered to his amazement that no translation of the 10th edition of the 
Systema Naturae had been done. Although he had studied two romance languages and could 
struggle through some translation of Linnaeus's Latin, Dundee realized that his interpretations 
could be in error, hence he sought some help in translations of parts of the the Systema that were 
essential to his work. Faced with the absence of members of the Classics Department at his 
institution during the summer he sought aid from a zoologist priest at another institution. 
Although the priest could read some Latin, he was not that skilled at the use of the language. In 
talking to an older priest friend, Dundee was informed that if you needed to get some Latin 
translation from a priest you would have to go to a person probably 55-60 years or older because 
the Catholic church had ceased to do masses in Latin and the younger priesthood no longer had 
to be proficient in Latin. Prior to 1850 zoologists usually were competent readers and users of 
Latin, but because Latin was no longer the language of any major country the language skills 
needed for reading technical papers shifted to active and productive languages. Today few 
zoologists can say that they took courses in Latin or Greek, the main languages of so much early 
science. The need therefore for a translation of a major classic in zoology became evident. 
Accordingly Dundee turned to Kenneth Kitchell, a scholar of Latin, to do the translation, with 
Dundee cooperating to finesse the translation in terms that would be used by zoologists. As the 
work progressed the need for a listing of current names for Linnaean species and for identification 
of the literature that he cited became obvious, and this area, being solely in the field of 
herpetology, has become a contribution by Dundee. 
