18 Mutability and Individual Variation. 



the elementary forms which proved themselves immu- 

 table when cultivated were the real independent creations. 



Let us first consider the views of the Transmutation- 

 ists. 



Before Linnaeus the genera were regarded as the 

 systematic units and the species were considered as sub- 

 divisions of them. Many genera have popular names : 

 these groups were known by the country folk, whilst 

 the species were only in much rarer cases distinguished. 

 TouRNEFORT gave the genera known to him their sys- 

 tematic names ; but the species he distinguished only by 

 symbols and not by special names. In his eyes the 

 genera were the essential things, the species merely de- 

 rivatives. 



The view that genera were created in the beginning 

 and that species had developed from them in the lapse 

 of time by transmutation had many adherents. Among 

 them are to be reckoned Buffon, at least in his earlier 

 works, then Bory de Saint- Vincent, Gmelin, Bur- 

 DACH, PoiRET, Fries and many others.^ This view, at 

 one time found an adherent in Linnaeus.^ He believed 

 in a simultaneous creation of all forms in Paradise ; he 

 suspected however that these forms corresponded to our 

 genera whilst species had arisen from them in part di- 

 rectly and in part by crossings.*^ 



This is important because it shows that the modern 

 conception of species did not exist before the time of 

 Linnaeus or at any rate that it was not the species which 



^ GoDRON, De I'Espccc, pp. 8-10. 



^ "Genus omne est nafurale, in primordio tale creatum." Syst. 

 Nat. Veg. 14. Philos. Bot. No. 159, p. 104. 



C. LiNNE, Oratio de Telluris hahitabilis incremento. Upsala, 

 1743; Leyden, 1744. — Idem Amocnitatcs academicac. 1794. T. I., 

 p. 71 {de Peloriis). 



