CHAP, ii.] Organs from Cesalpino to Linnaeus. 101 



Linnaeus next lays down with great detail each several rule, 

 which must be observed in establishing species, genera, orders, 

 and classes, and it is here that he displays his unrivalled skill 

 as a systematist. These rules were strictly observed by him- 

 self in his numerous descriptive works, and thus a spirit of 

 order and clearness was introduced into the art of describing 

 plants, which gave it at once a different appearance from 

 that which it had received at the hands of his predecessors. 

 Whoever therefore compares the 'Genera Plantarum,' the 

 ' Systema Naturae,' and other descriptive works of Linnaeus 

 with those of Morison, Ray, Bachmann, or Tournefort, finds so 

 great a revolution effected by them, that he is impressed with 

 the persuasion that botany first became a science in the hands of 

 Linnaeus ; all former efforts seem to be so unskilful and with- 

 out order in comparison with his method. Without doubt the 

 greatest and most lasting service which Linnaeus rendered both 

 to botany and to zoology lies in the certainty and precision 

 which he introduced into the art of describing. But if a refor- 

 mation was thus effected in botany, as Linnaeus himself took 

 pleasure in saying, it must not be overlooked that the know- 

 ledge of the nature of plants was rather hindered than advanced 

 by him. Ray, Bachmann, and in part also Morison and Tourne- 

 fort, had already liberated themselves to a great extent from 

 the influence of scholasticism, and they still give us the 

 impression of having been genuine investigators of nature ; 

 but Linnaeus fell back again into the scholastic modes of 

 thought, and these were so intimately combined with his 

 brilliant performances in systematic botany, that his successors 

 were unable to separate the one from the other. 



The feeling for order and perspicuity, which made Linnaeus 

 a reformer of the art of describing, combined with his scholas- 

 ticism, was evidently the cause of his not bestowing more 

 energetic labour on the natural system. It has been repeatedly 

 mentioned that it was he who first established sixty-five truly 

 natural groups in his fragment of the early date of 1738 ; and 



UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA 

 SANTA BARBARA COLLEGE 



