74 LINN&US AS AN EVOLUTIONIST 



in nature study, evolutionistic ideas found 

 expression not infrequently; and of late, 

 historians of science are bringing all this to 

 light. 



The catalogue of more or less distinctly 

 evolutionistic naturalists who lived before 

 the end of the eighteenth century, and who 

 gave some expression to their ideas on this 

 topic, is not a short one; but the name of 

 Linnseus has not, in so far as I can learn, been 

 placed on that list hitherto, except very hypo- 

 thetically. 1 



For any possible expression of views as to 

 the origins of groups of plants and the per- 

 manency or mutability of such groups, one 

 would naturally look, not to his many volumes 

 of taxonomic and descriptive writings, but to 

 just such a work as the Philosophia Botanica. 

 Yet there one looks in vain for any expression 

 that is not positively and unmistakably con- 

 trary to the idea of evolution. 



In respect to the origin of genera, that which 

 he says and with Aristotelian brevity and 

 conciseness is this: "Every genus is natural 

 and was in the beginning of things created 



1 In the environment of the idea of evolution Linnseus 

 may be considered not as a positive but as one of the negative 

 factors. Osborn, From the Greeks to Darwin, p. 128. 



