346 FOUNDATIONS OF BIOLOGY 



and who have suggested that the present ones arose from ear- 

 lier forms by a process of descent with modification, or EVO- 

 LUTION. But with the revival of natural history studies after 

 the Middle Ages, the Mosaic account of creation led the 

 majority, perhaps almost unconsciously, to assume that there 

 are as many kinds of organisms as issued from the Ark. And 

 this is not so strange, as might at first glance appear, when 

 one considers that all of the important facts which we have 

 reviewed in the preceding pages were then absolutely un- 

 known, and that the number of known kinds of animals 

 totalled but a thousand or so, instead of upward of a million, 

 as to-day. 



The pioneer work of the early Renaissance naturalists 

 consisted principally of collecting and describing animals 

 and plants. This involved making a catalog of the different 

 kinds classifying them in some way and consequently 

 some basis of classification was sought. Thus attention was 

 focused on the kinds of species and for practical, if for no 

 other, reasons, the species assumed a prominence which over- 

 shadowed the individuals which composed it. As a matter of 

 fact during the eighteenth century the greatest student of 

 plant and animal classification, Linnaeus, emphasized the 

 idea that each species represents a distinct thought of the 

 Creator and that the object of classification is to arrange 

 species in the order of the Creator's consecutive thoughts. 

 This viewpoint is somewhat whimsically expressed by the 

 old naturalist who, finding a beetle which did not seem to 

 agree exactly with any species in his collection, solved the 

 difficulty by crushing the unorthodox individual under his 

 foot. (See page 391.) 



We may consider that the consensus of opinion up to the 

 middle of the last century was overwhelmingly on the side 

 of SPECIAL CREATION and FIXITY OF SPECIES, and there- 



