ON BIOLOGY. 15 



portant branch was benefited by it, and one that hitherto 

 had not been much developed, and that was the knowl- 

 edge of the geographical distribution of animals, a most 

 important subject, as we shall hereafter see. Material 

 now, from all quarters of the globe, in the shape of plants, 

 animals, and similar objects of interest came in abun- 

 dance to Europe, where it poured into the museums or en- 

 riched the collections of universities or those of private 

 individuals. 



The age was ripe for a master mind; some great, all- 

 absorbing intellect to encompass and digest this incoming 

 store of wealth; to arrange, describe and classify it in due 

 and orderly manner; in that it might come to be a true 

 and living part of human knowledge, and capable of be- 

 ing comprehended, made useful, studied and appreciated. 



When Nature is prepared to inaugurate another epoch, 

 to turn over as it were another page in the history of the 

 world, it would seem that one of sufficient strength is in- 

 variably forthcoming to perform the operation, and such 

 an individual arose in the middle of the last century, to 

 do the realm of nature that service. It proved to be 

 Carl Von Linne, or, as he is better known to English ears, 

 Charles Linnaeus. This master genius was born at 

 Rashult, in the province of Smaland, Sweden, in the 

 latter part of May, 1707, and the term of his life spanned 

 seventy-one years. Mr. Jackson, of the London Linnaean 

 Society, tersely expressed the influence that Linne's per- 

 sonal magnetism, public lectures, teachings, and his one 

 hundred and eighty published books and papers had 

 upon natural science, when he said: "He found biology 

 a chaos; he left it a cosmos." With him classification 

 was a passion, and the description of natural objects a 

 pastime that occupied every moment of his thoughts. 

 To botany he gave the natural system of classification, or 

 a classification based upon a knowledge of the structure 

 of plants, their flowers and fruits. This, his original 

 scheme, has come down to us through a century and a 

 half of time, in practically the same principle as when it 

 left his hands. He revolutionized the entire system of 

 nomenclature by his use of generic and specific names 

 and by the employment of the higher groups used in 

 taxonomy. Linnaeus' mind, however, appreciated prob- 

 ably little or nothing of what a species really is, or what 

 species are now known to be in the light of modern re- 

 search. To him a species was an immutable integer; 

 when once found and properly described it was good for 

 all time, as it was good as an expression of what that 



