Classification of Plants. 23 



atist; as Sachs puts it, ''he might almost be said to 

 have been a classifying, co-ordinating, and subordin- 

 ating machine ". His physiology was not even up-to- 

 date; of pedigrees he had at most a fleeting idea. His 

 main desire was to name and to arrange, and in this 

 he did service by emphasizing the importance of the 

 stamens, which served him better than he had from 

 our point of view any right to expect. 



He classified flowering plants with especial reference 

 to the number of the stamens, as Monandria, Diandria, 

 Triandria, &c.; and this narrow basis often led him to 

 right results in the detection of affinities. It is a 

 remarkable fact in the history of classification that 

 characters which at first sight do not seem to be of 

 great importance, may nevertheless serve as good in- 

 dices to affinities. 



Though it was, in a sense, only a scientific trick, the 

 establishment of the binomial nomenclature, by which 

 each kind of organism received two names, a generic 

 and a specific, e.g. Bellis perennis (the daisy) or Viola 

 canina (the dog violet), has proved of great service in 

 classification, and although it cannot be called the 

 invention of Linnaeus, it was certainly established by 

 him. 



In the eyes of his contemporaries the great service 

 of Linnaeus was that he established greater order than 

 heretofore in the maze of living forms. In the eyes of 

 his modern successors "the greatest and most lasting 

 service which Linnaeus rendered both to botany and 

 zoology lies in the certainty and precision which he 

 introduced into the art of describing ". 



For the order which he established was, on the 

 whole, an artificial order, corresponding to nothing real 

 in the genetic relationships of plants. At the same 

 time, it must be remembered that Linnaeus had an 

 esoteric classification, as it were, a sketch of a natural 

 system (a true sy sterna naturce), the merits of which were 

 duly recognized by the Jussieus (uncle and nephew), 

 who laid the foundations of our modern arrangement 

 of flowering plants. 



While many of Linnets successors seem simply to 



