LINN^US 321 



to the modern naturalist, but both will admit the spirit 

 and picturesqueness of the language. Here is a writer 

 who can say forcibly and concisely whatever he has in 

 his mind. In the description of his Amphibia almost 

 every word expresses repulsion : — " Amphibia pleraque 

 horrent corpore frigido, colore lurido, sceleto cartilagineo, 

 vita tenaci, cute nuda, facie torva, obtutu meditabundo, 

 odore tetro, sono rauco, loco squalido, veneno horrendo." 

 Contrast the cheerful words in which the horse is 

 described : — "Animal generosum, superbum, fortissimum 

 in currendo, portando, trahendo, aptissimum equitando, 

 cursu furens ; sylvis delectatur, &c." The mournful 

 wail of the cat (" clamando rixandoque misere amat") 

 is equally well hit off. His biographers tell us that in 

 his youth Linnaeus had read a good deal of Pliny the 

 elder. He thought little of grammar or style in com- 

 parison with accuracy of fact, and would rather, he said, 

 have his ears boxed thrice by Priscian than once by 

 Nature. 



Besides the animal and vegetable kingdoms Linnaeus 

 recognised, as the alchemists had done before him, a 

 Regnum Lapideum. He went beyond the alchemists 

 in classing the minerals and rocks by genera and species. 

 These misleading analogies have been long abandoned. 

 Mineralogy and Petrology cannot adopt the methods of 

 Biology, and the terms genus and species lose all mean- 

 ing when applied to lifeless objects, which are incapable 

 of descent or true relationship. 



Some disapprobation was caused by the place assigned 

 to Man in the Systema Natures, where he is included 

 in the same order with the apes, and in the same genus 

 with the orang. Haller remarked that Linnaeus could 

 hardly forbear making man a monkey or the monkeys 

 men. Cuvier gave Man an order to himself, and Owen 



