318 A SHORT HISTORY OF SCIENCE 



sified. The early work of Aristotle in zoology and of Theophras- 

 tus in botany, as well as that of Gesner in the sixteenth century 

 and Ray and Grew and Malpighi and Willughby in the seventeenth 

 have been referred to above, but until we come to Buff on (1707 

 1785), the French naturalist, and Linnaeus (Carl von Linne) (1707- 

 1778), the Swedish, we meet with no other great name, and find 

 no important researches on record within the field of natural 

 history. Buffon's special contribution to science was a fine work 

 on "Natural History," and an infectious enthusiasm which so 

 popularized him that 20,000 people are said to have mourned at 

 his funeral. 



Linngeus was also an immensely popular writer and teacher of 

 natural history, who at the same time advanced the science of 

 botany by introducing an order and system into the classifica- 

 tion of plants which facilitated their comparative study. It is 

 not too much to say that Linneeus established botany as a 

 science. He also did much work upon animals and minerals, but 

 his famous dictum, "stones grow, plants grow and live, and 

 animals grow, live, and feel," while emphasizing an important 

 and fundamental similarity in natural objects, has long since lost 

 whatever standing it may once have had. It is not so much in 

 their properties as in their substance that stones, plants, and 

 animals agree, and the greatest service done by Linnaeus for 

 science was his insistence on the importance of the careful ob- 

 servation of likeness and difference, and of clear and accurate 

 description. To this end he introduced a binomial system, so 

 that closer and more accurate classification in natural history 

 was facilitated and ever after employed. His first great work, Sys- 

 tema natures, was published in 1735. His collection of plants, 

 insects, books, etc. now forms the nucleus of the Linnsean 

 Society library in London, founded in 1788. The special pro- 

 cedures adopted by him proved to be artificial, and were soon re- 

 placed by a more natural basis of classification introduced by de 

 Jussieu ; but the scientific names applied to many animals (includ- 

 ing man himself, Homo sapiens) and many plants, are still in com- 

 mon use throughout the scientific world. 



