NATURAL HISTORY 



whole field of natural history. When this work was 

 published, the clearness of the views expressed and 

 the systematic arrangement of the various classifica- 

 tions excited great astonishment and admiration, and 

 placed Linnaeus at once in the foremost rank of nat- 

 uralists. This work was followed shortly by other 

 publications, mostly on botanical subjects, in which, 

 among other things, he worked out in detail his fa- 

 mous "system." 



This system is founded on the sexes of plants, and 

 is usually referred to as an " artificial method" of 

 classification because it takes into account only a 

 few marked characters of plants, without uniting them 

 by more general natural affinities. At the present 

 time it is considered only as a stepping-stone to the 

 "natural" system; but at the time of its promulgation 

 it was epoch-marking in its directness and simplicity, 

 and therefore superiority, over any existing systems. 



One of the great reforms effected by Linnaeus was 

 in the matter of scientific terminology. Technical 

 terms are absolutely necessary to scientific progress, 

 and particularly so in botany, where obscurity, am- 

 biguity, or prolixity in descriptions are fatally mis- 

 leading. Linnaeus's work contains something like a 

 thousand terms, whose meanings and uses are carefully 

 explained. Such an array seems at first glance ar- 

 bitrary and unnecessary, but the fact that it has re- 

 mained in use for something like two centuries is in- 

 disputable evidence of its practicality. The descrip- 

 tive language of botany, as employed by Linnaeus, 

 still stands as a model for all other subjects. 



Closely allied to botanical terminology is the sub- 



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