l8 SMITHSONIAN MISCELLANEOUS COLLECTIONS VOL. yy 



Specierum differentiis parem sui non habuit." (I have elaborated no 

 method of my own in the ichthyology, but Petr. Artedi, of Sweden, 

 the g^reatest ichthyologist of our age. who had not his equal in dis- 

 tinguishing the natural genera and the differential characters of the 

 species of fishes has left us his). 



Among the pupils of Linnaeus I need only mention L. T. Grono- 

 vius, son of J. F. Gronovius, who sponsored the first edition of his 

 Systema Naturae. The younger Gronovius in 1/54 published the first 

 and in 1756 the second volume of Museum Ichthyologicum to which 

 w^as appended his Amphibiorum Historia. In this work the genera 

 were quoted thus: Syngnathus. Arted. Gen. i, Linn. Gen. 148 

 (referring to the 6th edition of Linnaeus, Syst. Nat., 1748) ; then 

 follows : the generic characters ; the species designation (polynomi- 

 nal) ; the species synonymy; descriptive notes on the specimens and 

 remarks ; habitat ; vernacular names. In the Amphibiorum Historia 

 the treatment is similar and due reference made to each of the Lin- 

 naean genera, only here the quotation reads like this : " Coluber 

 Linn, syst p. 34, Gen. 89." He is consequently as thoroughgoing a 

 binarian as Linnaeus himself. 



That Brisson's genus concept did not differ from that of Linnaeus 

 is too well known to need further demonstration. As for his appli- 

 cation of it to mammals and birds, it is universally conceded that it 

 was superior to that of Linnaeus himself (and the same may be 

 truthfully said of the Gronovian genera of amphibians). Systemati- 

 cally and nomenclatorially there is no essential difi'erence between 

 the genera of Artedi, Gronovius, Brisson and Linnaeus himself before 

 1758. Nor did the year 1758 make any difference in this regard. 

 They were all binarians after that date as they were before. 



The species concept of these men was also essentially the same. 

 Linnaeus, as w^e know, already in 1735 treated the species as a sys- 

 tematic unit as definitely separate from the genus as the latter from 

 the order and the order from the class. The two categories he also 

 distinguished nomenclatorially. For the genus he employed a single 

 term consisting of one word ; the species he distinguished by another 

 term consisting of one or more words. His genera, in other words, 

 were uninominal (or as others prefer to call them, mononomial) ; the 

 species were to a great extent plurinominal (or polynomial). His was 

 consequently at that time a nomenclature consisting of two terms, a 

 nomenclature which unquestionably is binary. It certainly was not 

 yet fully binominal. The great reform in the name applied to the 

 species was not started on a grand scale until 1753, when Linnaeus 

 substituted the nomen triviale for the previous plurinominal desig- 



