246 



SCIENCE. 



LN. S. Vol. XVI. No. 398. 



tematic zoology and botany, and with the 

 ' Systema Naturse ' arose a new era in the 

 science of living organisms. 



In common with most naturalists of his 

 day, the spirit of Linnseus was essentially 

 a devout one. Admiration for the wonder- 

 ful works of God was breathed on almost 

 every page. ' Jehovah ! quam ampla sunt 

 ■opera Tua ' is on the title-page of the ' Sys- 

 tema Naturse, ' and the inscription over the 

 door of his home at Hammarby was, to 

 Linnffius, the wisdom of his life. This in- 

 scription read : ' Innocue vivito : Numen 

 adest' (Live blameless: God is here). 



The followers of LinnsEus are divided 

 into two classes, explorers and compilers. 

 To the first class belonged his own students 

 and others who ransacked all lands for 

 species to be added to the lists of the ' Sys- 

 tema Naturffi. ' These men, mostly Scandi- 

 navian and Dutch, worked with wonderful 

 zeal, enduring every hardship and making 

 great contributions to knowledge, which 

 they published in more or less satisfactory 

 forms. To these men we owe the begin- 

 nings of the science of geographical distri- 

 bution. Among the most notable of these 

 are Per Osbeck and Frederick Hasselquist, 

 already noted ; Otto Fabricius, author of a 

 'Fauna of Greenland'; Caret Thunberg, 

 successor of Linnreus as head of the Univer- 

 sity of Upsala, who collected fishes about 

 Nagasaki, entrusting most of the descrip- 

 tive work to the less skillful hands of his 

 students Jonas Nicolas Ahl and M. Hout- 

 tuyn, Martin Th. Brunnich, who collected 

 at Marseilles the materials for his 'Pisces 

 Massiliensis ' ; Petriis Forskal, whose work 

 on the fishes of the Red Sea (Descriptio 

 Animatium, ' etc. ) , published posthumously 

 in 1775, is one of the most accurate of fau- 

 nal lists, and one which shows a fine feeling 

 for taxonomic distinctions, scarcely trace- 

 able in any previous author. George "Wil- 

 helm Steller, naturalist of Bering's expedi- 

 tion, gathered amid incredible hardships 



the first knowledge of the fishes of Alaska 

 and Siberia, his notes being printed after 

 his tragic death, by Pallas and Kraschenin- 

 nikow. Petrus Simon Pallas gives the ac- 

 count of his travels in the North Pacific in 

 his most valuable volumes, 'Zoographia 

 Russo-Asiatica. ' S. T. Gmelin and Giil- 

 denstadt, like Steller, crossed Siberia, re- 

 cording its animals. Johann David 

 Schopf, a Hessian surgeon stationed at 

 Long Island in the Revolutionary War, 

 gave an excellent account of the fishes about 

 New York. 



Other naturalists accompanied navi- 

 gators around the globe, collecting speci- 

 mens and information as opportunity of- 

 fered. John Reinhold Forster and Solan- 

 der sailed with Captain Cook. Commer- 

 son accompanied Bougainville and furnish- 

 ed nearly all the original material used by 

 Lacepede. Other noted travellers of the 

 early days were Sonnerat and Mungo Park. 



Still other naturalists, scarcely less use- 

 ful, gave detailed accounts of the fauna of 

 their own native regions. Ablest of these 

 was Anastole Risso, an apothecary of Nice, 

 who published in 1810 the ' Ichthyologie 

 de Nice,' an excellent work afterwards 

 (1826) expanded by him into a 'Histoire 

 Naturelle d 'Europe Meridionale. ' 



Contemporary with Risso was a man of 

 opposite character, Constantino Samuel 

 Rafinesque (1784-1842), who wrote at 

 Palermo in 1810 his 'Caratteri di Alcuni 

 Nuovi Generi' and 'Ittiologia Sciliana.' 

 Later he went to America, where he was 

 for a time professor in the Transylvania 

 University in Kentucky. Brilliant, erudite, 

 irresponsible, fantastic, he wrote of the 

 fishes of Sicily and later ('Ichthyologia 

 Ohiensis,' 1820) of the fishes of the Ohio 

 River, with wide knowledge, keen taxonom- 

 ic insight and a hopeless disregard of the 

 elementary principles of accuracy. Always 

 eager for novelties, restless and credulous, 

 his writings have been among the most diffl- 



