Jtjnb 21, 1907] 



SCIENCE 



957 



collection of animals. Thus his resources 

 for such an important undertaking were 

 extremely limited, being restricted to his 

 own considerable first-hand knowledge of 

 the fauna of Sweden, to the few specimens 

 of exotic animals he had been able to see 

 in Lund, Upsala and Stockholm, and to the 

 scanty literature of the subject there avail- 

 able. When the second edition appeared, 

 in 1740, he had spent less than three years 

 and a half in foreign countries, mainly in 

 Holland with single brief visits to London 

 and Paris, but his interests on these occa- 

 sions were botanical and not zoological. 



The sixth edition (the third revised by 

 the author), published in 1748, was in effect 

 a synopsis of the fauna of Sweden, filled in, 

 as regards the fauna of the rest of the 

 world, by compilations from his predeces- 

 sors. Strange as it may seem, outside of 

 the tropical genera Simia, Bradypus, Dasy- 

 pus, Myrmecophaga and Manis, this edition 

 enumerates only thirteen species of mam- 

 mals not found in Sweden. Only 140 are 

 recorded for his whole class 'Animalium 

 quadrupedium, ' one third of which are 

 Scandinavian. 



This analysis could be extended to other 

 classes with practically similar results. The 

 class Insecta, for example, includes only 13 

 species that are not also recorded in the 

 'Fauna Suecica,' showing how limited was 

 his knowledge of the world 's fauna at 1748. 



The tenth edition (the fourth revised by 

 the author), published in 1758, is the epoch- 

 making work in the history of zoology, as in 

 this the binomial system of nomenclature 

 for the whole animal kingdom is introduced 

 for the first time. The work is also greatly 

 enlarged, and the classification greatly im- 

 proved, especially that of the mammals, 

 which class is now for the first time aptly 

 designated Mammalia. The ordinal term 

 Primates is substituted for Anthropo- 

 morpha of the sixth and previous editions, 

 the sloths (genus Bradypus) are removed 



from it, the genus Lemur is added, as a 

 new genus, and the bats are transferred to 

 it from the Ferse. A new order, Bruta, is 

 made up of his former third order Agrise, 

 now suppressed, and of such other ex- 

 tremely heterogeneous elements as the ele- 

 phant, the manatee, sloths, anteaters and 

 the scaly anteaters. The order Ferae con- 

 sists of six properly associated genera; the 

 armadillos, insectivores and bats, formerly 

 included in it, being removed elsewhere. 

 His fourth order, Bestiffi, is a new group, 

 composed of the pigs, armadillos, opossums 

 and insectivores. The fifth order, Glires, 

 is a natural group, except for the inclusion 

 of the genus Rhinoceros, now most strangely 

 placed with the squirrels and mice. His 

 sixth order, Peeora, is retained as in the 

 previous editions, and is also a natural 

 group. The seventh, BelluEe, is a new 

 ordinal group, consisting of the genera 

 Equus and Hippopotamus, transferred 

 from the here disrupted order Jumenta of 

 previous editions. The Cete, now removed 

 by him from the fishes, form his eighth 

 and last order. This reconstruction of the 

 ordinal groups is a great improvement ; five 

 ^new genera are added, two old ones elimi- 

 nated, and the number of species is in- 

 creased from 140 to 185. In some of the 

 other classes there are similar radical 

 changes, but there is not time to refer to 

 them. 



The twelfth, and the last edition revised 

 by the author, published in 1766, shows 

 many improvements over the tenth. It is 

 greatly increased in bulk through the addi- 

 tion of many new genera and a large num- 

 ber of new species. The classification is 

 also judiciously modified at many points. 

 Taking again the class of mammals for 

 illustration, the number of orders is re- 

 duced from eight to seven, through the 

 suppression of the grossly unnatural order 

 Bestife and the transference of its genera 

 to other associations, with, however, the 



