June 21, 1907] 



SCIENCE 



961 



was recognized by himself as artificial and 

 provisional. It was intended only as a 

 stepping-stone to better things, when the 

 structure and affinities of animals should 

 become better known. The statistics al- 

 ready given indicate how limited was his 

 knowledge of the world's fauna; his classi- 

 fication of animals shows how little he knew 

 of their structure, and how often he was 

 misled by superficial resemblance^ Yet 

 his 'Systema Naturae' was the working 

 basis of all naturalists for the next half 

 century;* twelve editions were published 

 during his lifetime, and it was later trans- 

 lated into several of the continental lan- 

 guages. To such an extent was it regarded 

 as final by many subsequent naturalists that 

 when his groups began to be changed and 

 new genera interpolated it was deemed by 

 some of them little less than sacrilege. 

 When convenience demanded subdivision 

 of the larger genera, owing to the great 

 number of new species that had become 

 known since 1766, it was quite common to 

 consider the new groups as 'sections,' and 

 to give them merely vernacular names, or, 

 if their authors were bold enough to desig- 

 nate them by Latin names, they were com- 

 monly called subgenera. 



It was not till near the close of the 

 eighteenth century that there arose a new 

 class of naturalists, the anatomical school, 

 led by the elder Geoffrey and G. Cuvier, 

 who studied the internal structure of ani- 

 mals as well as their external parts. It 

 was, however, many years before the new 

 systems began to displace or greatly to 



' Turton, in his ' Life and Writings of Linn6,' 

 says: "To this system may be justly applied the 

 nervous observations of Dr. Johnson, in his de- 

 lineation of the character of Shakespeare. ' The 

 stream of time, which is continually washing 

 away the dissoluble fabrics of other systems, 

 passes without injury by the adamant of Linng.' " 

 — William Turton, ' A General System of Nature ' 

 * * * by Sir Charles Linng, Vol. VII., 1806, p. 

 [42]. 



modify the long-accepted and strongly in- 

 trenched Linnsean methods of grouping 

 animals. 



The great advance in biologic knowledge 

 since the time of Linnasus can not be easily 

 measured; it can be suggested by noting 

 the fact that comparative anatomy, embry- 

 ology, histology, paleontology, evolutionism 

 and many kindred lines of research have 

 nearly all had their origin or principal 

 development within the last century, all 

 converging for the solution of the genetic 

 relationships of animals and the origin of 

 life. Linnffius, in an oration delivered in 

 1743,^ held that each species of animal orig- 

 inated from a single pair, citing as incon- 

 trovertible proof the Mosaic account of the 

 creation. It is indeed a long look back to 

 th« middle of the eighteenth century when 

 his labors marked a new era in the history 

 of biology. In commemorating to-day the 

 two-hundredth anniversary of his birth, we 

 honor ourselves by showing our esteem for 

 the greatest naturalist of the eighteenth 

 century. 



J. A. Allen 



' In his oration ' De telluris habitabilis incre- 

 mento,' delivered and first published in 1743 

 and republished in 1744, and again in the second 

 volume of the ' Amoenitates AcademicEe ' in 1751, 

 he~gives his reasons for believing: "That at the 

 beginning to the world, there was created one 

 single sexual pair of every species of living thing. 



" To the proofs of this proposition," he con- 

 tinues, " I request those who are my auditors to 

 lend a favourable ear and willing attention. 



" Our holy Faith instructs us to believe that 

 the Divinity created a single pair of the human 

 kind, one individual Male, the other Female: The 

 sacred writing of Moses acquaint us that they 

 were placed in the Garden of Eden, and that 

 Adam there gave names to every species of animal, 

 God causing them to appear before him. 



" By a sexual pair I mean one male, and one 

 female in every species where the individuals dif- 

 fer in sex: * * * — J. F. Brand's translation, in 

 ' Select Dissertations from the Amoenitates Aca- 

 demicse,' 1781, pp. 75, 76. 



