THE PLACE OF LINNEUS IN THE HISTORY OF BOTANY 269 
The following extract from Prof. Hansen’s arguments will 
show the character of his writings on this matter :—‘‘ Linné der 
den meisten Laien als grésster, vielfach als einziger Botaniker 
bekannt ist, kann von unseren heutigen Beso tei kaum mehr 
als Botaniker bezeichnet werden. Er hat unsere Kenntnis vom 
Wesen der Pflanze so gut wie gar nicht cole er hinterliess 
vo g 
benutzt. Linné’s System hat mit der Sexualitét der Pflanzen so 
wenig zu thun, wie die Statistik tiber die Augenfarbe bei Schul- 
kindern mit der physiologischen Optik.” 
Prof., Dr. N. Wille, of Christiania, ba tap to both these writers, t 
and this able botanist remarks that the ignorance and lack of 
indeed, surprising for a isan 't of botany. In his reply, Wille 
criticizes in detail some of the most eters tg eB! of Han 
sen, i he very appropri Prov tas exclai ‘‘ Was it the fault at 
Linnaus that his successors did not andatatatid the edt which he 
fiidioated within the domains of phytogeography and ecology? It 
was first in the latter part of the last century these ideas were 
developed, and then it was pay that they were already pre- 
sented in nuce in the baie of Lin 
In this connection we may point | ut that Linneus, in his Oratio 
de telluris habitabilis sietenents (1743) mentions most of the points 
in regard to dispersal of plants, which Darwin more than one 
hundred years later renewed, and only recently have ere treated 
from an empirical and experimental side by Sernande 
Wille concludes his articles above referred to with the Eee 
ords :— ing a Norwegian, I have no national interest in step- 
pits trad as a defendant of Sweden’s great soe oc against the 
injudicious attacks of certain German naturalists of more or less 
sion 
works, and the more I have endeavoured to penetrate into these 
higher my admiration has a for this powerful, comprehensive 
genius, which is as n the biological scien 2) 
eighteenth century as a ‘Daiwia diving the nineteenth. ” 
[The first application of the ‘‘ nomina trivialia ”—that is, specific 
names in the modern sense—will be found in the Pan suecus, first 
published at ea in 1749, and reprinted in the Amenitates 
Academica, vol. il. pp. 225, seqq. On this point see Alphonse De Can- 
dolle, La Phytographie, p. 89, 343-344, and on the larger question of 
rere b influence on natural science, consult the same volume, 
p. 5.—B. Daypon Jacxson.] 
* Compare with this sentence that of Sachs, p. 85, quoted above. 
+ N. Wille: ‘‘ Goethe eller Linné.” Et svar til “‘Vossische Zeitung,” i 
Berlin. " Aftenposten, Nos. 644 & 645. Christiania, 1903. 
