208 CENTENARY OF THE LINNEAN SOCIETY OF LONDON. 



position of the Society was due less to its age than to the remark- 

 able activity of its Fellows, the importance of their work, and the 

 speedy and efficient manner in which the communications were put 

 before the world. During the past year the Society had published 

 seven parts of Transactions, four deyoted to botany and three to 

 zoology, containing 429 pages, 89 plates, and 2 maps. During the 

 same period there had been issued 20 numbers of the Journal, 9 

 being botanical and 11 zoological, containing 1151 pages, 56 plates, 

 and 54 woodcuts, together with the Proceedings for the year, 

 requiring 65 pages of letterpress. These publications contained 

 papers of the highest importance in all departments of science. 

 Not everything submitted to the Society found a place in its publi- 

 cations. Every communication was reported upon by one or more 

 experts, and was afterwards carefully considered by the council, and 

 only real contributions to knowledge, expressed in fitting language, 

 were published. Fellowship was not limited to men of science, but 

 it was extended to lovers and patrons of science, who often ren- 

 dered valuable services. At one time the reading of papers at the 

 Society's meetings was not followed by discussion, and the pro- 

 posal to allow discussion was at first opposed as an innovation 

 " that would turn the meeting-room into an arena for gladiatorial 

 combats of rival intellects and lead to the ruin of the society." 



In conclusion, Mr. Carruthers gave some account of the Society's 

 collections, and, after the usual vote of thanks, proceeded to read 

 a eulogium on Linnaeus, prepared for the occasion by Prof. There 

 Fries, the present occupant of the Chair of Botany at Upsala, who 

 was not able to be present in person. 



Prof. Fries began by referring to the profound sleep of the 

 natural sciences through the middle ages, to the hard battles that 

 had to be fought before men of science could liberate themselves 

 from the fetters of a narrow orthodoxy, and to the restraining 

 bands men of science had forged for themselves by attaching infal- 

 libility to Greek and Eoman authors rather than to the works of 

 Nature. They worked slowly forward to a truer conception through 

 the 16th and 17th centuries, longing for one who should bring 

 order and quickening life. At last came Linnseus, to whom, 

 although a poor and unknown youth, the world almost immediately 

 paid homage as a master of the extensive dominion of natural his- 

 tory. And to-day his name was mentioned with the highest 

 respect in all lands upon which culture had shed its benign rays. 

 Passing over the story of his eventful life the eulogist surveyed the 

 part taken by Linnaeus in the development of the sciences to which 

 his penetrating activity extended itself. Upon botany his systematic 

 mind stamped its impress for all time. Industrious naturalists had 

 described as well as they could plants brought from all parts of the 

 world ; but their descriptions were a shapeless mass of material- 

 There was no lack of system, but none satisfied even the unassu- 

 ming demands of those times. The Upsala student, at the age of 

 twenty-two, exhibited to his teacher some outlines of a system 

 which, when published under the name of the sexual system, 

 rapidly supplanted all predecessors. It was so simple that a child 



