CENTENARY OF THE LINNEAN SOCIETY OF LONDON, 20Si 



could grasp it. Contemporaries and successors rejoiced at the dis- 

 covery of the thread of the labyrinth which for centuries had been 

 sought in vain. Linnaeus, with clear insight, had openly suggested 

 the weakness of the system and put forward the establishment of a 

 natural system which he laboured to find. Down to our days 

 botanists had tried to raise the edifice of a natural system of plants 

 without getting it complete or even being able to agree on a ground- 

 plan. But all that agreed that Linnaeus, over against an artificial 

 system, set forth in a clear light the character and form of the 

 natural one, marked out the way for its development, and secure i 

 its supremacy. By successive works Linnaeus reconstructed des- 

 criptive botany in almost every detail and that in such a manner 

 that the opinions he expressed and the laws he established are even 

 to this day approved of as in all essentials correct. From botanical 

 language he swept away its inrooted barbarism, and gave the 

 proper stability by accurately limiting every botanical idea and fur- 

 nishing it with definite, appropriate nomenclature. For describing 

 plants and naming them he set up simple practical rules based on 

 a careful analytical examination of the structure of many thousand 

 species, especially their flowers and fruits. In opposition to all his 

 predecessors he drew a sharp line between species and variations. 

 To the then known 8000 species he gave not only new and appro- 

 priate names, but also new definitions, and he added critically 

 tested statements of their nomenclature by prior authors, together 

 with an account of their native country, manner of appearing, pro- 

 perties, uses, and so forth, and all this in a way easily apprehended 

 in accordance with the simple laws he himself had established. 

 All his work he endeavoured to arrange on the most natural and 

 easily comprehended plan. In small as well as large things he 

 proved himself a master yet unsurpassed in producing regularity 

 and order where previously ignorance, carelessness, or arbitrariness 

 tad generated obscurity and confusion. It was sometimes said he 

 was not qualified for the study of vegetable anatomy, and revealed 

 a one-sided love for descriptive botany ; but the reproach usually 

 came from one-sided anatomists. The amount of what he did bor- 

 dered on the miraculous. He himself admitted that the naming, 

 describing, and classifying of plants was not the only or the highest 

 function of the science, but only a necessary condition for a suc- 

 cessful study of the more important parts. It was almost impos- 

 sible to point to an investigator in botany who had studied the 

 world of plants from so many sides, and who pointed out so many 

 new aspects from which it ought to be examined. Much that had 

 been said about botany applied also in the department of zoology. 

 % establishing new, easily-understood laws, he made scientific, 

 descriptive zoology, and he laid the first groundwork of a 1 il 

 system. In the history of mineralogy he occupied a by no means 

 unimportant position, chiefly through his re-arrangement of the 

 mineral kingdom. More conspicuous was his energetic zeal in the 

 field of medicine. He attempted to arrange scientifically the dif- 

 ferent forms of diseases. It was easy now, compared with what it 

 *as in the time of Linmeus, to bring together collections from 



Journal of Botany.— Vol. 26. [July, 1888.] 



