332 LINNiEUS AND THE JUSSIEUS 



necessary for the profitable discussion of deep questions 

 of biology. He was, for example, utterly unable to deal 

 with the great unformulated question of the nature of 

 affinity. He did indeed undertake to explain how 

 affinities arose, but no practical naturalist could have 

 explained it worse. He propounds the general principle 

 that all the species which now exist were created in the 

 beginning.^ But doubts of various kinds and difiierent 

 degrees of weight had occurred to himself and others ; 

 we shall mention only one. The water-gentian (Vil- 

 larsia or Limnanthemum) has the fruit of a gentian, but 

 the leaf of a water-lily. This could, Linnaeus supposes, 

 mean nothing less than that the water-gentian is a 

 hybrid between a gentian and a water-lily, and with 

 incredible rashness he affirmed that the pollen of a 

 water-lily had fertilised the pistil of a gentian. No 

 proofs were adduced, and without pausing to sub- 

 stantiate his crude speculation, Linnaeus went on to 

 extend it without limits. The Creator, he tells us, had 

 originally fashioned a few independent forms, which he 

 allowed to commingle ; thence came genera. Nature 

 then took the genera in hand, and commingled them, 

 thereby producing species. Lastly, chance operated 

 on the species, and produced varieties. The wonder is 

 that a naturalist who, stans pede in uno, put forth so 

 daring and unsupported a theory, should ever have been 

 listened to again on the affinity question. It is a trifle 

 that he contradicts his own general principle (quoted in 

 the last foot-note).^ 



^ "Species tot euumeramus, quot diversae formas in prinoipio sunt oreatse." 

 Phil. Bot., §157. 



^See Linnaeus, Phil. Bot., § 157 and passages there cited. Genera PlaTUamm, 

 6th ed., 1764, p. v. (not in earlier editions), Fundamentum Fruotifioationis 

 and Plantse Hybridas in Amcen. Acad. ; also Sachs' comments in History of 

 Botany, Eng. trans., pp. 105-7. 



