BRIEF iiisronr of the sciknce of zoology 



4G.: 



ist, John Ray. He saw the importance of reeognizmo; in ani- 

 mals categories of successively diminishing rank in the ^'arious 

 classes of the animal kingdom. But it was left to Linnteus 

 (b. in Sweden 1707, d. 1778) to perfect the system by estab- 

 lishing categories. The animal kingdom was di\'ided by him 

 into classes, the classes into orders, each order into genera, and 

 each genus into species. He in- 

 vented the binomial nomencla- 

 tiu'e that is still in use for both 

 plants and animals. The first 

 name is a sort of surname and 

 indicates the genus ; the second 

 name gives the particular species. 

 Thus, Felis catus is the particular 

 name of the cat, Felis leo of the 

 lion, Felis tigris of the tiger, and 

 so on. Finallj', Linnaeus intro- 

 duced the method of brief de- 

 scription of the characteristic Fio. 417. — RImcrllus Malpighi. 

 . , r . . 1 /. From Loev, " liUAo^y and its 



pomts of each group m place of Makers," New York, Henry Holt 



the wordy, ill-ordered descrip- and Companj-. 

 tions of his predecessors. The brilliancy of Linnseus's work 

 attracted many investigators, and the interest in collecting and 

 classifying species remains to this day. Such '\\'ork, although 

 often fascinating, is not the highest tyi^e of scientific work. 



The foundations of modern morphological or anatomical 

 zoology were laid in part by men whose original interest was 

 medical and in part l)y a new school of naturalists who studied 

 the structure and behavior of the lower animals. As early as 

 the middle of the seventeenth century we find Malpighi, pro- 

 fessor of medicine at Bologna, publishing his investigations 



