840 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



to the feeding, to the wings in birds, and to the presence or ab- 

 sence of elytrae in insects. But his distinction rests pre-eminently 

 on his work in botany, and to this most of his publications relate. 

 He was not the originator either of the sexual system of classi- 

 fication or of the binary nomenclature ; for the former, as we 

 have seen, was suggested by other students whose essays he read 

 and whose ideas he put in practice ; and the latter was applied, 

 as has been shown in a sketch in a previous number of the 

 " Monthly," nearly two hundred years before him, by Pierre Be*- 

 lon. But Linnaeus made it general and established it in science. 

 The formal introduction of his system of classification was made 

 in the " Systema Naturae," which Gronovius published at Leyden 

 in 1735, in three sheets, according to one authority, or in eight 

 folio sheets, according to another. It was enlarged in successive 

 subsequent editions, of which the twelfth appeared during the 

 author's lifetime. It was followed in 1736 by the " Fundamenta 

 Botanica," of twenty-six pages, which contained an exposition of 

 the author's theory as worked out after seven years of study and 

 the examination of eight thousand plants. This work, amplified, 

 afterward developed into two — the " Bibliotheca Botanica," Am- 

 sterdam, 1756 ; and the " Classes Plantarum " or " Systemata 

 Plantarum," Leyden, 1738 ; while a more detailed explanation of 

 the system of nomenclature was given in the " Critica Botanica," 

 Leyden, 1737. These three works were the beginning of the 

 great reform in botany ; but the doctrine of Linnaeus on these 

 subjects, co-ordinated in its parts and illustrated by examples, was 

 reproduced as a whole in 1751 in the " Philosophia Botanica," 

 Stockholm — a work which served as the foundation for most of 

 the minor treatises till Linnaeus's artificial system of classification 

 was supplemented by the natural system. The " Genera Plan- 

 tarum," 1737, gave full descriptions of the genera, " according to 

 the number, shape, position, and proportion of all the parts of 

 fructification," and is pronounced by Mr. B. Daydon Jackson, in 

 the " Encyclopaedia Britannica," " a volume which must be con- 

 sidered the starting-point of modern systematic botany." In the 

 " Species Plantarum," 1753, "the author's most important contri- 

 bution to scientific literature," the trivial names expressing some 

 obvious character to designate species are fully set forth. 



The nomenclature introduced by Linnaeus has endured, and 

 the names he gave to species are still living ; so that " in what- 

 ever part of the world one may be, if there are botanists or profes- 

 sional gardeners, there it is enough to give the Linnaean name of a 

 plant to have its identity understood at once." His system of 

 classification has given way to the more philosophical natural 

 system by affinities based upon comparison of all the parts and 

 qualities of the plant. There is reason to believe that he foresaw 



