37 



definitely the question of Artedi's sole authorship, hut 

 it is still more clearly proved by what Artedi himself 

 wrote in the Preface he indited in London, that is to 

 say before he met Linnaeus in Leyden. We find there 

 that Artedi gives a brief account of what his work is 

 to contain, and writes in one place as follows: — "I then 

 remarked that no ichthyologist had up to that time 

 ever differentiated Genera clearly, nor described their 

 characters, nor marked off Species"; he then goes on 

 to relate that he has been at very great pains to exam- 

 ine fishes throughout their structure, for the purpose 

 of detecting the methods by which generic characters 

 and the very genera themselves had arisen, "and that the 

 impartial reader can convince himself of in the 'Philo- 

 sophia". "I saw, furthermore", he says, "that most of 

 the generic names were not of Latin, but of base origin, 

 and I have purged Ichthyology of those barbarims". 

 He mentions, too, having discarded such generic names 

 of fishes as were also used in other departments of the 

 animal world, in order to banish all cause of confusion, 

 and relates that he has explained the distinction be- 

 tween real Species and mere Varieties, and that he has 

 pointed out what specific names are spurious and what 

 genuine, etc. In a word, he states briefly but com- 

 pletely what the contents of each part of his work are, 

 and by so doing has placed it upon record beyond 

 gainsaying that the work proceeded from his own brain 

 and is not in part the production of another. On the 

 other hand, it is in like manner incredible that Linnaeus 

 should have borrowed any of his theses from the manu- 

 script of his friend, for the "Fundamenta Botanica" was 

 in a finished state when the meeting of the two friends 

 in Amsterdam took place, and was probably already 

 printed by the time Clifford had redeemed Artedi's 

 manuscripts. How are we then to explain to ourselves 

 the remarkable degree of harmony subsisting between 

 the fundamental rules laid down by the two investiga- 

 tors'? It is doubtless wholly due to the agreement in 

 their respective acceptations of science and scientific 



