TAXONOMY AND EVOLUTION 



By X 



" Some passages in this book, if taken alone and read hastily, may 

 appear to discourage systematic Zoology. This is far from my inten- 

 tion. No one can study the great naturalists of the seventeenth and 

 eighteenth centuries without feeling how seriously their work is impaired 

 by the defective systems of the time. It is not systematic but aimless 

 work that I deprecate — work that springs from no real curiosity in 



" Natural History of Aquatic Insects," Preface, p. i. 



Introduction 



Linnaeus bestowing Latin names upon animals and plants 

 was simply tripping gaily across the back of a half submerged 

 Behemoth and mistaking it for dry land. Now the beast is 

 careering around, and in spite of zoological congresses and inter- 

 national rules nobody quite knows what to do with him. No 

 doubt when some zoological czar arises and issues his fiat a uni- 

 form system of nomenclature will be adopted and things will 

 begin to straighten themselves out. This can only be a matter 

 of time — the past can not be altered. On systematists to-day 

 necessarily devolves the dull, difficult and important duty of 

 going through the descriptive work of the early naturalists and 

 emending it; so that Spallanzani 's derisive sobriquet of 

 "nomenclature naturalists" was a little unjust, even in his time. 



Whatever opinions may be held upon the genius of Linnaeus, 

 in justice to him it should be said that it was not until his ex- 

 ample had been followed by a crowd of other workers eager to 

 attain to immortality by way of the back door he had left open 

 that the fat was really in the fire. 



Well knowing the confusion into which systematic work in 

 zoology was brought by the early naturalists, modern systemat- 

 ists in our opinion will be the authors of a similar confusion in 

 the future if some of the slipshod methods of modern syste- 

 matica are not corrected. Moreover, a confused nomenclature 

 is not the least of the evils which second-rate systematic work 

 brings in its train. 



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