MR. T. SOUTHWELL ON OLD-TIME NORFOLK BOTANISTS. 379 
In 1735 appeared the first edition of the Systema A aturce 
of Linnaeus, which, however imperfect we may regard it at 
the present time, was an immense improvement on the state 
of chaos which had previously prevailed, whilst the bi-nominal* 
method of nomenclature introduced in his Species 
Plantarum in 1753 speedily led to the abandonment of the 
clumsy descriptive terminology at that time in use. Our 
great countryman, Ray, had, to a large extent, prepared us for 
tins change and had indeed foreshadowed in his Methodus 
Plantarum the natural system now in vogue, to be referred 
to later on, and l have already mentioned the part which 
Stillingfleet took in popularizing the great Swedish Natur- 
alist’s works amongst British Botanists, but perhaps the 
most strenuous supporter of the Linnean system in this 
Country was our own citizen Sir James E. Smith, whose 
history is so well known that a very brief notice here will be 
sufficient. 
Smith was born at Norwich on 2nd December, 1759. He 
studied medicine in Edinburgh, and subsequently in London, 
under John Hunter, and took the M.D. degree at Leyden in 
1786. The medical profession, however, seems to have 
possessed very little attraction for him and the purchase of 
Linnaeus’s Library and Collections in the year 1784, although 
it did not deter him from proceeding to his degree, was the 
means of diverting his whole energies to botanical pursuits, 
and medicine took a subordinate place in his very active 
life. Smith founded the Linnean Society in 1788, and was 
its first president. In 1814 he was knighted by George IV., 
and died in Surrey Street, Norwich. 17th March, 1828, leaving 
a widow who survived him till 1877, dying at Lowestoft at 
the age of 104 years. Of the many works which issued from 
* Caspar Bauhin in his ‘ Pinax Theairi Botanic i ,’ issued in 1623 (a work 
I have not seen) largely uses a bi-nominal terminology, but Mr. B. B. Wood- 
ward informs me that this was only done for th» sake of brevity in lettering 
his illustrations, and not with a view to i s introduction as a system. The 
Rules adopted by the International Botanical Congress at Vienna ( 1905) accept 
the earliest specific name of a plant, no matter under what genus it was first 
described, and the names of plants date from the First Edition of Linmvus’s 
Species plantarum ( 1 753). 
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