Mar. 31, 1908. The Queensland Naturalist. 7 
To quote the Gardener's Chronicle, of 25 May, 1907, 
“ Linnaeus, or, as he was afterwards called, Carl Von Linne, 
showed from earl^^ childhood a great interest in plant and 
insect life, much to the disappointment of his father, who 
wanted his son to take up theological studies. Linne fol- 
lowed his own inclinations, and went to the University 
Lund, where, under great privations, he studied for some 
time, afterwards going to Upsala, where at the expiration 
of two years, he was appointed Lecturer in Botany.” 
From this source of information, we may also gather 
a list of Linnaeus’ publications (which is a very defective 
one, however, omitting many titles), and other particulars. 
His life work may be alluded under various headings 
as follows : — 
The Linneak System of Naming Animals and Plants, 
An International Congress that met in Vienna, in 1905, 
adopted, as the 1st Rule of Botanical Nomenclature, the 
following one : — “ Natural history can make no progress 
without a regular system of nomenclature which is recognised 
and used by the great majority of naturalists of all 
countries.” 
Previous to Linnaeus, the different living things were 
designated by single names, by class names qualified by 
more or less long phrases, and less frequently and latterly 
by binomials as at present, but no definite rule was followed 
with regard to the matter ; there was no system. 
Single names principally sufficed for the natural history 
writers of antiquity, dealing as they did with few kinds of 
animals or plants. However, when, with the revival of 
learning, attention was paid to their works as a source 
for information, especially in the interests of the healing 
art, and accordingly for an insight into the materia medica 
of ancient Rome and Greece, the identity of both the 
animals and plants, on which their single names had been 
bestowed, puzzled the most erudite, and has in some instances 
to this day remained unsettled. Special reference being 
made to the writings of Artedi, Gesner, Fuchsius, Matthioli, 
etc., to which Hallam and others have referred. 
At the same time, the designation of natural objects 
by phrases, recapitulating salient features— attached to 
generic titles, found in the works of writers of the seventeenth 
and earlier centuries, and of which we have a few examples 
relating to Australian vegetation — in the ‘‘Voyages” of 
Dampier, 1696, early proved not only cumbersome, but 
constituting a nomenclature making for practical use 
excessive demands on man’s memory, a fact alone sufficient 
to lorbid its employment, 
A service then, conferred on the student of Nature 
y Linnseus, was that of devising a system — now universally 
