OF THE LIFE OF I I'FM’/’EUS. 
223 
u sisted only of a few pages 1 * ; heginhir r bt. the twelfib And last 
ii edition which appeared at Stockholm in 1767, at the expiration of 
thirty years aiter its first appearance, formed two large volumes. 
“ All the creatures of the animal reign then known, were arranged in 
“ it with as much accuracy and precision as the plants had been 
“ described in his botanical works. Every animal with its cha- 
u ra&eristics, its synonymous and trivial names, its country and prin- 
« cipal qualities, could easily be found in it. He taught us to distin- 
“ guish the species of the serpents by the number of their shields or 
“ scales, the fishes by the position of their fins, and was the first who 
“ ranged in due order the inse&s, those dumb and deaf instruments of 
K nature, which colleft in much larger numbers than any other living 
“ animals, and are in general only known by the mischief which we 
“ accuse them of committing upon us.” 
Lin n jEU s also introduced a more convenient method of ordering the 
testaceous animals*. The stone-plants or corals were even before his 
time mixed with the zoophites, worms, and inse£ts. Linnaeus pointed 
out their distinctive marks, and all were thus put in their proper place. All 
the animated beings were described on that muster-roll in such a manner 
that the lover of nature on the frigid coast of Greenland might learn to 
know by it even the smallest butterfly in the regions of India. 
The merits of Linnaeus in Mineralogy w T ere, doubtless, very shin- 
ing and eminent. He was the first who established the genera in that 
science, and precisely indicated their charafleristic signs. His mi. 
* “ Linn.*us,” says Condorcit in his panegyric, “might doubtless have employed 
“ with regard to the animals the system which he used for the plants, but he was appre. 
“ hensive, lest, in spite of all the modesty and gravity which appeared in his lessons and his 
“ works, that method should too frequently offer to his pupils, images which naturalists 
** themselves cannot always have the privilege to contemplate with total indifference.” 
* neral 
