May 31, 1888. J 
JOURRAL OF HORTICULTURE AND COTTAGE GARDENER. 
451 
Sweden, who, he had no doubt, would be pleased to accept the honour 
which had been conferred upon him. His Majesty, he knew, took great 
interest in scientific subjects, and if he had been in England he would 
have attended that meeting, not only to show his attachment to science, 
but also to do what he could to unite more closely this Society with the 
corresponding Society in Sweden. (Cheers.) 
The Treasurer submitted a financial statement, which showed a total 
income for the past year of £3246, beginning with a balance of 
£321, and leaving one of £302. The sum of £1405 had been spent 
upon publications. 
■ Mr. 1). Jackson, Botanical Secretary, read part of a paper giving a 
history of the Linnean books, herbarium, and other collections. In the 
course of the paper it was stated that Sir J. E. Smith, on the recom¬ 
mendation of Sir J. Banks, bought the entire collection and library of 
Linnfeus in 1784, and six years later founded the Linnean Society. He 
remained President till his death in 1828, when the Society bought the 
entire collections (except the minerals, which were sold in 1794), and 
have carefully preserved them in their original state to the present day. 
The story that the vessel that brought the collections to England was 
closely chased by the man-of-war sent to intercept it was not accepted 
by the author. 
The President, in his annual address, said that in no previous year had 
the Society to mourn the loss, of so many members and co-workers at 
home and abroad. * They had just received the sad news of the sudden 
termination of a young and promising life. William Threlfall a few 
months ago was enrolled a Fellow. He set out for the East to explore 
the fiora of some districts in the Ottoman Empire in Asia. The Council 
had taken steps to help him in his work, and they were all looking for¬ 
ward to important results from his travels, when they were startled to 
learn that by a distressing accident he had lost his life. The work of 
the Society was being carried on more actively than ever ; young, 
earnest, and able men were stepping to the front. That day they had to 
survey a century rather than a year. The acquisition by Dr. J. E. 
Smith of everything which Linnmus possessed relating to natural 
history or medicine, with his entire library, manuscripts, and corre¬ 
spondence, raised him at once to a position of high eminence among the 
•students of natural history in England. The transference of the collec¬ 
tions to England created a second centre for naturalists in London. Sir 
J. Banks had opened his house and given free access to his collections 
and library to scientific inquirers ; and he rendered an unselfish and 
important service to science by exerting his influence to induce Smith 
To secure a rival and finer collection. The system of Linnreus had then 
■completely displaced all others. The happy invention and careful defi¬ 
nition by Linnfeus of the words he 'employed, the precision of his 
descriptive characters, his terminal nomenclature, and above all the clear 
^ind certain divisions of his sexual system, presented such favourable 
contrasts to the systematic works of earlier authors that he had secured 
absolute sway over English naturalists. There existed at the time a 
small'-Society in London devoted to the study of natural history. It 
•seemed to have been a kind of mutual improvement society which did 
not publish memoirs. The Natural History Society continued to hold 
its meetings for several years after the beginning of this century, and 
-when the meetings could not be kept up, and the Society was dissolved, 
the books and other property were handed over to the Linnean Society, 
including the ivory hammer still used by the President. The new im¬ 
petus given to natural history by the arrival of the Linnean collections 
• showed the urgent need of a society which did not limit its operations 
to the mutual benefit of its members, and this led to the formation of 
the Linnean Society, whose first year’s income was £65 17s. 6d. For 
the first fifty years the members were satisfied with annual parts of 
Transactions, two, three, or four years being required to make up a 
volume. In 1855 a quarterly journal had become necessary. The dis¬ 
tinguished position of the Society was due less to its age than to the 
remarkable activity of its Fellows, the importance of their work, and 
the speedy and eifeient manner in which the commrrnications were put 
before the world. (Cheers.) During the past year the Society had 
published seven parts of Transactions, four devoted to botany and three 
to zoology, containing 429 pages, eighty-nine plates, and two maps. 
During the same period there had been issued twenty numbers of the 
Journal, nine being botanical and eleven zoological, containing 1151 
pages, fifty-six plates, and fifty-four woodcuts, together with the pro¬ 
ceedings for the year, requiring sixty-five pages of letterpress. These 
publications contained papers of the highest importance in all depart¬ 
ments of science. Not everything submitted to the Society found a 
place in its publications. Every communication was reported upon by 
■ one or more experts, and was afterwards earefully considered by the 
Council, and only real contributions to knowledge, expressed in fitting 
language, were published. Fellowship was not limited to men of science, 
but it was extended to lovers and patrons of science, who often rendered 
valuable services. At one time the reading of papers at the Society’s 
meetings was not followed by discussion, and the proposal to allow 
discussion was at first oi^posed as an innovation “ that would turn the. 
meeting room into an area for gladiatorial combats of rival intellects 
and lead to the ruin of the Society.” (Laughter.) The President also 
gave some account of the Society’s collections. 
On the motion of Sir J. Lubbock, M.P,, a cordial vote of thanks was 
given to the President for his address. 
The next item on the programme was the pronouncing of eulogia on 
Linnreus, Eobert Brown, Charles Darwin, and George Bentham. 
The eulogium 'on Linnaeus had been prepared by Professor Thiire 
Fries, the present occupant of the chair of botany at Upsala. In the 
unavoidable absence of the author, a translation of the eulogium was 
read by the President. Professor Fries began by referring to the pro¬ 
found sleep of the natural sciences through the Middle Ages, to the hard 
battles that had been fought before men of science could liberate them¬ 
selves from the fetters of a narrow orthodoxy, and to the restraining 
bands men of science had forged for themselves by attaching infalli¬ 
bility to Greek and Eoman authors rather than to the works of Nature. 
They worked slowly forward to a truer conception through the sixteenth 
and seventeenth centuries, longing for one who should bring order and 
quickening life. At last came Linnmus, to whom, although a poor and 
unknown youth, the world almost immediately paid homage as a master 
of the extensive dominion of natural history. And to-day his name was 
mentioned with the highest respect in all lands upon which culture had 
shed its benign rays. Passing over the story of his eventful life the 
eulogist surveyed the part taken by Linnajus in the development of the 
science to which his penetrating activity extended itself. Upon botany 
his systematic mind stamped its impress for all time. Industrious 
naturalists had described as well as they could plants brought from 
all parts of the world, but their descriptions were a shapeless mass 
of material. There was no lack of system, but none satisfied even the 
unassuming demands of those times. The Upsala student, aged 22, 
exhibited to his teacher some outlines of a system which, when pub¬ 
lished under the name of the sexual system, rapidly supifiauted all pre¬ 
decessors. It was so simple that a child could grasp it. Contempo¬ 
raries and successors rejoiced at the discovery of the thread of the 
labyrinth which for centuries had been sought in vain. Linii^us, with 
clear insight, had openly suggested the weakness of the system and put 
forward the establishment of a natural system which he laboured to 
find. Down to our days botanists had tried to raise the edifice of a 
natural system of plants without getting it complete or even being able 
to agree on a ground plan. But all agreed that Linmeus, over against 
an artificial sj’stem, set forth in a clear light the character and form of 
the natural one, marked out the V'ay for its development, and secured 
its supremacy. By successive works Linnfeus reconstructed tlescriptive 
botany in almost every detail, and that in such a manner that the 
opinions he expressed and the laws he established are even to this day 
approved of as in all essentials correct. From botanical language he 
swept away its inrooted barbarism, and gave the proper stability by 
accurately limiting every botanical idea and furnishing it with definite 
appropriate nomenclature. For describing plants and naming them he 
set up simple practical rules based on a careful analytical examination 
of the structure of many thousand species, especially their flowers and 
fruits. In opposition to all his predecessors he drew a sharp line 
between species and variations. To the then known 8000 species he 
gave not only new and appropriate names, but also new definitions, 
and he added critically tested statements of their nomenclature by 
prior authors, together with an account of their native^ country, manner 
of appearing, properties, uses, and so forth, and all this in a way easily 
apprehended in accordance with the simple laws he himself had estab¬ 
lished. All his work he endeavoured to arrange on the most natural 
and easily comprehended plan. In small as well as large things he 
proved himself a master yet unsurpassed in producing regularity and 
order -where previously ignorance, carelessness, or arbitrariness had 
generated obscurity and confusion. (Cheers.) 
It was sometimes said he was not qualified for the study of vegetable 
anatomy, and revealed a one-sided love for descriptive botany ; but the 
reproach usually came from one-sided anatomists. The aniount of what 
he did bordered on the miraculous. He himself admitted that the 
naming, describing, and classifying of plants was not the only or the 
highest function of the science, but only a necessary condition for a 
successful study of the more important parts. It was almost impossible 
to point to an investigator in botany who had studied the world of plants 
from so many sides, and who pointed out so many new aspects from 
which it ought to be examined. Much that had been said about botany 
applied aiso in the department of zoology. By establishing new, easily 
understood laws, he made scientific descriptive zoology, and he laid the 
first groundwork of a real system. In the history of mineralogy he 
occupied a by no means unimportant position, chiefly through his 
rearrangement of the mineral kingdom. More conspicuous was his 
energette zeal in the field of medieine. He attempted to arrange 
scientifically the different forms of diseases. It was easy nou,compared 
with what it was in the time of Linnarus, to bring together collections from 
widely distant places. Untiring was his zeal and unparalleled his power 
of stimulating persons of the most varied positions in life—monarchs 
and students, lords and poor seaman, bishops and ignorant tradesmen— 
all to work to one end. Devoted scholars, young and old, surrounded 
his chair. His disciples went to unknown regions to collect for him the 
treasures of nature, and many of them perished in foreign_ lands as the 
martyrs of natural science. J^Towliere, next to his own native land, had 
his name been so revered as in England. The botanist, Dillenius, 
pressed him to remain at Oxford “ to live and die with him.” He was 
in active correspondence with nearly all England s naturalists, several 
of whom had enjoyed his instruction at Upsala. England, unluckily for 
Sweden, finally became his heir. In conclusion. Professor Fries said 
Many are consequently the ties by which the memory of Linnfeus is 
united with England, the strongest, however, is the Linnean spirit—the 
o-enuine spirit of freshness and enterprise in which scientific research 
has continued, and still continues, in England. Is it not probable that 
this fact is due, in some measure at least, to the transfer of the Linnean 
collections here? At any rate it was that which gave the primary 
incentive to the formation of this Society, which has now, for a hundred 
