Guide to an Exhibition oj 
plates are preserved in the Botanical Department of this 
Museum. It was the first work printed in England in which 
any of the Linnean specific characters were exhibited, and was 
implicitly trusted to by Linnaeus, who adopted the species. 
AMONG other Naturalists of note living prior to the Natural 
History Reformation effected by Linnaeus, were :— 
Rene A. Ferchault de Reaumur [1683-1757], the 
celebrated French natural philosopher and entomologist, whose 
Memoires pour servtr a FHistoire des Insectes^ in 6 vols., Paris, 
1734-42, were long the standard work on Entomology. 
Albert Seba [1665-1736], the Dutch naturalist, who 
formed large collections of great worth, of which a remarkable 
illustrated catalogue, entitled, Locupletissimi Rerum Naturalium 
Thesauri accurata description was published at Amsterdam in 
1734-65- 
Petrus Artedi [1705-1735], a young Swedish naturalist 
and friend of Linnaeus, had begun an important work on 
Fishes, which Linnaeus edited and brought out. Artedi’s 
Ichthyologiun Lugduni Batavorum, 1738, made some advance 
towards a natural arrangement ; his genera were well con¬ 
stituted and he laid down rules for the nomenclature of genera 
and species as well as created a precise terminology for all the 
interior and exterior parts of animals. 
Georges Louis Leclerc, Comte de Buffon [1707-1788], 
the celebrated French naturalist, who was born the same year 
as Linnaeus, produced a work of descriptive Natural History 
which was without equal in its tim^e and, by the addition in 
later editions of the Linnean nomenclature, became a most 
valuable work and the basis of succeeding works of a like nature 
for very many years. 
Johan Gottskalk Wallerius [1709-1785], a Swedish 
chemist, who was the first to apply chemistry to agriculture, 
gave in his Mineralogia^ Stockholm, 1747, a more complete de¬ 
scription of Minerals according to their external characters and 
a better classification than any before published, basing it on a 
critical comparison of those that preceded. 
Axel Fredric Cronstedt [1722-1765], a Swedish chemist 
and mineralogist, first made use of the blow-pipe in the deter- 
26 
