Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 71.djvu/506

500 is not that we should praise Linnæus less, but some of the others more. I have, however, mentioned these things, not for the sake of measuring out Linnæus's glory with a hopeless attempt at exact distributive Justice, but for the sake of defining more precisely, and in terms of explicit contrast—which is the only illuminating way of defining—the nature and limits of Linnæus's contribution to the evolution of the sciences. He was the one naturalist of first eminence whose work lay entirely, or almost entirely, within the sphere of descriptive and classificatory science. His rôle is precisely described by the term which he himself employed; he was not the originator of, nor a great discoverer in, botany, but he was the "reformer" of that science, reformator botanices, and in a less degree, of zoology. And in using this term to describe his work, the emphasis should be upon the "form." He was, in other words, an unsurpassed organizer, both of scientific material and of scientific research; he introduced form and order, clearness and precision, simple definitions and plain delimitations of boundaries, into sciences previously more or less chaotic or confused or impeded with cumbrous and inappropriate categories and terminology.

This reformation was the result of the three improvements effectually introduced by Linnæus and indissolubly associated with his name. The first, which seemed the most impressive and did most to establish his fame among his contemporaries and for several generations thereafter, was really the least permanent and the least valuable of his contributions: this was the introduction of a new artificial system of classification, based, in the botanical field, upon the differences of the sexual organs of plants. The second was the introduction of the binomial nomenclature, the system of so-called "trivial" names, which put a final end to the hopeless length and complexity of botanical and zoological specific names, and sharply differentiated the naming of organisms from the description of them. The third and, I suppose, the most useful as well as most durable of all of Linnæus's improvements, was the establishment of a new descriptive terminology in botany, the drawing up of a set of terms, each with clearly defined meaning, for designating concisely the distinguishable parts and organs of plants, and the several types of form of which each part is susceptible. By these means Linnaeus imposed order and harmony upon a realm that had hitherto suffered much from anarchy; he gave a common language to those who tilled its fields, and provided them with working tools of an unprecedented simplicity and convenience. And where he thus introduced order he also, as a natural consequence, introduced abundance. Both directly and indirectly Linnaeus immensely augmented the store of concrete botanical information. The science thus simplified and systematizcd and given a convenient means of expression became vastly more attractive and interesting; in particular.