BIOGRAPHIES.
Linnaeus was born in 1707—a few years after the death of the great British botanist, John Ray, and died in 1778. The; greater part of his life was spent in Sweden as a Professor in the University of Upsala, but a certain portion was given up to European travel ; three years were spent in Holland and a, shorter visit was paid to England. The precise importance to be attached to his work—and he had many spheres of activity—is a question about which there is little agreement even at the present day. Linnaeus brought a precision and care to the observation and description of plants that had not been attained previously, and it was this accuracy that enabled him to bring in a very important reform—the naming of each living organism by means of two names. This had been done before occasionally by Bauhin in his Pinax, which was published in 1623, but Linnaeus made it a general practice. Before his time a descriptive phrase was used to designate each organism, and this usage proved very cumbersome in practice. He had also a great genius for classification, and in fact his fame for a long time depended on his artificial classification of plants—a useful temporary expedient which overshadowed his more important scientific contributions and in some ways delayed the progress of botany. The general secretary of the Linnean Society, Dr. Daydon Jackson, has in this volume adapted the Life of Carl von Linne—a standard work written: in 1903 by Professor T. M. Fries—to suit the requirements. of English readers, removing facts of local interest only and correcting the story in the light of recent research. One could think of no one more fitted for this task than Dr.Jackson, and, with the exception that many sentences still read a little like direct transliterations, he has provided an admirable and full account of the life of this great naturalist.
Previous page
