the beginning of Linnaes's career as a botanist. The academic
gardens were thus thrown open to him, and he found time at his disposal
for pursuing his studies between lecture hours and in the evenings. It
was at this time that he began the preparation of his work the Systema
naturae, the first of his great works, containing a comprehensive sketch
of the whole field of natural history. When this work was published, the
clearness of the views expressed and the systematic arrangement of the
various classifications excited great astonishment and admiration, and
placed Linaeus at once in the foremost rank of naturalists. This
work was followed shortly by other publications, mostly on botanical
subjects, in which, among other things, he worked out in detail his
famous "system."

This system is founded on the sexes of plants, and is usually referred
to as an "artificial method" of classification because it takes into
account only a few marked characters of plants, without uniting them by
more general natural affinities. At the present time it is considered
only as a stepping-stone to the "natural" system; but at the time of its
promulgation it was epoch-marking in its directness and simplicity, and
therefore superiority, over any existing systems.

One of the great reforms effected by Linnaeus was in the matter of
scientific terminology. Technical terms are absolutely necessary to
scientific progress, and particularly so in botany, where obscurity,
ambiguity, or prolixity in descriptions are fatally misleading.
Linnaeus's work contains something like a thousand terms, whose meanings
and uses are carefully explained. Such an array seems at first glance
arbitrary and unnecessary, but the fact that it has remained in use
for something like two centuries is indisputable evidence of its
practicality. The descriptive language of botany, as employed by
Linnaeus, still stands as a model for all other subjects.

Closely allied to botanical terminology is the subject of botanical
nomenclature. The old method of using a number of Latin words to
describe each different plant is obviously too cumbersome, and several
attempts had been made prior to the time of Linnaeus to substitute
simpler methods. Linnaeus himself made several unsatisfactory attempts
before he finally hit upon his system of "trivial names," which
was developed in his Species plantarum, and which, with some, minor
alterations, remains in use to this day. The essence of t