History of the inductive sciences, from the earliest to the present time

by William Whewell

[146] p. 58.

Improvement of the System. Artedi.—Peter Artedi was a countryman and intimate friend of Linnæus; and rendered to ichthyology nearly the same services which Linnæus rendered to botany. In his Philosophia Ichthyologica, he analysed[147] all the interior and exterior parts of animals; he created a precise terminology for the different forms of which these parts are susceptible; he laid down rules for the nomenclature of genera and species; besides his improvements of the subdivisions of the class. It is impossible not to be struck with the close resemblance between these steps, and those which are due to the Fundamenta Botanica. The latter work appeared in 1736, the former was published by Linnæus, after the death of the author, in 1738; but Linnæus had already, as early as 1735, made use of Artedi’s manuscripts in the ichthyological part of his Systema Naturæ. We cannot doubt that the two young naturalists (they were nearly of the same age), must have had a great influence upon each other’s views and labors; and it would be difficult now to ascertain what portion of the peculiar merits of the Linnæan reform was derived from Artedi. But we may remark that, in ichthyology at least, Artedi appears to have been a naturalist of more original views and profounder philosophy than his friend and editor, who afterwards himself took up the subject. [424] The reforms of Linnæus, in all parts of natural history, appear as if they were mainly dictated by a love of elegance, symmetry, clearness, and definiteness; but the improvement of the ichthyological system by Artedi seems to have been a step in the progress to a natural arrangement. His genera,[148] which are forty-five in number, are so well constituted, that they have almost all been preserved; and the subdivisions which the constantly-increasing number of species has compelled his successors to introduce, have very rarely been such that they have led to the transposition of his genera.

[147] p. 20.

[148] Cuvier, p. 71.

In its bases, however, Artedi’s was an artificial system. His characters were positive and decisive, founded in general upon the number of rays of the membrane of the gills, of which he was the first to mark the importance;—upon the relative position of the fins, upon their number, upon the part of the mouth where the teeth are found, upon the conformation of the scales. Yet, in some cases, he has recourse to the interior anatomy.

Linnæus himself at first did not venture to deviate from the footsteps of a friend, who, in this science, had been his master. But in 1758, in the tenth edition of the Systema Naturæ, he chose to depend upon himself and devised a new ichthyological method. He divided some genera, united others, gave to the species trivial names and characteristic phrases, and added many species to those of Artedi. Yet his innovations are for the most part disapproved of by Cuvier; as his transferring the chondropterygian fishes of Artedi to the class of reptiles, under the title of Amphybia nantes; and his rejecting the distinction of acanthopterygian and malacopterygian, which, as we have seen, had prevailed from the time of Willoughby, and introducing in its stead a distribution founded on the presence or absence of the ventral fins, and on their situation with regard to the pectoral fins. “Nothing,” says Cuvier, “more breaks the true connexions of genera than these orders of apodes, jugulares, thoracici, and abdominales.”

Thus Linnæus, though acknowledging the value and importance of natural orders, was not happy in his attempts to construct a system which should lead to them. In his detection of good characters for an artificial system he was more fortunate. He was always attentive to number, as a character; and he had the very great merit[149] of introducing into the classification the number of rays of the fins of each species. This mark is one of great importance and use. And this, as well as [425] other branches of natural history, derived incalculable advantages from the more general merits of the illustrious Swede;[150]—the precision of the characters, the convenience of a well-settled terminology, the facility afforded by the binary nomenclature. These recommendations gave him a pre-eminence which was acknowledged by almost all the naturalists of his time, and displayed by the almost universal adoption of his nomenclature, in zoology, as well as in botany; and by the almost exclusive employment of his distributions of classes, however imperfect and artificial they might be.

[149] p. 74.

[150] Cuvier, p. 85.

And even[151] if Linnæus had had no other merit than the impulse he gave to the pursuit of natural science, this alone would suffice to immortalize his name. In rendering natural history easy, or at least in making it appear so, he diffused a general taste for it. The great took it up with interest; the young, full of ardor, rushed forwards in all directions, with the sole intention of completing his system. The civilized world was eager to build the edifice which Linnæus had planned.