The Pioneer Work of the Systematist*

Abstract

THE inquiry into the secrets of organic Nature may be divided into three categories of questions: (1) what organisms creative forces have produced on earth; (2) how they have produced them; and (3) what is the nature of the creative forces. It was at the time of Linnaeus a comparatively simple achievement for one man to have enumerated all the animals then known, his “Systema Naturae” of 1758 containing altogether fewer than 4300 species. That task is in our days a hundred times more difficult, not only on account of the vast number of species which have poured into collections, are still pouring in and will continue to do so for a long time, but also because research in systematics requires a much deeper knowledge of the morphology and bionomics of the animals classified. At the time of Linnaeus and after, when systematics were in their infancy, individual specimens showing marked differences were as a rule diagnosed as representing distinct species, the unit called species being looked upon as essentially a constant.