ure ifRosa sylvestris alba cum rubore, folio glabro  t otris inodora seu canina. Linnaeus solved t by calling it simply Rosa canina. to make toall required muc required an instinct—a genius, in fact—for spotting t qualities of a species.

    tem is so ablis ive, butbefore Linnaeus, systems of classification en  becategorized by ed, terrestrial or aquatic, large or small,even y to man. Anatomical considerations barely came into it. Linnaeusmade it o rectify t oits ptributes. taxonomy—ion—has neverlooked back.

    It all took time, of course. t edition of  Systema Naturae in 1735 fourteen pages long. But it greil by tion—t t Linnaeuso see—it extended to t and animal. Otoria Generalis Plantarum in England, completed a generationearlier, covered no fes alone—but oucency, order, simplicity, and timeliness. tes from t didn’t become il t in timeto make Linnaeus a kind of fato Britisuralists. Noer enty s Stockholm).

    Linnaeus  flarous humans”

    ive travelers. Amongt yet mastered tof speecus, “man ail.” But t , analtoget Josepook a keen and believing interestin a series of reported sigtis at teentury. For t part,  by sound and oftenbrilliant taxonomy. Among ots,  rial animals in ter coMammalia), which no one had done before.

    In tended only to give eac a genus name and a number—Convolvulus 1, Convolvulus 2,and so on—but soon realized t t isfactory and on t t remains at t of tem to tention originally o use tem for everytever existed in nature. Not everyone embrac