Quotes from his journals:
Pg 18
The forest abounded with flowers...their blossoms were all closed. Who has endowed plants with intelligence, to shut themselves up at the approach of rain? Even when the weather changes in a moment from sunshine to rain, though before expanded, they immediately close.
Pg 38
Arriving in the evening...I saw the sunset apparently on the summit of a high mountain.... This spectacle I considered as not one of the least of nature's miracles. Oh Lord, how wonderful are thy works!
Pg 51
7 June
This day was a Sunday, hence we rested here all day.
Pg 53
The bill is the most remarkable thing about this bird, the avocet; it is black, bent downwards, three times longer than the head. It is all the more remarkable since it is the only species to which the Creator has given a recurved bill, which it uses like a plow in the mud, to find its food.
Pg 95
At the risk of our lives we left the harbor in a furious sea.... The waves raged, the ship was thrown between the roaring billows, my companions became seasick, the rigging burst, our hearts filled with despair and we committed our fate to God's hands....
Pg 97
by William T. Stearn
... The most influential and useful of his contributions to be biology undoubtedly is his successful introduction of.. two word names for individual kinds with one word for the whole group of the objects but the other word limiting the name to a single member of the group....
In all he coined usable names for roughly 4,400 species of animals and 7,700 species of plants.... Botanical names published before 1753 have no standing in modern nomenclature unless they were adopted by him....
The basis of Linnaeus's achievement was a strong sense of order....
Reared in a pious atmosphere, spared from death on his travels, always strongly egotistic, Linnaeus could excusably believe himself God's chosen instrument for revealing in an orderly way the divinely ordered works of Creation, and he did not spare himself in that task.
ISBN 0-684 15976-7
No comments:
Post a Comment