APPENDIX D. BICENTENARY OF LINNAEUS. Address by GEORGE F. KUNZ, Ph.D,, President of the American Scenic and Historic Preservation Society, [271] BICENTENARY OF LINNAEUS. At the Celebration of the 200th Anniversary of the Birth of Linnæus, Held in the City of New York on May 23, 1907. As described on page 82 of this report, George F. Kunz, Ph.D., President of the American Scenic and Historic Preservation Society, spoke as follows: Linnæus was a great scientist, and the conquests of science have done more to advance the world than wars, which science may yet render impossible. It was thirty years of scientific research in Germany that gave us artificial indigo. It was pure scientific research that led Moissan, Cowles and Acheson to discover independently an abrasive substance of a hardness between the diamond and the sapphire; and then Moissan by scientific deduction worked out the genesis of the hardest and most fearless of gems, which, though obtained only in the form of powder, was still the diamond. Within the past quarter of a century we have seen air, oxygen and hydrogen liquefied, giving us temperatures absolutely unknown in nature before, and also the electric furnace, giving an extreme heat such as has perhaps never existed, unless it be on the surface of the sun. Jade, the Chinese stone, has been known in China for more than a thousand years. Some believe that it was known to a prehistoric race the existence of which was almost unknown to the Chinese, and whose only records extant are found as we find the evidence left of the mound-builders, who passed away before the advent of the white man in North America. It was not until 1866 that Damour, a scientist, separated jade into two distinct minerals, nephrite and jadeite; and one of those into two varieties, jadeite and chloromelanite-facts unknown to the Chinese, though they apparently knew and understood every tiny fragment they had ever seen of this mineral. It was the scientist who took three red stones belonging to the King of Burmah or to the Emperor of China, and proved to him that one was a ruby, one was a spinel, and the third a tourmaline, and not all rubies, as they had been regarded for a century or more previously. Moses was the first great systematizer, and his original assemblage of the people in tens, hundreds and thousands, is carried out in the military systems of to-day, and is again reflected in our own and in the monetary systems of many of the European nations, and more especially in that indispensable and scientific international system of weights and measures, the metric system. It was Alexander who conquered the eastern world, bringing back with him much refinement, and possibly also the valuable and industrious silkworm; and it was he also who discovered that the carrying powers of his camels were doubled if he employed a gold medium of exchange instead of silver. Cæsar, in his attempt to conquer the world, did much toward the dissemination of education and civilization, from which Rome greatly benefited. Napoleon upturned and readjusted the treasuries of a number of kingdoms, duchies, cloisters and churches in Europe; and, even though his regime was attended by frightful loss of life, marked and permanent improvement has followed it. But it was La Sage, a scientist, who compiled a great work for Napoleon, from which he learned what noble families had lived in all times, and what campaigns had been fought by the various conquerors; and it was a thorough study of La Sage's work that had much to do with giving Napoleon an idea as to what worlds others had conquered, and what parts of this world were left for him to subdue. It may not be generally known that it was one of our New York scientists, Dr. Melvil Dewey, who introduced the card catalogue system of cataloguing books, which led to the present system of keeping books by the loose-leaf system. It would be easy to mention many who have materially assisted in the advancement and organization of the multifarious affairs of mankind; but the other and lower creations of nature outnumbered mankind many thousand times, and the co-ordination of scientific nomenclature covering this vast domain is due to the great Carl von Linné. Until his time, an animal was known as a deer in English, a Hirsh in German, a cerf in French, and by fifty other names in as many different languages. By applying two or three words as a name to every creature that flies in the heavens above, that dwells in the earth beneath or in the waters under the earth, he made it possible for the scientist, whether at the Cape of Good Hope, in Greenland, in New York, or in the Sandwich Islands, to know not only just what living form was referred to, but also to understand immediately to just what genus, class, species or variety, this living organism belongs. The Linnæan system has also greatly aided scientific classification in natural history, which, in connection with medicine, has given us the connecting link in the science of biology and bacteriology. The Linnæan system compares with the natural history of to-day as alchemy does with chemistry, as astrology and fortune-telling with astronomy and medicine of the present time. It is strange that, as well-planned and admirable and successful as the Linnæan system is when applied to the nomenclature of animate objects, it was absolutely rejected by the then mineralogists and chemists, as the chemical equivalents and the structure are frequently better expressed by a single term than they would be by a binominal system. Had a Linnæan system existed when Adam and Eve were in the Garden of Eden, there would be no dispute to-day as to whether the "apple" which caused their expulsion from the Garden was the identical kind of apple that has caused so many boys to be driven from gardens and orchards wherein they trespass to-day, or whether it was a pomegranate, an orange, a lemon, or some other fruit of which we have no knowledge. If Noah had known a Linnæan system when he took his animals into the ark, and had so named them, how helpful that would be to us to-day! There would not be the doubt in the minds of the few who still maintain that evidences of the flood are to be found in fossil remains, since these would belong to those animals that were destroyed at the time of the great flood. We have recorded a history of the past, to-day we have heard much of Linnæus and his time: let us speak now of the present. For a quarter of a century it has been our pleasure to know one of the most ardent disciples of Linnæus that has lived in our land; and had it not been for his untiring zeal, his keen judg |