Species

62 Species

In this enumeration I do not mention the Mule, because ‘tis a mungrel production, and

not to be rekoned as a distinct species. And tho it be most probable, that the several

varieties of Beeves, namely that which is stiled Vrus, Bisons, Bonasus and Buffalo and

those other varieties reckoned under Sheep and Goats, be not distinct species from

Bull, Sheep, and and Goat; There being much less difference betwixt these, then there

is betwixt several Dogs: And it being known by experience, what various changes

are frequently occasioned in the same species by several countries, diets, and other

accidents: Yet I have ex abundanti to prevent all cavilling, allowed them to be distinct

species, and each of them to be clean Beasts, and consequently such as were to be

received in by sevens ...^54

Here we see that the term species is being given a peculiarly zoological mean-
ing. Given that his collaborator John Ray gives our rst denition of species in a
biological context (below), it is clear that the issue of Noah’s Ark has contributed
to the rank of living kinds being of one particular level. The very need for a lowest
level of kind on the Ark generated the rank of living species. It is this question that
Ray addressed. This also explains why later writers spoke of the primum genus or
species (see, for example, Fuchs, below). These were the initial kinds from which
other kinds (secundum genera or species) were formed, usually by hybridization or
local climatic modications. The inuence of Conrad Gesner’s Historia animalium
on Kircher^55 and Wilkins is also evident, and to this novel tradition we now turn.

Fuchs and Gesner: Images, Genus, and Species

Following the Renaissance, beginning in the sixteenth century after the decline in

empirical work on animals and plants in the fourteenth century, modern biology

begins to take root.^56 The period of the Reformation was largely lost to natural history,

with the exceptions of the herbals of Leonhart Fuchs (1501–1566) and Otto Brunfels

(1500–1534), and the bestiary of Conrad Gesner (1516–1665) and the naturalists that

followed him such as Guillame Rondelet (1507–1556) and Pierre Belon (1517–1564),

who is remembered for his study of the homology between bird and human skeletons.

While Brunfels is regarded as derivative, and Heironymus Fock as naïve, Fuchs

has some novelties that were later inuential.^57 He occasionally used binomials (with

the “genus” name often after the “species” name), and organized his kinds (genera

and species are used indifferently) under heads (capita). However, he has nothing

resembling the Linnaean ranks, although his descriptions can be mapped to Linnaean

species as Sprague and Nelmes have shown. Moreover, he did not divide his “genera”

evenly. For example, Sprague and Nelmes list his classication of Ranunculus (a

owering plant genus that includes the buttercups), with the corresponding Linnaean

species (Figure 3.4). Each of the species listed is listed in an apparently arbitrary

order. There is no type species of the “genus.”

(^54) Wil k ins 1668, 16 4f.
(^55) Breidbach and Ghiselin 2006, 998.
(^56) A good summary, with excellent reproductions of woodcuts of the period, is Pavord 2005, which also
includes a nice discussion of the Arabic contribution to the herbalist tradition.
(^57) Sachs 1890, Sprague and Nelmes 1928/31.