Editing Carl Linnaeus (section)

===''Systema Naturae''===
[[File:Linnaeus1758-title-page.jpg|thumb|upright|Title page of the [[10th edition of Systema Naturae|10th edition of ''Systema Naturæ'']] (1758)]]

{{Main|Systema Naturae}}

The first edition of ''{{lang|la|Systema Naturae}}'' was printed in the Netherlands in 1735. It was a twelve-page work.<ref>[[#L1735|Linnaeus (1735)]]</ref> By the time it reached its [[10th edition of Systema Naturae|10th edition]] in 1758, it classified 4,400 species of animals and 7,700 species of plants. People from all over the world sent their specimens to Linnaeus to be included. By the time he started work on the 12th edition, Linnaeus needed a new invention—the [[index card]]—to track classifications.<ref>{{cite journal|last1=Everts|first1=Sarah|title=Information Overload|journal=Distillations|year=2016|volume=2|issue=2|pages=26–33|url=https://www.sciencehistory.org/distillations/magazine/information-overload|access-date=20 March 2018|archive-date=3 April 2019|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20190403133511/https://www.sciencehistory.org/distillations/magazine/information-overload|url-status=live}}</ref>

In ''Systema Naturae'', the unwieldy names mostly used at the time, such as "''{{lang|la|Physalis annua ramosissima, ramis angulosis glabris, foliis dentato-serratis}}''", were supplemented with concise and now familiar "binomials", composed of the generic name, followed by a specific epithet—in the case given, ''[[Physalis angulata]]''. These binomials could serve as a label to refer to the species. Higher taxa were constructed and arranged in a simple and orderly manner. Although the system, now known as [[binomial nomenclature]], was partially developed by the Bauhin brothers (see [[Gaspard Bauhin]] and [[Johann Bauhin]]) almost 200 years earlier,<ref>[[#Windelspecht|Windelspecht (2002)]], p. 28.</ref> Linnaeus was the first to use it consistently throughout the work, including in monospecific genera, and may be said to have popularised it within the scientific community.

After the decline in Linnaeus's health in the early 1770s, publication of editions of ''Systema Naturae'' went in two different directions. Another Swedish scientist, [[Johan Andreas Murray]], issued the ''Regnum Vegetabile'' section separately in 1774 as the ''Systema Vegetabilium'', rather confusingly labelled the 13th edition.{{sfn|Linné|1774}} Meanwhile, a 13th edition of the entire ''Systema'' appeared in parts between 1788 and 1793 under the editorship of [[Johann Friedrich Gmelin]]. It was through the ''Systema Vegetabilium'' that Linnaeus's work became widely known in England, following its translation from the Latin by the [[Lichfield Botanical Society]] as ''A System of Vegetables'' (1783–1785).{{sfn|Linné|1785}}