Illiger’s Prodromus 13 Nov 2009 Does anyone have a scan of Johann Karl Wilhelm Illiger’s Prodromus systematis et mammalium avium (1811), or at least the introductory section? It appears that Illiger is the one who introduced the rank of family to the Linnean system, and I’d like to find out more. Late note: Thanks to reader Veronica Abbass, I have the link. It wasn’t visible from Australia for some strange reason. And as far as I can make out the Latin in the Lectori, he introduces family on page x as necessary because there are too many genera to group into orders. Biology History Natural Classification Systematics
Evolution Not Saint Darwin 11 Feb 200918 Sep 2017 Oh, I forgot, due to the lack of internets at home, to link to my essay that I mentioned before: Not Saint Darwin, in Resonance [PDF] Consider this my “death of Darwin” piece. Read More
Biology Book review: Understanding Evolution 15 Apr 201415 Apr 2014 I posted this on Panda’s Thumb, but I thought I would repeat it here. I occasionally get books for review unsolicited, and many of them are not worth noticing. However, Kostas Kampourakis’ Understanding Evolution is a wonderful resource for students of all kinds, including biology students. Kampourakis, a philosopher at Geneva, has… Read More
Thanks Veronica, but I have to pay for that version. And Gallica lacks a copy. It’s a dual German/Latin edition, by the way.
It doesn’t help in this case, but if you’re not already aware of http://www.biolib.de it’s worth you taking a note. Internet Archive has a 1800 book by Illiger. Apparently so does Google Books, but it’s one of those ones that don’t come up on searches. (I don’t know why – are some books restricted to US readers?)