The Notebook: A History of Thinking on Paper

by Roland Allen

But Linnaeus’s most significant achievement was the Systema Naturae, a book which he steadily reworked until, with 1758’s tenth edition, it had reached a sophistication and consistency that today’s taxonomists still admire. Over the years the Systema grew from eleven oversized pages to over six thousand; when revising each edition, Linnaeus used special interleaved copies in which blank and printed pages alternated – practical hybrids of book and notebook. In it, Linnaeus organised mammals according to the number and type of their teeth; birds according to their bills and feet; fish according to the position of their fins; and so on, in a glorious summation of known life on earth.