Contributors

Th e Swedish naturalist Carl Linnaeus – also known as Carl von Linné aft er his enoblement – was, as we all know, the founder of the scheme of nomenclature still in use today for the animal kingdom and is sometimes referred to as the "fa-ther of modern taxonomy"; by the way, he is also considered as one of the fathers of modern ecology. Linnaeus, a botanist, physician and zoologist, was born in southern Sweden on the 13th May, 1707 and lived to be al-most seventy one years old, having died in Uppsala on the 10th January 1778, having been buried in the local cathedral. At the time of his death his name was known throughout Eu-rope, where he was acclaimed as one of the greatest scientists of his time. From 1735 to 1738 he lived away from his native Sweden, in Netherlands and in England, having met many important naturalists such as Albertus Seba, Jan Frederik Gronovius, Hans Sloane, etc. It was precisely in the Netherlands, in 1735, that the fi rst edition of Systema Naturae was printed, a mere eleven pages long. Successive editions enlarged it pro-gressively and by the time it reached its 10th edition, Systema Naturae classifi ed no less than 4,400 species of animals and 7,700 species of plants, consistently using the now familiar binomial nomenclature. In the current year of 2008, the 10th edition of Systema Naturae celebrates its 250th anniversary and it can be said that it is just as actual and important today as it was then. It seems only fi t that in celebration we dedicate issue number 6 of Th e Cone Collector do the memory of Carl Linnaeus and of his unsurpassed work