Carl Linnaeus (1707-78) is famed for his introduction of what was hoped to be a universal method of classifying the natural world. The binomial naming system was intended to provide a common scientific name within this hierarchy that could be used to identify different species. It was made up of the general name and a more specific aspect.

The new system was welcomed by many in the natural sciences but, despite the praise, the system was far from perfect. It was intended to serve only as a stop-gap to simplify taxonomy until a more comprehensive method was devised. Errors, such as unrelated species often being grouped together due to their sharing similar characteristics (in botany for instance, Linnaeus based his classes on the numbers of reproductive parts each plant possessed) eventually led to criticism from fellow naturalists. These discrepancies were most prevalent in Linnaeus’s systems for minerals, which soon fell out of favour altogether and plants, for which a more accurate system was subsequently devised by the French botanist Antoine Laurent de Jussieu in 1788. The introduction of binomial nomenclature was very influential, however, and continues to be used, albeit in greatly modified forms, to this day.
This book is the second edition Linnaeus's catalogue of plants found in Lapland in northern Sweden and Finland. It was edited and republished in 1792 by the botanist James Edward Smith. Smith had acquired Linnaeus's library and papers in 1784 and, in 1788, he founded the Linnean Society to further the study of natural history in Britain.