GMELIN, JOHANN FRIEDRICH, a German naturalist of some celebrity, was born at Tübingen in 1748. After taking his degree of M.D., he travelled through England and Holland, lecturing on his favourite subjects of botany and natural history, and finally settled at his native town as extraordinary professor of medicine. He afterwards removed to Göttingen in the same capacity, and remained there till his death in 1804. His name is preserved by his edition (the thirteenth) of Linnæus' Systema Naturæ, which, however, is hardly so well known as Cuvier's criticism of it, in which it is described as "an ignorant compilation, useless to the professor, and more likely to mislead the student than to enlighten or instruct him. In fact, under the pretence of giving a complete list of synonyms, he collected indiscriminately all the names which he found in different authors, without observing whether such a plant, animal, or mineral had been differently designated by different naturalists, so that the same name has often been given to distinct objects. This double error, which constantly recurs throughout Gmelin's work, shows that the too prolific writer had but a very superficial knowledge of his subject, and did not study the book of nature."
Though these charges of the great French critic are quite true, yet Gmelin's book is acknowledged to possess a
certain value, as being the only book which even professes to include all the objects of natural history described up to the year 1790. His other works are not entitled even to that humble praise.