The Friends of Charles Darwin

The world's oldest biological society plans to make all its major collections available in a digital format. The Linnean Society's collections comprise almost 40,000 specimens of plants, insects, fish and shells, many of which date to the 18th Century. The society was founded in London in 1788 and takes its name from the Swedish naturalist Carl Linnaeus. The scientist is perhaps best known for devising a system for classifying and ranking plants using Latin names.