LINNÆUS

(1707-1778)

BY JOHN MUIR

HE immortal Linnæus - Carl von Linné- was born in Sweden, a cold rocky country now famous forever. He was born in the bloom-time of the year, May 13th, 1707; and contemplating this great event, one may easily fancy every living thing dancing and singing and clapping hands for joy.

Whether descended from sea-kings and pirates as is most likely, or from fighting Normans or Goths, matters not; for he was a lover sent of God to revive and cheer and bless all mankind. And this he did in spite of crushing poverty, and all the black brood of disappointments and discouragements that ever beset the onway of genius. His parents were as poor and pious as the parents of great men usually are. He was a naturalist from his birth, and reveled in the bloom of the fields and gardens about his native village of Rashult as naturally as a bee. By his steady, slow-going neighbors he was looked on as one possessed. They did not know what to make of him; neither did his own father and mother. His father, a minister, naturally wished his son to follow in his footsteps, and with commendable self-denial saved money to send young Carl to school with this end in view. But the studies leading to the ministry did not interest the lad, and like other divine boys he was called a dunce. Accordingly, when his father visited the school and anxiously inquired how Carl was getting on, he was bluntly told that the boy was dull, had no brains, and could never be made into a minister or scholar

of any kind. Under these dark circumstances, the best advice the schoolmaster was able to offer the discouraged father was to take away his boy and make a tailor or a shoemaker of him. Yet this was the boy who was to do the most of all for many generations to open men's eyes to see the beauty of God's gardens and the creatures that enliven them.

The real education of Linnæus began as soon as he could see. When only four years old he constantly questioned his father about the weeds and flowers around the house. His formal education began at the age of seven, when he was sent to a private school for three years; at the end of which time he entered another private school at Wexiö. In 1719, we are told, he was committed to the care of one Gabriel Hok, a teacher of repute, but who was as unsuccessful as his

predecessors had been in his efforts to overcome the lad's distaste for scholastic studies and his seemingly irrational liking for plants. In 1724 he entered the gymnasium, caring for nothing but botany and biology in general,- which in truth is almost everything. Here he managed to get together some of the books of the few Swedish authors who had written of plants, and over these he laboriously pored.

It was when he was in the gymnasium, at the age of seventeen, that his father was advised to make a tailor or shoemaker of his dullard. The old clergyman, grieved and disappointed at the outcome of twelve years' schooling, met Dr. Rothman, a practitioner of the town, to whom he mentioned his sad case. The doctor, a better judge of human nature than the minister, declared he could end the troubles of both father and son: he offered to board Carl the year that remained of the gymnasium course, and assured his father that though backward in theology, the boy would yet make a name in medicine and natural history. So Carl escaped cobbling, was kindly cared for by the good doctor, given instruction in physiology, and directed to Tournefort's system of botany, the best then in existence. At the age of twenty he went to the University of Lund; and while studying there had the good fortune to lodge at the house of Dr. Stobæus, who had a museum of minerals, shells, dried plants, and birds, which made the heart of young Linnæus throb with joy. The learned doctor also had a library to which Carl at length gained access, and from which he got books on natural history, which he read stealthily by night against the rules of the orderly household. And thus genius made its own starry way, uncontrollable as the tides of the sea.

In the summer of 1728 Linnæus again met his benefactor Rothman, who urged him to leave Lund and go to Upsala, where educational advantages were better. Accordingly, with about forty dollars in his pocket, all he was to expect from his father, he set out for the university he was soon to make famous. Of course his little stock of money quickly melted away; and being a stranger, he could earn nothing by teaching. Nearly a year he passed in dire poverty, glad when he could get one hard meal a day. His worn-out shoes he patched with pasteboard. His eyes were full of plants, but his stomach was achingly empty most of the time. Only by chance meals from fellow-students, and others almost as poor as himself, did he manage to keep body and soul together. A course of starvation, it would seem, is a tremendous necessity in the training of Heaven's favorites.

During the hunger period, in the autumn of 1729, Linnæus was one day intently studying a plant in the academical garden, when a venerable minister happened to notice him, and asked what he was