courses of lectures, the more diligently perhaps because of his poverty.

4. In 1736, after meeting with many kind friends in his straitened circumstances, and making a long botanical journey to Lapland, he went to Holland, where he formed the acquaintance of a rich banker named Cliffort, who was also a great botanist. This was the turning-point of Linnæus's life. Mr. Cliffort invited him to live with him, treated him like a son, and allowed him to make free use of his magnificent horticultural garden. He also sent him to England to procure rare plants, and gave him a liberal income. This continued for some time till Linnæus's health began to fail, and he found besides that he had learnt all he could in this place, so he resolved to leave his kind friend and pursue his travels.

5. At last he settled down as professor of medicine and natural history at Upsala, where he founded a splendid botanical garden, which served as a model for many such gardens in other countries. His struggles with poverty were now over forever, and his fame as a botanist became world-wide. He used to go out in the summer days with more than two hundred pupils to gather plants in the surrounding country, and many celebrated people came to Stockholm to attend Linnæus's "excursions." Then as his pupils spread over the world he employed them to collect specimens of plants from distant countries, and he himself worked incessantly to classify them into one great system.

6. In 1774, while lecturing on botany, he was seized with apoplexy, and two years later a second attack paralyzed him and impaired his faculties; so that the remaining months of his life were passed in mental darkness, which the sight of flowers and opening buds and other familiar

and beloved objects could never wholly dispel. His death, in 1778, was the signal for a general mourning in Upsala ; a medal was struck and a monument erected to his memory, and the King of Sweden pronounced a eulogy on him in a speech from the throne.

7. In stature Linnæus was diminutive, with a large head and bright, piercing eyes. It is said that his temper was quick, but he was easily appeased, and he had pleasant relations with his scientific friends and associates. His was indeed a noble life. Truth-loving and enthusiastic, he had toiled, even when poor, for science and not for wealth, and when he became famous and rich he helped his pupils, and lived simply and frugally till his death.

8. After the death of Linnæus his mother and sisters sold his collection of plants to an Englishman named Dr. Smith. The King of Sweden was at this time away from Stockholm, but as soon as he returned and learned that such a valuable national treasure was on its way to England he sent a man-of-war to try and bring it back. A very amusing chase then took place. Dr. Smith did not mean to lose his prize if he could help it; so he set full sail, and by good seamanship reached London without being overtaken. Thus the Linnæan collection was transported to England, where it still is.

9. Some persons suppose Linnæus to have been the founder or father of botany. But to think in this way about any man is to think very superficially. No science is ever the creation of any one man or of any one age, but of many men through many ages. Every science "cometh from afar," and is a plant that has its roots deep in antiquity. Nevertheless, Linnæus did great things for the science he loved. And the first and greatest thing of

are found both opposite and alternate leaves, as in the composite or sunflower family; and a single wild sunflower plant itself has opposite leaves below and alternate leaves above.

11. Of our forest trees, there are very few species with opposite leaves. If you see that the branches and leaves of a tree do not stand one opposite another on the stem, you can at once be sure that it is not an ash, a maple, or a buckeye, because all these trees do have opposite leaves. On the other hand, there are many trees having alternate branches and leaves, such as the oak, chestnut, elm, hickory, walnut, butternut, tulip-tree, magnolia, sycamore, alder, beech, birch, poplar, willow, sassafras, mulberry, hackberry, sweet-gum, linden, locust, and others.

1. WHO that has seen the sensitive plant has not noticed with wonder the strange sensibility of its leaves? When roughly brushed by the hand the plant makes three movements, thus described by Professor Gray. First, the numerous leaflets close in pairs, bringing their upper faces together and also inclining forwards; then the four branches of the leafstalk, which were outspread like the rays of a fan, approach each other; at the same time the

main leafstalk turns downward, bending at its joint with the stem. So the leaf (for it is all one compound leaf) closes and seemingly collapses at the

touch. In a short time, if left to itself, it slowly recovers the former outspreading position.

2. This movement which we may thus call forth in the sensitive plant is repeated by the plant of itself during the night. Various other plants fold up their leaves during the night, and this habit was called by Linnæus the "sleep of plants."

the

3. It was in

bird's foot

trefoil that Lin

LEAVES OF SENSITIVE-PLANT. I

næus first noticed the difference between the position of the leaves during the day and during the night. Scarcely had he made this discovery when he came to the conclusion that this change would be found not to be confined to this single plant, but would be general in vegetable life. From that time Linnæus, every night, tore himself from sleep, and in the silence of nature studied the plants in his garden.

4. At each step he discovered a new fact, and very soon satisfied himself that the change in the position of leaves during the night was observable in a considerable

1 This figure represents a piece of stem with two (compound) leaves; the lower one expanded, as it is when untouched: the upper leaf shows the position which is taken, by quick movements, when roughly brushed by the hand.

number of vegetables, and that in the absence of light plants quite changed their aspect, so that it became very difficult to recognize them. He further states that it was the absence of light, and not nocturnal cold, which was the principal cause of the phenomenon, for plants in hothouses closed themselves during the night just like those which were exposed in the open air.

5. The illustrious Swedish botanist made many observations on the diversity of position taken by leaves during the night, and he even attempted a classification of those differences. The most general idea which he sought to establish was, that the positions differed according as the leaves were simple or compound. Linnæus thought that the object, in these circumstances, was to place the young shoots under shelter from nocturnal cold and from the effects of the air. It is among the composite leaves, in short, that the difference between the waking and sleeping is most clearly indicated.

6. This strange sleep of plants vaguely recalls to us the sleep of animals. In its sleep the leaf seems to approach the age of infancy. It folds itself up, nearly as it lay folded in the bud before it opened, when it slept the lethargic sleep of winter, sheltered under the robust and hardy scales, or shut up in its warm down. We may say that the plant seeks every night to resume the position which it occupied in its early days, just as the animal rolls itself up, lying as if it lay in its mother's bosom.

7. What is the cause of the sleep of plants? It occurs. in all states of moisture, and the length of their sleep is not influenced by any change of temperature. A celebrated French botanist supposed that the absence of light was the direct cause of the phenomenon. To assure him