Mr Bushnan ow the Linncea horealis. 301 



and undisturbed by his rapacious hand. During the examina- 

 tion of any plant, the mind often reverts to the father of the 

 science, with pleasing emotions of gratitude for the facilities and 

 certainties which guide it in its search after knowledge and re- 

 creative amusement ; but that plant which Linnajus, from the 

 thousands he had seen, selected to transmit his name to posteri- 

 ty, can never fail to draw from the mind of the botanist, a dou- 

 ble share of such filial offerings. This little plant appears, from 

 the Lachesis Lapponica of Linnaeus, to have been chosen by him- 

 self to commemorate his name, when he gathered it at Lyksele 

 on the 29th of May 1732. It was formerly known as the Cam- 

 panula serpyllifolia of John and Gaspard Bauhin, Tournefort, 

 Morrison, Ray, &c. ; but Linnaeus soon ascertained it to be a 

 distinct genus, and, with his consent, his name was given to it 

 by his friend Dr Gronovius, and as such was published in the 

 Genera Plantarum in 1737. From the Critica Botanica, we 

 learn that Linnaeus himself found a resemblance of his own early 

 fate in the history of " this little northern plant, long overlooked, 

 depressed, abject, flowering early ,^ and, adds Sir J. E. Smith, 

 " more honoured in the name than any other : few could have 

 been better chosen, and the progress of practical botany in Bri- 

 tain seems to be marked by the more frequent discovery of the 

 Linnaea." 



The Linnaea borealis thus pre-eminently distinguished, and so 

 interesting to the botanist, has yet a further, though a far 

 slighter, claim on the regards of every Scottish votary of Flora, 

 as being first made known as a denizen of Britain, by a Beattie, 

 a name dear to every lover of poetry and truth. In 1795, Pro- 

 fessor James Beattie found it in an old fir wood at Inglis Mad- 

 die, on the borders of Mearnshire. He sent specimens of it to the 

 Linnean Society, and his discovery was published in the third vo- 

 lume of their transactions. Since that time, other locahties in 

 Aberdeenshire have been made known to the botanical world. 

 Mr Craigie, according to Dr Hooker, found it in several woods, 

 and Maughan at Crebstone and Kemnay in the same county. 

 Messrs Brown have recorded it as growing in a wood at the back 

 of the hill of Kinnoul near Perth, which, as far as I am aware, 

 is the most southerly station, that can, as yet, be assigned to the 



JANUARY MARCH 1829- X 



