b INTRODUCTION. 



lingly relinquished their spoil, and permitted the en« 

 terprising traveller to return without further moles- 

 tation to his native country. Under the patronage of 

 Louis his king, he visited Greece and many of the 

 provinces of Asia, and as he rambled over classic 

 ground, he gathered the same treasures, which had 

 centuries before been described by Theophrastus. 

 After this he returned to Paris where he published his 

 Institutions, an excellent work requiring no higher 

 praise, than that'' it became the torch which illumined 

 the early path of Linnaeus, and was the source of that 

 more powerful light which the writings of the latter 

 afterwards diffused." 



But we must pass by the names of Kaempfer, Celsius, 

 Dillenius, and Vaillant, names long distinguished in 

 the annals of botany, though eclipsed by the superior 

 splendour of one who was about to appear. His name 

 was Charles Linnaeus ; and it commands more than cold 

 respect, it has the veneration of the scientific world. 

 He was born at a small village in Sweden, on the 3d of 

 May 1707, and exhibited, during the first years of his 

 life, a prediliction for those studies which he after- 

 wards pursued with unequalled success. His father 

 being himself a clergyman destined him for the church, 

 but 



u Lightly he rambled over meadow and mount, 

 And neglected his task for the flowers on the way." 



The consequent deficiency of his academical ac 

 quirements soon became known, and the father, disap- 

 pointed by the perverseness of his wayward son, was 

 about to devote him to a more humble occupation, when 

 the interposition of a neighbouring physician placed 

 the young Linnaeus in the road of usefulness and glory. 



