3 INTRODUCTION. 



By the latter he was employed a9 an assistant, and du- 

 ring the years which he spent in this happy situation. 

 he planned the system, which with some variations has 

 been received by most of his successors, and publish- 

 ed among other works, a description of the plants which 

 he had formerly gathered in Lapland, and also of those 

 which were collected in the garden of his friend. 

 Having in the mean time visited the most richly stored 

 gardens of England and France, he returned after an 

 absence of nearly four years, to his native country ; 

 where through the kindness of an eminent Swedish 

 statesman, he at length obtained the great object of his 

 ambition, the botanical chair at Upsal. In this situa- 

 tion he was unusually popular, and his increasing fame 

 attracted students from every quarter, among whom 

 were several, who imbibed, and diffused throughout 

 the civilized world, a taste for the science over which 

 Linnaeus presided. 



" The father who had been so often grieved at the 

 perverseness of his son's disposition for hunting after 

 plants and worms, and who had therefore concluded 

 that he was fit only to be a maker of Swedish brogues, 

 fortunately lived to see him, not only professor of bot- 

 any, but dean of the College of Physicians at Upsal, 

 caressed by the grandees of Sweden, and honored by 

 all the literati of Europe." 



At the age of forty-six, by the government of his 

 own country he was created knight of the Polar Star, 

 and »oon afterwards, he was elected a member of the 

 Ptoyal Academy of Sciences at Paris, and of the Roy- 

 al Society at London. " Botanical studies we have 

 seen, were the first to engage the youthful mind of 

 Linnaeus ; in these he persevered through life with de- 

 light, and on the advancement which he lent to the 



