LINN^AN MEMORIAL ADDRESS 25 1 



been before the public for some thirty years. His work was 

 the most complete and signal success that ever had been, and I 

 ma}' almost say, that ever yet has been, in the field of botanical 

 authorship ; because it seems to have captivated the whole botan- 

 ical world, without arousing a jealous enemy, or eliciting a line 

 of adverse criticism for twenty years ; save only a mild protest 

 from the gentle John Ray in England who, clearly superior to 

 Tournefort as a botanist, never measured half the latter's suc- 

 cess as an immediate and popular influence. Viewed without 

 bias or prejudice, and in the perspective of two centuries, 

 Tournefort's Institutes becomes the most conspicuous landmark 

 in the whole history of botany. By no other one author's help 

 did the science make a stride in advance equal to that made 

 under Tournefort's influence between the years 1694 and 1730. 

 It is important that these things be taken note of here. On the 

 day when Linnaeus was born two hundred years ago, Tourne- 

 fort's dazzling star was high on the botanical horizon. It was 

 at its meridian when, at eighteen years of age Linnceus fell 

 under the benign influence of Dr. Rothman at Wexio. This 

 man made no pretensions to botany, beyond what any first-class 

 practicing physician of that period had to know ; but he had 

 full knowledge of the great fame of the Parisian, Tournefort, 

 and had in his library the German Professor Valentini's ^ abridg- 

 ment of Tournefort's Elements. Dr. Rothman had evidently 

 studied Tournefort and been fascinated with his system. Lin- 

 naeus the youth, away in the distant north, the pupil of none but 

 theologians, had not so much as heard of Tournefort. Roth- 

 man told him frankly that all his recreations with plants were 

 little better than wasted time unless he should begin to recognize 

 them as interrelated by characters of their flowers, as Tourne- 

 fort had taught. 



From the day when Dr. Rothman placed in' his hands Valen- 

 tini's key to the twenty-two Tournefortian classes of plants, the 

 young Linnaeus bent his energies in botany to ascertaining by 

 their organographic marks to what one of the classes of Tourne- 

 fort each plant that he found belonged. It was a day that com- 



^Valentixi (Michael Bernhard), professor in Giessen. Tournefortius Con- 

 tractus, Frankfurt am Main. 1715, folio, 48 p., 4 tab. 



