252 GREENE 



pletely and most happily revolutionized this brilliant youth's 

 conception of the plant world, as well as his method of investi- 

 gating it. It was, in fact, the day when Linnaeus, according 

 to his own testimony about it, first began to be a botanist ; and 

 thenceforward the illustrious Parisian had never a more zealous 

 disciple, until after some years the ardent disciple began, and 

 in some respects deservingly, to supersede the master. It is 

 hardly to the praise of Linn^us that in after life, when at the 

 height of his own resplendent fame he was dedicating a genus 

 of plants to each of his chief benefactors of earlier days, he 

 forgot good Dr. Rothman. This man had been the first, 

 and perhaps the most important of them all, even from the 

 view-point of botanical training. It was certainly he who, as 

 far as one can see, saved the boy Linnasus from oblivion when 

 his own father had resolved to apprentice him to a cabinet- 

 maker or a tailor. It was he who, having assumed as it were 

 sponsorship for Linnaeus as candidate for a career in science, 

 placed in his hands the first book of real botany that the youth 

 had ever seen, and taught how to begin to be a botanist; intro- 

 duced him to the illustrious Tournefort, who at once became 

 the lode star of Linnasus's own genius for years to come. Yet 

 to the end of Linnaeus's days there was no genus Rothmania. 

 Professor Thunberg, once a pupil of Linnaeus at Upsala, and 

 long afterwards a successor of his in the chair of botan}' there, 

 made tardy reparation to the neglected memory of Dr. Roth- 

 man, after both benefactor and beneficiary were dead. 



After one year under Dr. Rothman's patronage and instruc- 

 tion, it was thought advisable that Linnaeus should enter the uni- 

 versity at Lund. In connection with the transfer from Wexio 

 to Lund there was an illustration of how, in the extremities of 

 their need, fortune favors at every turn, the men of genius and of 

 high destiny. It was requisite that the candidate should carry 

 a formal letter of transfer from the head master of Wexio 

 Academy to the rector of the University at Lund. The head 

 of the Wexio school, a professor of divinit}', must have been 

 the selfsame who, one year before, had counseled Nils Linnaeus 

 to abandon all hope of Karl's ever becoming a clergyman, to 

 take him home, and apprentice him to the learning of some use- 



