LINN^AN MEMORIAL ADDRESS 253 



ful handicraft. To this man young Linnceus had to make ap- 

 plication for the necessary credentials. As a matter of routine 

 duty, the letter was indited promptly, and handed to the appli- 

 cant. It was brief, and rhetorical ; and, whether by chance, or 

 of deliberate purpose, the figure of speech employed was botan- 

 ical. " Boys at school," he writes, " may be likened to young 

 trees in orchard nurseries ; where it will sometimes happen that 

 here and there among the sapling trees are such as make little 

 growth, or even appear like wild seedlings, giving no promise; 

 but which when afterwards transplanted to the orchard, make a 

 start, branch out freely, and at last yield satisfactory fruit." 



On reaching Lund, Linnaeus first of all paid his respects to 

 Professor Gabriel Hoek, who some years before had been an 

 esteemed tutor of his in the earlier days at Wexio. This gen- 

 tleman was so much pleased at seeing young Linnaeus there as 

 a postulant for admission to the university, that he at once, and 

 in complete ignorance of that humiliating letter, proposed to 

 himself the pleasure of introducing in person, his former pupil 

 to the rector Magnificus and also to the dean, and asking that 

 he be registered as his own former pupil. This done, good 

 Professor Gabriel Hoek, like a veritable angel guardian and 

 helper, and knowing the indigence of Linnaeus, went further 

 and procured for him free lodgings under the hospitable roof of 

 one Doctor Kilian Stobaeus. 



Doctor Stobaeus, at the time only a practicing physician to 

 the nobility and gentry at Lund and the regions round about — 

 though afterwards one of the head professors at the university — 

 at first saw in young Linnaeus nothing but an indigent student 

 with the profession of medicine in view, his only possessions 

 seeming to be a few books of medicine. But the student, on 

 the other hand, found the Stobaeus domicile a wonderful and 

 fascinating place. There was a library, evidently precious, 

 because it was kept locked. There were, however, open to 

 any one's inspection, a number of cabinets of natural history ; 

 collections of minerals, shells, birds, and — what Linnaeus, 

 though he was now twenty years old, had never before seen — 

 an herbarium ; a collection of pressed and dried botanical speci- 

 mens. On this suggestion Linnaeus at once began making an 



