258 GREENE 



JOURNEY TO LAPLAND. 



Inasmuch as his lecturing in the botanic garden had been 

 under Rudbeck's jurisdiction, and the latter had become much 

 attached to the young man, he had taken him into his own 

 household. Rudbeck himself had been the earliest botanical 

 explorer of Lapland, and, by frequent rehearsal of the wonders 

 he had seen in that wild hyperborean realm, he had enkindled 

 in the young Linnaeus a keen desire to go there. The Swedish 

 government had long thought its own territorial possessions 

 there to be worth investigating from scientific and economic 

 points of view. 



It was now soon arranged that Linnaeus under the auspices 

 of the Academy of Sciences at Upsala, should make an expe- 

 dition to Lapland for purposes of scientific exploration. He 

 set forth from Upsala on the thirteenth of May, 1732, returning 

 late in autumn. It had been a journey of some 2,500 miles, 

 made alone, for the most part, and almost everywhere on foot ; 

 but this was one of the most fruitful seasons of his whole life, 

 though he was now but twenty-five years of age. His Flora 

 Lapponica, together with the narrative of the journey, are 

 among the most instructive and fascinating reports of a scien- 

 tific expedition ever written. In the da}^ when they were new 

 the}^ were unequalled in the literature of scientific travel ; and 

 the Flora Lapponica w^ould have secured a deathless fame to 

 an}^ botanist, even if he had written nothing else. 



JOURNEY TO GERMANY AND HOLLAND. 



After the return from Lapland, the next two years were 

 passed in teaching publicly and privately, at one place and 

 another in Sweden, mostly at Fahlun ; but also at every spare 

 hour of time working industriously at the manuscripts of sev- 

 eral books — the Flora Lapponica and others — which he was 

 all the while hoping soon to be able to give to the public. At 

 Fahlun he won the esteem and friendship of the Rev. Johan 

 Browallius, at that time private chaplain to a certain nobleman, 

 subsequently a professor at the University of Abo, and Lutheran 

 bishop of that diocese. This man urged Linnaeus to circum- 

 vent his powerful antagonist at Upsala by going abroad, and 



