262 GREENE 



had a very noble garden, and conservatories abounding in rare 

 plants from the Indies and other remote places. But his errand 

 with Linnaeus was not botanical. He was something of an in- 

 valid, and melancholy. His regular physician was Boerhaave, 

 at Leyden. On a late visit to him, Boerhaave had advised him 

 that his ailments were chiefly resultant from his princely ways 

 of living ; that he could not do better than employ the services 

 of a brilliant 3'oung Swedish physician, a specialist in dietetics, 

 at present the guest of Professor Burmann. He advised him 

 to take Doctor Linnaeus for body physician into his own house, 

 and place himself under his direction as to diet. This was Clif- 

 fort's motive in calling upon Linnaius. The outcome of it was an 

 agreement between them ; and the young physician botanist was 

 soon quite luxuriously domiciled with Cliffort, and under good 

 pay. Charmed with the Cliffortian garden and conservatories, 

 and seeing there many a plant unkown to botanists, Linnjeus 

 counseled the preparation and publication of an illustrated folio, 

 that might fitly be entitled the Hortus Cliffortianus, in which the 

 rarities and novelties growing there should be brought to the 

 knowledge of the world botanical. Of course the proposition 

 delighted Cliffort and the work was done. That most luxurious 

 of all Linnasus's works, the Hortus Cliffortianus, he assures us, 

 was written in nine months. It was published in Amsterdam in 

 1737, when Linnceus was thirty years old. But besides this, 

 there had alread}- been published, since Linnaeus had come to 

 Amsterdam, the Bibliotheca Botanica, and the Fundamenta 

 Botanica, in the year 1736; and there now followed the Flora 

 Lapponica, the Genera Plantarum and the Critica Botanica, all 

 in the year 1737 ; some of them issued at Amsterdam, others at 

 Leyden. This represents the most wonderful beginning at 

 botanical authorship of which there is any record. Here were 

 seven learned and forceful books, two in folio, and five in octavo, 

 all given to the public within two years, almost a librar}-^ of 

 botany, and that a new botany, and so easy to comprehend, that 

 almost any educated person could now acquire proficiency in 

 botany by these books alone as a guide. The system was a new 

 one ; evidently a rival system to that of Tournefort, which had 

 now been dominant for forty years. All the botanical world 



