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AUTHORSHIP IN THE ' AMCENITATES ACADEMIC^.' 

 By B. Daydon Jackson, Ph.D., Sec.L.S. 



Few subjects have been more discussed by librarians and 

 bibliographers than the authorship of many of the academical 

 theses and dissertations which are met with in large collections 

 of books. I may quote a sentence from Mr. H. B. Wheatley's 

 volume Uoid to Catalogue a Library : — "In the ' title-taking ' of 

 these dissertations the difficulty is not in their subjects, which are 

 sometimes confined to a single word, but it is in the choice of 

 their author's names : whether the prseses, the respondent, the 

 proponent, or defendant is to be chosen." 



In many cases there can be no room for doubt, as in the 

 present day, when each thesis may be taken to be the work of the 

 graduate who maintains it. But formerly in Germany and 

 Scandinavia, the prseses ranked as author, a practice continued in 

 Sweden almost to our own times. The difficulty arises when 

 some novel ascription is made in the title of the dissertation, 

 when, in place of the opposed prseses and respondens, some such 

 title as " auctor " or " auctor respondens " makes its appearance, or 

 still more embarrassing when we find such as these: — "Quarn deo 

 ter optimo maximo Praeside ex auctoritate D. Rectoris exam, sub- 

 jicit J. G. W.," or " Quam praeside summo numine ex auctoritate 

 D. Rectoris subjicit . . ." 



My object is, however, not to discuss the subject as a whole, 

 but to confine my remarks almost exclusively to the dissertations 

 which were printed with the name of Linnaeus as praeses, and 

 subsequently reissued in the volumes of the Amoenitates Academicce. 

 If these are held to be the work of the prasses, they must be 

 quoted as of Linnaeus, with all the authority attaching to his 

 name, but if, as some of recent years have held, the respective 

 respondents are the actual authors, then the names of many 

 obscure individuals will stand as sponsors in place of the hitherto 

 reputed author. 



Prof. T. M. Fries has given an account of these dissertations, 

 and it will be best to give his statement concerning them. 

 According to the existing regulations, down to 1850, everyone who 

 wished to be examined in the faculty of philosophy had to dispute 

 'pro exercitio, and, after the examination, another thesis pro gradu, 

 before the degree was conferred. The former in most cases was 

 entirely or chiefly the work of the professor, who took the chair 

 at the function as praeses, and also assumed the lion's share in 

 defending the thesis. On the other hand, the respondens took 

 but little part in the composition or defence. To determine how 

 many of these one hundred and eighty-six dissertations entirely 

 proceeded from Linne's pen is impossible. That such was the 

 case with certain essays, we have his own word, and their con- 

 tents also show that; others, such as Lofling's De gemmis ar- 

 borum, Soderberg's Pandora et Flora Bybyensis, Tillaeus's De varia 

 febrium intermittentium curatione, are, on the contrary, exclusively 

 the result of the respondent's own study and observations. But 



