102 THE JOURNAL OF BOTANY 



even these have certainly to some extent received the stamp and 

 imprimatur of Linne, who completed and corrected them through- 

 out before they were printed. 



As to what happened in most cases, one of his pupils, J. G. 

 Acrel, supplies the information. " All disputations," he relates, 

 11 he wrote by dictating, partly in Swedish, partly in Latin, which 

 it was the task of the respondens to reduce to method and order ; 

 and although he did not trouble himself about the Latinity in 

 them, he took care to intimate his opinion as to whether they 

 were well written or the contrary. To write an essay thus needed 

 scarcely three hours, for it was for him nothing but a lecture on 

 the subject, which the respondent took down." But that all could 

 not be so easily dealt with is apparent from even a hasty perusal, and 

 often they demanded from the respondent a fair amount of trouble 

 and knowledge, though the most requisite thing was to provide a 

 passable Latin translation. It was also the custom that he should 

 appear to be the real author and to add some flattering phrases 

 praising the learning and acuteness of the praeses. 



In the library of the Linnean Society there are many duplicate 

 copies of the original theses, corrected and annotated by Linnaeus 

 himself, and the later revision is that printed in the Amcenitates 

 Academicce. That Linnaeus regarded most of these exercises as 

 his own may be learned from such instances, as where he cited 

 plants from Centuria 1 {-2) Plantar-urn in the second edition of his 

 Species Plantarum as first described in those parts, but without 

 naming any author whatever. He plainly looked upon these pro- 

 ductions as entirely his own. 



There is, however, another set of dissertations which must 

 have required a large amount of patience and reference on the 

 part of the respondent, such as the Flora Anglica of 1754, soon 

 followed by Fl. Alpina, Fl. Palastina, and Fl. Monspeliensis, 1756, 

 chiefly based on comparing certain published Floras with the 

 recently issued Species Plantarum. After a short interval we 

 find also Fl. Danica, Fl. Capensis, Fl. Jamaicensis, and Fl. 

 Behjica (excluding Fl. Akeroensis and Fl. Bybyensis). The Flora 

 Anglica is a list of names, with references to the third (Dillenius) 

 edition of Ray's Synopsis, so that the name has to be established 

 by a double reference, with the risk of a wrong number vitiating 

 the result. Fl. Monspeliensis labours under the same defect, con- 

 sequently when the Index Keivensis was in course of compilation, 

 I was careful not to include any of the Floras above mentioned, 

 though the dissertations on new genera and the Centuries were 

 of course utilized. 



We see, therefore, that the prevailing custom was for the 

 praeses to suggest, dictate, and correct the academic exercises of 

 his pupils, and he therefore took them to be his own work. This 

 point of view long prevailed in Sweden. As an instance, I may 

 mention the elder Agardh's Aphorismi Botanici, a volume of sixteen 

 dissertations issued as the work of as many students, whose names 

 appear on the respective title-pages. The work is divided amongst 

 them, a sheet apiece, ending sometimes in the middle of a word, 



