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invented for momentary use, so that before I had passed through the lower and 

 upper schools I had learned to distinguish from 300 to 400 species. In 1S11 1 

 and my classfellows said farewell to AVexio, to enter the University of Lund. I, 

 indeed, carried thither with me a firmly rooted love for Upsala, the most 

 ancient seat of botanical lore in Sweden. For the masters of the school, one 

 and all, had admonished us to avoid Upsala, because the philosophical schools of 

 Schelling and the Romanticists ("Phosphorism" as the taint was called in Sweden) 

 were dominant in that University. Transferred from the mountains of 

 Smoland to the misty level of Scania my companions thought they were plunged 

 in the Stygian marshes, but to me it seemed that I was reborn into the Elysian 

 fields, so attractive were the novelties which the University library within, and 

 the untrod plains without offered me. 



Although a niycological library properly so called was all but entirely 

 wanting, none but those who have straggled with similar difficulties can picture 

 with what rapture, ransacking the library every hour it was open, I recognised 

 in the Flora Danica, in the works of Jacquin, and in the coarse engravings of 

 Buxbaum, many species still unnamed which were perfectly familiar to me. 



Lund supplied two teachers to whom I am mainly indebted for the 

 direction and encouragement my studies required, A. S. Rezius and C. A. Agardh, 

 the setting and the rising suns of Botany, each of whom treated me from the first 

 with peculiar kindness and attention. The latter gave mePersoon's "Synopsis of 

 Fungi," and from the former I obtained Albertini's " Conspectus of the Fungi of 

 the Niskian district." It was from this last book more than from any other that I 

 gained scientific instruction in the truest sense. In the following year I collected 

 Hyphomycetes and Epiphylli, classes hitherto neglected ; and I quickly appre- 

 hended that they were for the most part merely elementary conditions (as we say 

 now) of more perfect growths. I have ever thought that these insignificant and 

 ignoble species were not worthy of detailed description by any other than those 

 who care but to add new species to received lists. The very facility which I 

 found in describing them away from their native localities changed to weariness 

 the pleasure I should have experienced in overcoming real difficulties. It has 

 been always my custom to define every plant in its natural conditions of 

 season and habitat, and I have throughout refused to take note of merely tra- 

 ditional descriptions. The year 1813, ungenial as it was with storms of thunder 

 and rain, afforded an unusually abundant harvest of Funguses. I was absorbed 

 for a time in the closest study for my degree in Philosophy, but when Homer and 

 the Funguses equally claimed my attention I allotted to each its due share of my 

 time. In the following year my academical specimens, as they are called, being 

 completed, I was chosen Botanical Lecturer, and I could then devote myself 

 with a safe conscience entirely to the study of Funguses ; though at the same 

 time I in no way neglected any region of the fbral kingdom. In order to 

 consult more copious botanical works than Lund possessed, in the November of 

 this and the ten following years I visited Haunia, and there I delivered to the 



