BIHANG TILL K. SV. VET.-AKAD. HANDL. BAND 13. AFD. IV. N:0 5. 47 



had got piinted, and with whicli lie labelled the whole, the 

 insects excepted, ^a method», hc adds, »of saving labour in a 

 collection not vet finally arranged.» It will appear as if Swartz, 

 the botanist, thiis avoided the risk of naming in his own 

 handwritino- objects among which he did not feel at home. 



Lastlj there is the testimony of Thdnberg, himself a 

 disciple of Linn.eus and intim ately acquainted with the hand- 

 writino- of his master, declaring that when he took charge 

 of the Drottningholm collections after their arrival at Upsala, 

 he had searched with the most scrupulous care for a name or 

 anything written by Linnj^us himself, but without discovering 

 a trace of anv sort, »except the printed labels which Professor 

 Olaus Savartz had recently pasted on the shells.» Many years 

 ago also Wahlenberg, who took an active part in these pro- 

 ceedings, afhrmed to the writer of this that Linn^eus most cer- 

 tainly had not labelled the Queen's collection 2). 



It may therefore be taken as an established fact that 

 LiNN^us never deposited any names in the collections he de- 

 scribed at Ulriksdal and Drottningholm, but simply arranged 

 the specimens in the same order with the descriptions reserved 

 for the Royal works. It may be readily believed that the 

 danger of the labels getting astray and thus giving rise to 

 worse confusion, appeared to him great enough in the Queen'8 

 cabinet, the more so as, probably from experience, he had 

 come to the conviction that »Potentates have none but dons 

 for servants»^). So he relied on his descriptions. 



The mauner in which the Shells and Echinoderms were 

 kept in the Queen's Museum at Drottningholm is now no 

 longer known, but very possibly it was the same in which 

 they are still kept, and which, in that case, has been adopted 

 by Thunberg for the shells of the låter donation of King 

 Charles the XIII and for those of the University Museum. 

 It is the following. Xearly every single specimen is contained 

 in a square box of convenient size, made of strong paper, and 

 filled with cotton on which it lies attached with slue. The 

 Drottningholm specimens are accompanied by slips of paper 



') Address at the Inauguration of the new Museum at Upsala, ^^'.1 

 1807, p. 67. 



^) The statement to the contrary given in the American Naturalist, 

 XXI, p. 410, is entirely groundless. 



') Dedication to the Queen of the M. L. U. 



