694 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1907. 
youth had ever seen, and taught him how to begin to be a botanist; 
introduced him to the illustrious Tournefort, who at once became the 
lode star of Linnzeus’s own genius for years to come. Yet to the end 
of Linnzus’s days there was no genus Rothmania. Professor Thun- 
berg, once a pupil of Linneus at Upsala, and long afterwards a suc- 
cessor of his in the chair of botany there, made tardy reparation to 
ihe neglected memory of Doctor Rothman after both benefactor and 
beneficiary were dead. 
After one year under Doctor Rothman’s patronage and instruction, 
it was thought advisable that Linneus should enter the university at 
Lund. In connection with the transfer from Wexio to Lund there 
was an illustration of how, in the extremities of their need, fortune 
favors at every turn the men of genius and of high destiny. It was 
requisite that the candidate should carry a formal letter of transfer 
from the head master of Wexi6o Academy to the rector of the Uni- 
versity at Lund. The head of the Wexi6 school, a professor of 
divinity, must have been the selfsame who, one year before, had coun- 
seled Nils Linnzeus to abandon all hope of Karl’s ever becoming a 
clergyman, to take him home, and apprentice him to the learning of 
some useful handicraft. To this man young Linneus had to make 
application for the necessary credentials. As a matter of routine 
duty, the letter was indited promptly, and handed to the applicant. 
It was brief, and rhetorical; and, whether by chance, or of deliberate 
purpose, the figure of speech employed was botanical. “ Boys at 
school,” he writes, “may be likened to young trees in orchard nurs- 
eries, where it will sometimes happen that here and there among the 
sapling trees are such as make little growth, or even appear like wild 
seedlings, giving no promise, but which, when afterwards trans- 
planted to the orchard, make a start, branch out freely, and at last 
yield satisfactory fruit.” 
On reaching Lund, Linneeus first of all paid his respects to Prof. 
Gabriel Hoek, who some years before had been an esteemed tutor of 
his in the earlier days at Wexio. This gentleman was so much 
pleased at seeing young Linneus there as a postulant for admission to 
the university that he at once, and in complete ignorance of that 
humiliating letter, proposed to himself the pleasure of introducing in 
person his former pupil to the Rector Magnificus and also to the dean, 
and asking that he be registered as his own former pupil. This done, 
good Prof. Gabriel Hoek, like a veritable angel guardian and helper, 
and knowing the indigence of Linneus, went further and procured 
for him free lodgings under the hospitable roof of one Dr. Kilian 
Stobzeus. 
Doctor Stobeus, at the time only a practicing physician to the 
nobility and gentry at Lund and the regions round about—though 
afterwards one of the head professors at the university—at first saw 
