LINNHZ AN ADDRESS—GREENE. 695 
in young Linneus nothing but an indigent student with the profession 
of medicine in view, his only possessions seeming to be a few books of 
medicine. But the student, on the other hand, found the Stobseus 
domicile a wonderful and fascinating place. There was a library, 
evidently precious, because it was kept locked. There were, however, 
open to any one’s inspection a number of cabinets of natural history, 
collections of minerals, shells, birds, and—what Linneus, though he 
was now 20 years old, had never before seen—an herbarium, a collec- 
tion of pressed and dried botanical specimens. On this suggestion 
Linnzus at once began making an herbarium of his own, its contents 
being the plants of Lund and its vicinity. But what he wished for 
beyond anything else was access to the library, though he did not dare 
ask for the privilege. There he would be sure to find the works of 
Tournefort, original and unabridged, and even older and rarer stand- 
ards of the best botany. The privilege came at last, and in a re- 
markable manner, by a chain of circumstances that demonstrates the 
young Linneus’s irrepressible zeal and most unexampled industry in 
acquiring knowledge of botany. 
Doctor Stobzeus, the owner of the first museum of natural history 
that Linneus had beheld was, by Linneus’s account of him, not only 
of great learning and of surpassing skill in the healing art, but also 
himself a feeble sickly man, having but one eye, being also crippled 
in one foot, and a gloomy hypochondriac. A student or two in his 
household was a necessity. Much of his medical practice was by cor- 
respondence, and on some of the professional visits the student must 
be sent. At the time of Linneus’s coming, a medical student from 
Germany had long been Doctor Stobzeus’s main dependence for help ; 
was thoroughly trusted, and his right-hand man. This older student 
the magnetic young Linneus in an innocent way, and half uncon- 
sciously, appears to have at first captivated and then bribed into 
helping him in respect to that which he now most desired. 
An old and honored inmate of the doctor’s household was his 
mother. She was a nervous, fretful old lady, much troubled with 
sleeplessness. A window of young Linnzus’s room was visible from 
where she tried to sleep, and she observed that, after this newcomer 
had been in the house some weeks, a light seemed to be left burning 
in his room, if not all night, at least until well toward morning, when 
presumably it had burnt itself out. She reported the case to her son, 
and insistently, as a thing that ought by all means to be stopped. 
The whole house was in danger of destruction by fire. Doctor 
Stobzeus had knowledge of students and their ways. In his own mind 
he doubted that this was a case of sleeping with the candles burning. 
He entertained a suspicion that the two companion youths would be 
found there, recreating themselves with cards in the small hours of 
41780—_08——48 
