LINN AN ADDRESS 
GREENE. 703 
APPOINTED PROFESSOR AT UPSALA. 
Court influence now procured him the comfortable position of phy- 
sician to the admiralty. After that the death of Doctor Roberg, 
professor of medicine at Upsala, opened the way to Linnzeus’s pro- 
motion to a professorship at that university. It was that of medicine, 
and that of botany was, at the time, held by Linneus’s former antag- 
onist, Rosén. The two professors, now equal in official rank, be- 
came reconciled, and, with the full consent of the authorities, ex- 
changed professorships. Linneus was now again a botanist. He 
was still a young man, only some 34 years of age, and had lived out 
not quite half his days. The after years, those of his fruition, did 
not produce as much of importance to botany as the earlier period 
had yielded. There came out in 1751 the Philosophia Botanica, 
partly of the nature of a recension and enlargement of two of his 
early books, the Fundamenta Botanica and the Critica Botanica. It 
is one of his most important and imperishable books. In 1753 
appeared the largest and most comprehensive of his works—the 
Species Plantarum. During the remaining years of his life Linneus 
was largely occupied with the preparation of new editions of almost 
all his works, the public demand for which was very great. 
INFLUENCE OF LINNZZUS UPON BOTANY. 
It is not possible to convey an idea of what Linneus accomplished 
for the advancement of botany without presenting, in brief outline, 
a view of what had been done before him. That there was not much 
botany before Linneus is a fable that gained popular credence in 
rural districts a half century ago. One of the earliest books which 
our Linneus published was the Bibliotheca Botanica. It contains 
the titles of 1,000 volumes, by almost as many different botanists, 
most of which books he thought an indispensable part of a working 
botanist’s equipment; and his own works, on almost every page, 
abound in citations of those of his predecessors. The first founda- 
tions of scientific botany had been laid by Czsalpino, an Italian 
physician and university professor of botany, 124 years before Lin- 
neus was born. He selected his granite blocks of principle so well, 
and laid them so securely, that the superstructure of modern system- 
atic botany rests upon them. Every variation of botanical system 
that has been builded in the last 324 years has rested on the Cvsal- 
pinian foundation, i. e., that in the fruit and seed of plants we 
have the key to their affinities. Not one of the great geniuses botan- 
ical in later times who have most advanced the science has questioned 
the validity of that principle. Not one has yet dared to predict that 
the Cesalpinian foundations are likely ever to be abandoned as in- 
secure. 
