•JO EMINENT NATURALISTS. 



at Oxford remarking to a person while in the presence 

 of Linnreus, that he (Linnaeus) was the young man 

 who confounded all botany. After a time, however, 

 he got on better with these learned sages, and procured 

 many valuable specimens from both Chelsea and 

 Oxford for the garden of his employer, Mr. Cliff ort. 



Linnreus, after a brief stay in England, returned 

 to Holland, and very soon became absorbed in his 

 system of botanical reform. Stoever says of him at 

 this time : "It required a strong and forcible progress 

 to bring about such a revolution ; and, in fact, no 

 time during the whole life of Linnaeus was more 

 distinguished by an extraordinary activity, none more 

 fertile for the republic of science than the year 1737. 

 It was in the course of this same year when Linnaeus 

 published about 200 printed sheets. Such a deal of 

 writing would have been no novelty, and the young 

 Swede had long before been excelled in it. But what 

 constituted its pre-eminence was, that the six works 

 which Linnaeus published in the course of the year, 

 and which diffused the reform of botany from Harte- 

 camp throughout Europe, were all original, and by 

 more than one-half large classical works, replete with 

 the most difficult researches, new representations, and 

 accurate critical doctrines. It would have done infinite 

 honour to his diligence had he only produced one of 

 those works in a whole twelvemonth. The plans and 

 materials for some of them had certainly been pre- 

 viously collected, but the whole required to be digested 

 and arranged." 



The " Grenera Plantarum " was the first book 



