2 EMINENT NATURALISTS. 



His father, Nicholas Linnaeus, was passionately fond 

 of gardening, and living as he did in the heart of a 

 beautifnl country, in a house surrounded by ample 

 grounds, he was enabled to gratify this hobby to his 

 heart's content, and young Charles appears to have 

 been born with this intense love for the same pursuit, 

 and thus his parents themselves laid the foundation 

 of what was afterwards to defeat their most cherished 

 wishes, that he should enter the ministry. As a babe 

 cooing in his wooden cot he was often carried into 

 the open air amid the trees and flowers, and the 

 lullabies of his mother were supplemented by the 

 lullabies of the birds and the rustling leaves. His 

 earliest attempts to walk were among the flower-beds, 

 and his fingers daily revealed the handfuls of soil 

 which he had been displacing. Even his very toys 

 were flowers, and thus in the midst of such surround- 

 ings there could be no wonder that he should grow 

 up a veritable child of nature. 



A change of pastorate in 1708 took the family to 

 another living, and here the father selected a house 

 with a very large garden, which he soon cultivated 

 to such an extent as to make it the finest and most 

 variegated in the entire district. He had at one 

 time in it upwards of four hundred species of flowers, 

 many of them of foreign growth. Young Charles 

 very soon made himself familiar with the names of 

 the plants and flowers growing around their home, 

 and almost as soon as he had found the use of his 

 little legs he went out on private expeditions and 

 brought home roots of weeds and wild herbs among 



