CAROLUS LINNJEUS 23 



cian might be made, that he proposed to 

 receive him, with the father's consent, into 

 his own house for a year, and give him special 

 instruction, free of all charge; and this was 

 done. 



Now while making himself the despair of 

 his tutors in Hebrew and theology, what had 

 the young Linnaeus been accomplishing all 

 these years? The idler which these thought 

 him, he had not been. In mathematics and 

 physics he was quite distinguished; moreover, 

 his student comrades called him always the 

 little botanist, thus by chance conveying the 

 information that, as a youth of eighteen years, 

 Linnaeus was small of stature, and as much 

 as possible given to botanizing. He has told 

 us himself that, during all his years at Wexio, 

 the red-letter days were those of his occasional 

 walks across the country thirty miles to the 

 home at Stenbrohult, which gave opportunity 

 to study the wild plants of the waysides. 

 He had also acquired certain books on botany 

 Swedish local floras in the study of which 

 he had busied himself day and night until 

 he almost knew them by heart, as he assures 

 us. The titles of at least three of those books, 

 and especially their authors' names, must 

 needs be given on a Linnaean bicentenary that 



