30 CAROLUS LINN&US 



letter, proposed to himself the pleasure of 

 introducing in person his former pupil to the 

 rector Magnificus and also to the dean, and 

 asking that he be registered as his own former 

 pupil. This done, good Professor Gabriel 

 Hoek, like a veritable angel guardian and 

 helper, and knowing the indigence of Linnaeus, 

 went farther and procured for him free lodgings 

 under the hospitable roof of one Doctor Kilian 

 Stobaeus. 



Doctor Stobaeus, at the time only a prac- 

 tising physician to the nobility and gentry 

 at Lund and the regions round about though 

 afterwards one of the head professors at the 

 university at first saw in young Linnaeus 

 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 

 Stobaeus 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; col- 

 lections of minerals, shells, birds, and what 

 Linnaeus, though he was now twenty years 

 old, had never before seen an herbarium; 

 a collection of pressed and dried botanical 



