CAROLUS LINNAEUS 35 



at Upsala was completed Linnaeus was penni- 

 less and almost barefooted; being obliged to 

 line his shoes with birch bark and pasteboard, 

 and his clothing was worse than threadbare. 

 He was now in the twenty-third year of his 

 age, and in his distress he still consoled himself 

 with studies botanical. In the midst of the 

 botanic garden at Upsala he sat, one autumn 

 day, drawing up descriptions of some rare 

 plants that were in bloom. An ecclesiastic 

 of distinguished bearing in passing through 

 the garden paused before him, asked him 

 what he was describing, if he knew plants, 

 was a student of botany, from what part of 

 the country he had come, and how long he 

 had been at the university, tested his knowl- 

 edge of botany by asking him the name of 

 all the plants that were in sight. This ecclesi- 

 astic was no less noted a personage than Olaus 

 Celsius, a man then some sixty years of age, 

 eminent as a theologian, an orientalist and 

 more than an amateur in the natural sciences; 

 even now beginning to be a botanist; for 

 some two years before the date of his chance 

 meeting with the student Linnseus he had 

 been assigned by a council of Lutheran cler- 

 gymen the task of writing a treatise on the 

 plants mentioned in the Bible. His classic 



