CAROLUS LINNAEUS 47 



good pay. Charmed with the Cliffortian 

 garden and conservatories, and seeing there 

 many a plant unknown to botanists, Linnaeus 

 counselled the preparation and publication 

 of an illustrated folio, that might fitly be 

 entitled the Hortus Cliffortianus, in which 

 the rarities and novelties growing there should 

 be brought to the knowledge of the world 

 botanical. Of course the proposition de- 

 lighted Cliffort and the work was done. That 

 most luxurious of all Linna3us's works, the 

 Hortus Cliffortianus, he assures us, was written 

 in nine months. It was published in Amster- 

 dam in 1737, when Linnaeus was thirty years 

 old. But besides this, there had already 

 been published, since Linnseus had come to 

 Amsterdam, the Bibliotheca Botanica and the 

 Fundamenta Botanica, in the year 1736; and 

 there now followed the Flora Lapponica, the 

 Genera Plantarum and the Critica Botanica, 

 all in the year 1737; some of them issued at 

 Amsterdam, others at Leyden. This repre- 

 sents the most wonderful beginning at botan- 

 ical authorship of which there is any record. 

 Here were seven learned and forceful books, 

 two in folio and five in octavo, all given to 

 the public within two years, almost a library 

 of botany, and that a new botany, and so 



