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LINN^US 

 1707-1778 



N the same year that England and Scotland were 

 united into one kingdom, and two days after the 

 Act of Union came into operation (3rd May 1707), there 

 was born at Roeshult, Sweden, Carl Linnaeus, the father 

 of modern botany. He found biology a chaos, and he 

 left it a cosmos. He was the first to popularize the study 

 of botany in Europe by establishing the custom of using 

 for a plant a second or specific name in addition to the 

 generic name under which every specimen was then only 

 known. Linnaeus was destined to rescue botany from the 

 degraded state to which Pliny and his imitators had reduced 

 it. To this truly great man we owe the first attempt to 

 remove the natural sciences from the control of those into 

 whose hands they had fallen. 



The origin of the name Linnaeus is supposed to have 

 had some connection with a lofty linden or lime tree which 

 stood in the garden of the ancestral home. 



It was intended that he should follow the same pro- 

 fession as his father that of a Lutheran pastor ; but 



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