382 HISl^ORY OF SCIENCE. 



strange considerations. It will therefore be obvious that in attempting 

 to sketch within the compass of a single chapter the progress effected 

 in the natural history sciences during the last century, we can for the 

 most part touch only upon their general aspects. Such are the theories 

 of the earth, as indicating the progress of discovery in Geology ; and 

 the schemes of classification in Botany and Zoology, as reflecting the 

 knowledge of living things and of their relations. The .limited space 

 remaining will not permit of more than very brief notices of the careers 

 of but a few of the great men whose labours raised the natural history 

 sciences to their present lofty position. 



KARL LIISIN^EUS was born on the 24th of May, 1707, at Rashalt, in 

 in the province of Smaland, in Sweden. His father was a village 

 pastor, from whose example Linnaeus probably derived his taste for 

 the study of nature. The child who was destined to become so famous 

 as a botanist, cultivated at a very early age a portion of the garden 

 assigned to him by his father with full liberty to make whatever use 

 of it he pleased, and the small plot was soon stocked not only with 

 the flowers of the cultivated garden, but with the wild leafy beauties 

 of the neighbouring woods and meadows. The pastor himself had 

 some store of botanical knowledge, for we are told that when Linnaeus 

 was only four years of age, he heard his father explaining to a company 

 of his friends the properties of the various plants in the garden. Young 

 Karl then began continually to be asking his father the names and 

 qualities of all the plants he met with. The pastor's home seems to 

 have been favourably placed for fostering that love of nature which 

 was a characteristic of Linnaeus through life, for the house was near a 

 beautiful lake, and was surrounded by hills and villages, woods and 

 fields. When Linnaeus passed from school to the gymnasium, or col- 

 lege, where he was to pursue studies preparatory to his adoption of 

 the clerical profession, it was found after a time that he had no taste 

 for Greek, Hebrew, ethics, metaphysics, rhetoric, or theology, and ac- 

 cordingly his preceptors reported to his father that the youth was unfit 

 for the clerical or other learned profession, and recommended some 

 handicraft trade as more suitable for him. But a professor of medicine 

 had observed the genius of the boy for natural science, and he offered 

 to receive him into his house as a student of medicine. Linnaeus ac- 

 cordingly followed the prescribed course of studies at Lund, and after- 

 wards at Upsala, at the same time eagerly pursuing botanical studies, 

 in which he became so skilled as to attract the notice and acquire the 

 friendship of the professor of botany and other persons distinguished 

 for their scientific acquirements. 



Linnaeus had his attention attracted to the stamens and pistils of 

 flowers by some remarks in a review of Vaillant's " Discours sur la 

 Structure des Fleurs" and having closely examined these organs and 

 discovere'd that they were essential to all flowering plants, he conceived 

 the idea of making their arrangement the foundation of a new system 



