i8 WITH CARL OF THE HILL 



how we should cross it. And lo ! as we got nearer, 

 an old man was waiting in a queer crank boat and 

 took us in. Very silently he rowed us, I remember, 

 and with head bent down, as though he were sad at 

 heart or pondering many things. At another point 

 out ran some bare-footed children to give us bunches 

 of sweet Linngea which they had found in flower 

 in some warm corner among the pines, crying, 

 " Linnsea, Linnaea," as they came along. And 

 though I had seen much of this plant I had 

 never seen as yet the flower, which only blossoms 

 fully in the early summer, though afterwards I saw it 

 many times. And about that small, sweet, bell-like 

 flower there is a little story, so pretty as it seems to 

 me that, even if well known and whether true or 

 untrue, I must tell it here. 



noj^'l^ Old Linnaeus lay upon his death-bed. The winner 



of secrets, the magician of nature, the reformer of 

 science would soon have passed away. All that he 

 had brought to the information of the centuries 

 and the equipment of his age would be a memory 

 and no more. Now true greatness is ever humble, 



/734 cb-'cfT^' ^"^ Carolus Linnaeus was truly great. And so it 



had come about that he had connected his name 

 with not one of his many discoveries, being only 



i-fiY'^c 



