16 THROUGH THE FIELDS WITH LINNAEUS 



Linnaeus since Stoever (of Altona) wrote in German his 

 valuable ' Life of Linne" ' in 1794, and Pulteney his in 

 English in 1805. 1 



These two biographers abuse each other politely in 

 long prefaces. Stoever says of Pulteney's book, c It is 

 in several other respects imperfect and deficient. The 

 learned author ought to have had recourse to Baron 

 Haller's " Bibliotheca Botanica," torn ii. What follows is 

 a translation of this work.' Pulteney speaks of Stoever's 

 ' Life of Linne ' as containing interesting particulars, 

 < but it is not without a considerable number of errors.' 



Sir William Jardine, in his brilliant epitome of both 

 books, made as a short biographical notice of Linnseus 

 for the Naturalists' Library, speaks of Linngeus's diary * 

 as owing its preservation to Dr. Maton who edited it. 3 

 Almost as precious as this are the letters and diaries 

 of travel kept by Linnaeus, which came with his other 

 collections into the possession of Sir James E. Smith, 

 the founder of the Linnaean Society. These papers, 

 written either in Latin or Swedish, have been par- 

 tially edited and translated by him, and some few of 

 the diaries have been separately published in German, 

 but some of them have never hitherto been brought to 



1 Turton's biography, written in 1806 to accompany a translation 

 of Linnaeus's General ' System of Nature,' is compiled from these. 

 The smaller biographies are abridgments of Stoever. 



2 The marvel is that Stoever did his work so well without the diary 

 and documents that Dr. Maton appended to the second English edition 

 of Stoever. 



3 The diary, down to 1730, was put into Latin by Archbishop 

 Menander. It is written in the third person. 



