THE LINDEN-TREE OF LINNHULT 17 



light at all. Sir J. Smith is our most trustworthy 

 authority on this subject, as he possessed materials of 

 which both Stoever and Pulteney were ignorant, although 

 he only used them biographically in a short memoir 

 written for Rees's ' Cyclopaedia.' 



What the present generation knows of Linnaeus is 

 an obsolete system and a few trivial anecdotes. In 

 painting his portrait I have tried to give as a background 

 the things he saw, the scenes he moved in, the con- 

 tinuous diorama of his life, which abounded with 

 adventure more than usually falls to the lot of scholars 

 * whose fame is acquired in solitude.' I wish it may be 

 thought a pleasant yarn about Linnaeus. 



Stoever, and all the short biography writers who about 

 his time pillaged rather than translated him, begin with 

 a hot dispute concerning Linnaeus's birthday. Some 

 say it was the 3rd of May, some the 13th, some the 

 23rd, and various other dates. 1 Linnaeus in his genea- 

 logical table says : < On May 12, 1707, at RSshult in 

 SmSland, was born Carl Linnaeus ' ; but as his own 

 flowery language in his commenced autobiography says 

 he was ' brought into the world in a delightful season of 

 the year, between the months of frondescence and flo- 



1 The New Style being then in process of gradual adoption in 

 Sweden, the year 1704 was regarded as a common year in that 

 country ; consequently the true date of Linnaeus's birth, according 

 to our present reckoning, was May 23, 1707 ; the commonly received 

 date, May 24, being an error due to supposing the calendar in 

 Sweden and Kussia at that time to be identical. Encycl. Brit.> 

 JACKSON. 



VOL. I. C 



