THE LINDEN-TREE OF LINNHULT 19 



ing garden, still set with flowers and beehives on grass 

 thick with anemones and tiny pansies, and wild straw- 

 berries under the yellow-flowering gooseberry bushes 

 and other shrubs. The cottage stands in a beech grove 

 which forms with the spruce, larch, and other trees a 

 forest around it. The ground at the foot of a good-sized 

 oak growing below the cottage is powdered with wood 

 anemones. The land is undulating hereabout, and very 

 agreeably broken and diversified. The railway-line 

 passes directly before the obelisk and cottage, being 

 only divided from the garden by a pair of iron gates. 

 Beyond a stream, which one passes by a plank bridge, 

 a wood rises on the opposite side across the railway. 



The well is still worked by a pole lever, one of the 

 earliest and simplest ways of raising water for garden- 

 ing purposes. Above the vibrating sound of the wood- 

 pecker's tapping rises the prolonged coo of the wood- 

 pigeon. The air is vocal with birds and perfumed with 

 buds and flowers. It is the very fittest early home for a 

 student of natural history, the science of peace. The 

 garden is walled on two sides with granite, the large 

 stones being smoothly laid and fitted without mortar. 

 A granite slab forming a small table in an arbour is 

 inscribed with Linnaous's name ; the Polar star and 

 other devices are decipherable on it, traced in outline 

 with tinges of colour. This, of course, has nothing to 

 do with the infancy of Linnaeus. 



His father was appointed rector, instead of curate, 

 of Stenbrohult in 1708, and the family moved to the 



c 2 



