24 THROUGH THE FIELDS WITH LINNAEUS 



is always clear and profitable when once the boulders 

 are piled up into fences. If I seem tediously minute, 

 remember that Stenbrohult is the foundation stone of 

 Linnasus's history. This is the summer life. In winter 

 the social joys are perhaps keener and more common, for 

 it is easiest to get about when frost has made the land 

 and water all alike, when the snow has filled up and 

 smoothed the roughnesses of the ground between the 

 boulders, and the Swedish landscape is daylighted by 

 its own purity of snow, its landmarks effaced, and one 

 can best travel by the compass of the stars. The worst 

 season is before the frost sets in, when these Northern 

 forests have a dreadfully aguish feeling. The little 

 Linnaeus, all his life a gouty subject, was very suscep- 

 tible to neuralgia and suffered much from toothache. 



His pleasures, however, as a child redeemed his 

 pains. He has recorded how the love of natural science 

 that followed him through life was first decidedly dis- 

 played when he was scarcely four years old. The child 

 was indeed father to the man. It must have been at 

 Whitsuntide after his fourth birthday when Carl ac- 

 companied his father to a feast at Mockeln, on the 

 other side of the tall alder-fringed lake. In the even- 

 ing the guests seated themselves on some flowery turf, 

 listening to the pastor, who explained to them the 

 names and properties of various plants, showing them 

 the roots of the Succisa, Tormentilla, Orchides, &c. 

 The child paid deep attention to all he saw and heard, 

 and from that time never ceased harassing his father 



