DEAN CELSIUS COMES 117 



illustrating the plants of Scripture, and, himself an 

 adept in Eastern tongues, had travelled to the East to 

 inquire into and study these plants in their native soil. 

 He was now at work preparing his ' Hierobotanicon :- a 

 Critical Dissertation on the Plants mentioned in Scrip- 

 ture,' only needing some more youthful help to make the 

 work perfect and bring it before the world . Now had come 

 the hour, the man, and the collaborator ready made to 

 his hand. < There is no education like adversity ' : one 

 readily turns one's hand to anything. Linnaeus bore an 

 active share in the production of this learned work, 

 which is in Latin, and, alas, sadly fails in interesting 

 the ordinary reader. It was published in 1745 and 1752 

 in two volumes. As there were only two hundred copies 

 printed, the book is of course now very rare, which is as 

 well. The dean could not even interest his eldest son in it ; 

 but then he was working at his own line of mathematics. 

 The arrival of this young man, just six years older than 

 himself, was a great additional pleasure to Linnaeus. 

 They became firm friends. Andres Celsius is one of 

 Sweden's most celebrated men. Later he joined Mau- 

 pertuis and his associates in the measurement of the 

 Lapland degree, and afterwards built an observatory at 

 Upsala. He was the first who employed the centigrade 

 thermometer. He wrote astronomical and meteorologi- 

 cal observations and a collection of the Aurorae Boreales 

 observed in his time in Sweden. 1 Linnaeus, however, 



1 Under the title CCCXVI Observationes de Lumine Boreali, 

 1733. Nuremberg. Andres Celsius, born 1701 at Upsala, died 1744, 



