TAKES HIS DOCTOR'S DEGREE IN HOLLAND 265 



and as Linnaeus says he did so at one time of his life, 

 there seerns but one other time when he had the oppor- 

 tunity, which was when he travelled in Sk&ne, the sixth 

 and last of his tours. Linnaeus's own diary says ' he 

 continued his journey through Helsingborg to Elsinore, 

 thence by sea to Travemunde and Liibeck, thence to 

 Hamburg,' which seems clear and positive ; but Pulteney, 

 who edits the diary, coolly sets it aside, saying he passed 

 through part of Denmark. One can hardly call touching 

 at Elsinore travelling in Denmark. Indeed Linnaeus 

 himself mentions elsewhere (and previously to the SkSne 

 journey) that he travelled in Denmark. There is some- 

 thing rotten in the state of biography when discrepancies 

 like these exist. We often find Linnaeus in far-off places. 

 Where he dropped from we cannot always ascertain. 

 We make light of this in cursory reading, but in actual 

 travel the distances are enormous much too long to 

 hop or skip. It is, as Fuller remarks, ' easie for a writer 

 with one word of his pen to send an apostle many miles 

 by land and leagues by sea, into a country wherein 

 otherwise he never set his footing.' l 



Either view of the biographers gives Linnaeus a 

 strangely roundabout and expensive journey to Hamburg, 

 where they all meet on neutral ground. For my part, I 

 believe Linnaeus's statement in all its simplicity, con- 

 sidering the scarcity of copper dollars ; but as written 

 history is so positive the other way, I have constructed 

 a neat little hypothesis to meet their views, which has 

 1 The Church Historic of Britain. 



