298 THROUGH THE FIELDS WITH LINN^US 



Burmann's works on the plants of Ceylon, and fre- 

 quently visiting the botanic garden. 



Mr. George Clifford, 1 J.U.D., burgomaster, banker, 

 and one of the directors of the Dutch East India Com- 

 pany, was at this time the most enterprising botanist 

 and horticulturist in Europe. He had a fine country 

 seat and garden at Hartecamp, near Haarlem. 



He was out of health, and applied to Boerhaave for 

 advice. The doctor recommended Linnasus to him ae 

 one capable of looking after his health, and who would 

 also be able to arrange his fine collection of foreign 

 plants and form his garden, which cost the ' banker 

 12,000 florins annually, and was his hobby and his 

 pride. All Dutchmen love their gardens, but Clifford 

 was no common tulip-fancier, but an ambitious man of 

 scientific aims one of the men, Motley's republican 

 Dutchmen, the makers of Holland, who made their small 

 country a leader in European history. Hartecamp 

 was no ordinary lusthaus, as Boerhaave well knew ; he 

 also rightly judged that the eager enthusiastic young 

 Swede was no mere classifier of plants in a herbal, but 

 one who would tend and keep in order a paradise. We 

 are not to suppose that, for all Carl's science, l a prim- 

 rose by the river's brim,' a ' monopetalous hypogynous 

 Pentandria monogynia ' was to him, and it was nothing 

 more : on the contrary, he was first and above all things 

 a florist. He kept the dried flowers in his herbal and 



1 Stoever and his copyists, following the German pronunciation, 

 write the name Cliffort. Dutch books spell it Clifford. 



