42 THROUGH THE FIELDS WITH L1NX.-EUS 



terested in the friend of Celsius ; and to Des Sauvages, 

 who laughingly called Linnaaus the Charles XII. of 

 Natural History. Reaumur seems to have felt a little 

 national jealousy at the Swede finding his time too 

 valuable to allow him to engage in studying the manners 

 and language of the French. In his diary we again 

 find Lirmasus describing himself as ' of opinion that time 

 is never bought so dear as when people go abroad only 

 for the sake of languages.' 



This is narrow ; he might have considered that few 

 persons go abroad exclusively for the sake of languages. 

 The fact is, that carelessness in this respect was one of 

 the sins he felt inclined to ; and besides this, his ear for 

 accent was deficient. He learnt Latin readily enough as 

 soon as he found a purpose for doing so ; but Reaumur 

 continues, ' He never had a genius for languages, nor 

 could he ever render himself familiar with the English, 

 French, German, or even the Lapland tongues. He felt 

 the same difficulty with respect to Dutch, although he 

 had resided three years in Holland.' This, however, 

 fortunately, did not prevent him from making himself 

 sufficiently understood, especially in France. 



The French are so brilliant and so quick to compre- 

 hend the universal language of gesture. Demosthenes 

 was right in saying, ' Action, action, and again action.' 

 His own and the French natural politeness and tact 

 prevented Carl feeling the inconvenience suffered by 

 Tom Hood, who counselled his friends : 



Never go to France unless you know the lingo ; 

 If you do, like me, you'll repent, by jingo ! 



