86 THROUGH THE FIELDS WITH LINNAEUS 



their laws it was ordained that a short discourse should 

 be delivered by the person who went out of office ; but 

 Linnaeus ' who was as fond of public speaking as our 

 Gladstone c made a formal oration,' a most admirable 

 speech in Swedish, 1 ' captivating his audience by the 

 beauty of his observations, on "What is remarkable 

 in Insects," which pleased everybody ; and the custom 

 of giving an oration was followed by all the presidents 

 afterwards. This oration was printed by order of the 

 Academy ; it went into seven editions and translations. 

 ' The author of this discourse,' says Chevalier Back, ' was 

 an animated and sprightly painter, who captivated his 

 readers and excited in them a kind of ecstatic rapture.' 

 To us the speech reads something like a chapter taken 

 out of White's ( History of Selborne.' Such observations 

 had at that time infinite freshness and novelty. In a 

 separate paper Linnaeus wrote on the insects destructive 

 to books. About this time he wrote a paper in the 

 Transactions of the Academy of Stockholm, i On laying 

 the Foundation of Economics on Natural History and 

 Physics.' This was always a favourite subject with our 

 author, who has proved in various parts of his writings, 

 and in a very striking manner, the close connection 

 subsisting between the sciences of natural history and 

 rural economy of every description. This was quite a 

 novel idea at that time. 



Linnaeus was pre-eminently a practical man, although 

 in hygienic science he was a century in advance of the 

 1 Stoever. 



