HIS WORK FOR POSTERITY 245 



Tulbagh, of the Dutch settlement at the Cape of Good 

 Hope, sent two hundred of the rarest vegetable pro- 

 ductions to Linnasus, and caused to be packed up with 

 great care a multitude of bulbous roots. Linnaeus con- 

 sidered his collection of Cape plants one of the finest 

 that had been hitherto made. The Upsala garden hav- 

 ing been rendered by means of the extraordinary extent 

 of Linnaeus's correspondence, 1 and by his own unremit- 

 ting attention, the richest at that time in the world, 

 he was naturally anxious as to its fate after his decease. 

 This anxiety is shown in several of his letters. He 

 writes, Oct. 23, 1761: 'Should anyone get the man- 

 agement of it but a person who from his youth has 

 been bred up to it, then this garden, at present un- 

 deniably the richest in the world, in respect to plants, 

 would within a few years be in as bad a sta,te as the 

 Oxford garden is now, which when Dillenius was alive 

 was the first, but which during the two first years that 



S had the management of it was almost ruined.' 



He says later, c If I live three years longer, I am confi- 

 dent that nobody will be able to take better care of it 

 than my son, and therefore he is the proper person to 

 be employed when I am gone, should the public wish 

 to keep it up.' 2 



1 Of which twenty-eight large boxes full have been preserved by 

 the Linnaean Society. These papers, with others relating to his life 

 and works, were carefully bound when the Society entered upon its 

 fine new rooms. 



2 When his own mind commenced to wane at fifty-six in 1763. 

 His son, at twenty-two, was appointed assistant professor ; the salary 

 was increased, but Linnaeus was not permitted to resign. 



