ST. MARTIN'S SUMMER 323 



son Carl would, of course, keep the official residence in 

 Upsala, and he wanted to provide a home for the rest. 

 Besides this, he had long been possessed with that 

 * thirst for a lodge in some vast wilderness ' that comes 

 on many men and women between the ages of forty 

 and fifty. 



So he built Hammarby and set it in a garden 

 showing that an Eden can be made even in Scandinavia 

 and did many other works of natural magic, at least as 

 marvellous as the march of Birnam wood to Dunsinane. 

 He built a museum of natural history at Hammarby, 

 to contain his own private collection, separate from his 

 house, as a precaution against fire, which, however, 

 seems once (in 1766) to have come very near destroying 

 the collection. We find no particulars of this fire, only 

 an expression in the diary of thankfulness to God who 

 protected him from fire, and a letter of Collinson's 

 dated March 1767, who writes, <I feel the distress you 

 must be under with the fire. I am glad, next to your 

 own and family's safety, that you have saved your 

 papers and books.' 



During the last twenty years of his life Linnaeus 

 mostly resided for the summer at Hammarby, where, 

 laying aside the solemn habit of the professor, he 

 became a friendly companion in dressing-gown and 

 slippers and red cloth cap, stout, and stooping with some 

 difficulty over that rarity a yellow cabbage rose, protect- 

 ing the bush from insects by planting camomile under 

 it ; Linnseus ' being,' as Fuller quaintly hath it, * a very 



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