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more than a year after this, residing at Hammarby. 

 He thus with touching cheerfulness describes his situa- 

 tion in his diary. 'Linnaeus limps, can hardly walk, 

 speaks unintelligibly, and is scarce able to write.' He 

 used to be carried up the hill to his museum, and had 

 great delight in examining rarities and new productions 

 brought by M. Mutis from New Grenada &c., and by 

 his other pupils from the Cape of Good Hope and Asia. 



The dried specimen lived again to him, and was still 

 able to ' bring all heaven before his eyes.' 



' Linnaeus had already prepared great part of a 

 third botanical appendix, or " Mantissa." To this his 

 son added (later) the communications of Thunberg from 

 the Cape, which his father, "with half-extinguished 

 eyes," as Condorcet beautifully relates, had just been 

 able to glance over, but not to describe.' 



Linnaeus broke down : he dropped like the begonia 

 at the last the flower that had always interested him so 

 much, with its male and female flowers so graceful and 

 so differing. The common begonia, that most interest- 

 ing and elegant of plants, is jointed all the way up, and 

 as it withers the joints become separated and in shape 

 like the bones of the human limbs ; they drop apart, 

 and fall like dry bones upon the ground. This family 

 is a botanical study in itself. ' Many begonias are 

 remarkable for the production of adventitious buds in 

 great numbers from various parts of their surface. The 

 relations of this interesting family and numerous order 

 1 Smith. 



VOL. II. B B 



