68 MEMOIR OF LINNAEUS. 



of Linnaeus, as to solicit from him the office of 

 *>nservator of the garden of plants at Upsala ; a 

 avour which would have been granted had the 

 situation been in his power to bestow. 



As botany was the earliest, so it continued to the 

 ast to be the favourite study of Linnasus. His 

 >redilection for it is obvious to the most superficial 

 >bserver of his life and works. From it he drew 

 nis greatest happiness during prosperity, and his 

 sweetest consolations in adversity. The sight of a 

 new plant threw him into an ecstacy of delight. In 

 writing, after he had passed his sixtieth year, to a 

 friend in Paris, expressing his eager anxiety for a 

 specimen of the Loasa, he says, " If you can give 

 me, or procure for me, a single seed, I would 

 esteem it a treasure/' This passion continued un- 

 abated to the close of his life ; and some have 

 attributed the revival of his intellectual faculties, 

 to the desire he felt to describe the plants which had 

 been sent him by Dalberg from Surinam. It is at 

 least certain, that his latest labours had for their 

 object the publication of a memoir under the title 

 of Plantce Surinamenses. "Well might he apply to 

 himself Rousseau's description of the charms of bo- 

 tany, " I owe my life and my purest pleasures to 

 botany : it is my solace in the midst of disap- 

 pointments, the soother of my cares, and the sun 

 that sheds a smiling colour on the intervals of mis- 

 fortune. Had I my own choice, I would spend my 

 days in this delightful study, and even pursue it 



