338 HISTORY OF BOTANY. 



talents and knowledge may fail in such an under- 

 taking. 



It is, however, only by means of the knowledge 

 which he displays, and of the beauty and conve- 

 nience of the improvements which he proposes, that 

 any one can acquire such an influence as to procure 

 his suggestions to be adopted. And even if original 

 circumstances of birth or position could invest any 

 one with peculiar prerogatives and powers in the 

 republic of science, Karl Linne began his career 

 with no such advantages. His father was a poor 

 curate in Smaland, a province of Sweden ; his boy- 

 hood was spent in poverty and privation; it was 

 with great difficulty that, at the age of twenty-one, 

 he contrived to subsist at the University of Upsal, 

 whither a strong passion for natural history had 

 urged him. Here, however, he was so far fortunate, 

 that Olaus Rudbeck, the professor of botany, com- 

 mitted to him the care of the Botanic Garden 1 . 

 The perusal of the works of Vaillant and Patrick 

 Blair suggested to him the idea of an arrangement 

 of plants, formed upon the sexual organs, the sta- 

 mens and pistils; and of such an arrangement he 

 published a sketch in 1731, at the age of twenty- 

 four. 



But we must go forwards a few years in his life, 

 to come to the period to which his most important 

 works belong. University and family quarrels in- 

 duced him to travel ; and, after various changes of 



1 Sprengel, ii. 232. 



