LINNAEUS 51 



theological student was being initiated in the study of 

 plants in the University of Lund in Sweden, who was 

 destined to exert a tremendous influence on the science 

 of botany in the generations to follow. His name was 

 Carl Linnaeus. It is rather interesting to notice how 

 many botanists of the past were born and bred in the 

 atmosphere of the Church. Of those I have mentioned 

 to you, Brunfels, Bock, Tournefort, Turner, Ray, Morison, 

 Hales were all clerics or had at least embarked on a 

 clerical career before turning to scientific studies. 

 Linnaeus, as I have just said, was at first a theological 

 student, and many of those I have yet to discuss with 

 you were well-known divines or sons of such. 



Linnaeus's life was an uneventful one. He was born 

 in 1707, and when twenty- three years of age became 

 curator of the Gardens of the University of Lund. The 

 period from 1732 to 1738 he spent in travel in Lapland, 

 Holland, England, and France, returning at length to 

 Stockholm, where he practised medicine. In 1741 he 

 was appointed to the chair of botany in the University 

 of Upsala, where he remained until his death in 1778. 



It is by no means easy to form a correct estimate of the 

 effect of Linnaeus's work on botany. By gome he is 

 called the " Father" of the science, as if to indicate that 

 he laid its foundations ; by others he is looked upon as 

 the last of the long line of systematists that began with 

 Brunfels two hundred years before. Some have expressed 

 the opinion that to Linnaeus the science owes an impetus 

 that carried it on well into the nineteenth century, but 

 there are not a few who think that his work was largely 

 reactionary and did much to hinder the progress of 

 botany. Let us try and see what he actually did accom- 

 plish and then come to some decision of our own on 

 the matter. 



I do not propose to enumerate all Linnaeus's contribu- 

 tions to botany, but only those that stand out prominently 

 and in which his principal conclusions are formulated. 



