66 



SCIENCE 



[S. S. Vol. XXVI. No. 655 



time the commou people of Sweden did not 

 have any family names, and this is true to 

 a certain extent even to-day. A man was 

 known by his given name, the given name 

 of his father with the word son appended, 

 and the place where he lived. The farmer 

 mentioned above was known as Ingenaar 

 Sveuson from Jonsboda. His father's 

 name was Sven Carlson and that of his 

 grandfather, Carl Johnson. The names of 

 his two sons would have been Carl and 

 Sven Ingemarson had they remained in the 

 peasant class, instead of Carl and Sven 

 Tiliander. 



The daughter married a farmer, Ingemar 

 Bengtson, and her son's name was Nils 

 Ingemarson, until he entered the "gym- 

 nasium." He was also born in Jonsboda 

 and, when selecting a name, he naturally 

 also turned to the same old linden tree as 

 his maternal uncles had done. He called 

 himself Linnjeus. It is remarkable that 

 two of his father's maternal granduncles 

 also bore another Latin form of the same 

 name, viz., Lindelius. Some claim that 

 even this name was derived from the same 

 old linden tree, but this is scarcely in ac- 

 cordance with the facts. More likely it 

 traces its origin from the Linden Farm in 

 Dannas Parish, where their ancestors lived. 



But what has this genealogy to do with 

 Linnffius's relation to North American bot- 

 -any? Perhaps nothing directly, but indi- 

 rectly a great deal; for the circumstances 

 and surroundings under which a man is 

 born '.and reared to a certain extent make 

 the man. In his younger days, Sven Tili- 

 ander was the house-chaplain of Field- 

 marshal and Admiral Viscount Henrik 

 Hoi-n, who was for many years governor 

 of Bremen and Verden, two cities with 

 territory in Germany acquired by Sweden 

 through the Thirty-yeare War. During his 

 stay in Germany, Tiliander learned to know 

 and love botany and horticulture and es- 



tablished around Viscount Horn 's residence 

 in Bremen a garden which was remarkable 

 for that period. When both returned to 

 Sweden, Tiliander brought with him the 

 choicest plants from this garden and plant- 

 ed them around the parsonage of Pjetteryd 

 Parish, of which he had been appointed 

 rector. Here at Pjetteryd Nils Linnsus 

 spent most of his youth, studying in com- 

 pany with his uncle's sons. Later, both as 

 curate at Kashult and as rector at Stenbro- 

 hult, he surrounded the parsonages with 

 gardens, in which he grew many rare and 

 interesting plants. In the midst of these, 

 Carl Linnajus, the famous botanist, was 

 born and reared. Later, while a student 

 at the university, he spent a summer vaca- 

 tion at home in 1732, and made a list of the 

 plants in his father's garden. This list is 

 still to be seen in the Academy of Sciences 

 at Stockholm. Although defective, the first 

 four classes being unrepresented, it enu- 

 merates 224 species. Of these, many were 

 at that time very rare in cultivation. Pro- 

 fessor Theodore Fries in his biography of 

 Linnseus enumerates 36 of the rarest of 

 these. Among them we notice six Amer- 

 ican plants, viz., Bhus Toxicodoidron (the 

 poison oak), Mirabilis Jalapa (four-o'- 

 clock), Asclepias syriaca (milk-weed), 

 Phytolacca decandra (poke-weed). An- 

 tennaria — now Anaphalis — margaritacea 

 (pearly everlasting) and Solanum tuber- 

 osum (the potato). It may be remarked 

 that the cultivation of potatoes was intro- 

 duced into Sweden about twenty years 

 later. We see from this that Linnasus-la'd 

 learned to know some American plants even 

 in his early childhood. 



Carl Linnseus was born the thirteenth of 

 May (old style), 1707, at Rashult, an annex 

 to the parish of Stenbrohult. His father- 

 was the curate there, but two years later, 

 at the death of his father-in-law, Samuel 

 Broderson, he became rector and moved to- 



