THE BROW ALITA, 103 
the pentstemon, and the mimulns, with many more 
garden favourites that to the casual eye have but few 
traces of a family likeness. 
The Browalha was so named by Linneus in remem- 
brance of J. Browallius, Bishop of Abo, which was for- 
merly the seat of government in Swedish Finland, and still 
is the seat of a Lutheran archbishopric, although now it is 
a Russian and not a Swedish city, having passed over with 
the whole of Finland at the peace of Frederickshamm in 
1809. Finland was a botanical playground to Linneus, 
and its capital Abo was to him the most important, 
because it was the nearest centre of learning and liberal 
thought. Commemorative names of plants are in many 
respects objectionable, but there is something to be said 
in their favour, and in any case the names that Linnwus 
bestowed on plants ‘the world will not willingly let die.” 
Of one flower in particular may this be said, for the delicate 
two-flowered Linnea, the Zinucwa borealis of the botanist, 
he named after himself. It is a humble creeping shrub 
of the cold morasses of the north, producing exquisitely 
beautiful though unattractive miniature bell-flowers in 
pairs. The great botanist, remembering his own humble 
origin, and conscious of a merit that then bad not been 
generally recognised, chose this flower for the emblem of 
his own career, and described it as “a little northern 
plant, flowering early, depressed, abject, and long over- 
looked.” It may not be too wide a departure from the 
course set before us to remark that in those few words 
we have a great poem, wanting neither verse, nor rhyme, 
nor music to indicate the pathos that cannot be concealed. 
Linnens was indeed a poet, though he was and is properly 
ranked among the soldiers of science. 
