for inquiries kindred to those of the alchemists of the 

 Middle Ages, asserted themselves too powerfully within 

 him to suffer gainsaying, and accordingly his father's 

 repeated injunctions and warnings to him to shun the 

 pursuit of worldly and pernicious objects of study were 

 foredoomed to be of none avail. 



The choice thus made by Peter Artedi of natural 

 science, in preference to theology and philosophy, as 

 the branch of knowledge he was resolved to apply his 

 energies to, was a notable one apart from the breach 

 it signified with family traditions, for at that time the 

 study of natural science as an end in itself may be al- 

 most said to have been non-existent at Upsala; thus, 

 for instance, Artedi is reported to have been the only 

 man of his day who went in for chemistry. It should 

 be mentioned that he had to attach himself to the Med- 

 ical Faculty, for it was only under its auspices that 

 any instruction in natural history was then imparted. 

 Of the professors belonging to that faculty there were 

 tw r o who had made themselves famous for a relatively 

 speaking wide acquaintance with natural history, they 

 having both done some amount of original investigation. 

 In 1724, however, both these professors were well advanced 

 in years and had all but retired from taking any share 

 in teaching work. One of them, Lars Roberg, was 60 

 years of age when Artedi matriculated, and though he 

 was a fair zoologist and a skilled anatomist, yet the 

 teaching he did while Artedi was up at the university 

 must have been very small in quantity; there is no re- 

 cord, for instance, of his having held any course of 

 public lectures at all. Moreover, what was still more 

 serious, there existed at that period practically nothing 

 in the way of collections or other educational materials 

 for natural history study, since the few curiosities that 

 Roberg possessed can hardly be said to deserve the 

 name of a collection; furthermore, in the allotment of 

 subjects among the several professors, Zoology had ac- 

 tually not fallen to Roberg's province. 



