EARDWICKE" S SCIENCE-GOSSIP. 



Holland or Sweden. " Miller allowed me to gather 

 in his garden," he writes, " and gave me, besides, 

 many dried plants gathered in South America by 

 Houston. The English are certainly the most 

 generous people on earth." The highest possible 

 compliment was paid him after his departure by the 

 re-arrangement of the Chelsea garden after the 

 Linna:an system. 



On returning to Holland, Carl was seized with an 

 irrepressible home-sickness. He had been absent 

 four years and was not yet prosperous. Engaged to 

 Elizabeth Morrens, the daughter of a Swedish 

 physician, his marriage, it was decided, should not 

 take place till there was better promise of a settled 

 income. This was, they hoped, to be obtained at 

 Stockholm, where he took up his residence and turned 

 his attention to medicine. It was a hard struggle for 

 a bare subsistence ; his reputation as a botanist was 

 not thought to enhance his merit as a doctor ; people 

 were slow to believe that a man of learning — a pure 

 scientist — could be a simple curer of diseases, but in 

 the course of his practice he had the good fortune to 

 attend a man of some note and to cure him very 

 speedily of an apparently hopeless complaint. His 

 fame spread to the Court, and he was called on to 

 prescribe for the Queen herself ; he treated her with 

 such success that patients grew numerous and fees 

 plentiful. He was appointed Physician to the Navy 

 with pay, and first President of the Academy, with 

 distinction. 



By this time, honours had fallen thick upon him ; 

 the European Academies vied with each other in 

 complimentary offers of membership. The Royal 

 Society of London, following the example set by 

 Paris, Florence, and other cities, elected him their 

 Swedish Correspondent. Crowned heads came to 

 visit him. Appointed Professor of Physic and 

 Anatomy in the University of Upsala, he was com- 

 paratively a rich man and able to marry his Elizabeth. 

 The long years of anxiety and waiting had come to 

 an end, but whilst still in the prime of life, he began 

 to feel the decay of overtaxed powers. Court 

 ceremonial, the whirl of visitors, incessant corre- 

 spondence became impossible to him, and in spite of 

 all remonstrance he retired to a house he had built 

 for himself, a short distance from Upsala, where his 

 life is described as full of happiness and peace, 

 although the state of his health forbade him to 

 continue working " at more than human speed." 



Students still flocked to see him from all quarters 

 of the globe. He assisted' all with his advice, and 

 those who needed it, with his purse. Some of the 

 poorest he took into his house. 



Although his energy and enthusiasm hardly seemed 

 to diminish, he knew that he had turned down hill, 

 and wrote pathetically of his failing health and 

 memory. "At sixty years of age proper names 

 began to be forgotten by him whose head had con- 

 tained more of that kind than most other persons." 



A few years later he had to be carried to his museum, 

 where his whole interest was centred. He died in 

 the year 1778, leaving behind him the record of 

 unsurpassed scientific research, and of a perfectly 

 useful and blameless life. 



C. E. Meetkerke. 



'A PRIMROSE BANK ON A PRIMROSE 

 DAY. 



By A. H. Swinton. 



THE yellow dials of the Oriental goat's-beard are 

 still open, the night-flowering catch-fly hangs 

 its viscid, shrivelled bells ; let us descend from this 

 crag of Toulant, where the yew, and the iris, and 

 gadding vine and ivy darkly hang, and around and 

 around which the bird of prey has been floating, on its 

 far-reaching wings, through the deep, cerulean air of 

 spring ; for from these thorny thickets the Ossianic 

 harp of our Celtic forefathers has sounded over the 

 surrounding admirably-designed orchestra of bounding 

 peaks and far-shouting hills, in those stirring times 

 when fear and loneliness made hallowed ground. It 

 spoke in rapture of a fraternity of nations, and, 

 prompted by its vivid wishes and tender hopes, many 

 we know have gone to stray over the flat meadows 

 and parterres that encircle the lake, where primroses, 

 violets, and anemones, the gay decorations of the 

 English coppice-clearing, have sprung up to wanton 

 in the sunshine, and where the sounds of Chene and 

 Rove inform the traveller of hamlets once over- 

 shadowed by the pedunculated oaks, whose gnarly 

 timbers, in the decadence of the fragrant loveliness 

 of a pastoral life, must have shivered to the petulant 

 carol of the bacchanalian grape-gatherers of the 

 Lavaux. 



" Sad, sad for the husbandman. 

 Why, for why 1 

 He thinks that I'm his mistress — 

 I, not I ! " 



Here, from whence the rocks of Mellerie may be 

 scanned afar, and where the nearer hillocks tumble 

 idly down to the still water, there are no meadows 

 decked out in funereal glow, there is nothing but a 

 quiet mountain-track resounding to the tick-tack, 

 tack-tick, of the white and crimson wood-pecker, 

 that delves among fields glittering over with the 

 vernal gold of the dandelions, where you cannot 

 open your eyes without being struck by the 

 artfulness of nature. It is a pretty pastime in the 

 prime, when fancy prompts to notice how variously 

 their toothy leaves are notched and cut, and to 

 meditate on the endless diversity of human souls, 

 and from sheer vexation at the nones to blow away 

 their seeds that float off like parachutes, and suggest 

 to the inventive and talented mind, mechanical 

 design. One o'clock, two o'clock, they depart like 

 time and happiness, gliding ever with the sauntering 



