14 LINN^US 



the lifeless remains of his proteftor and friend. Thus all his hopes 

 were lost — but fortune soon compensated for this unmerited event. 



KiLiAN Stob^us, professor of physic and botany, and afterwards 

 one of the physicians to the royal family of Sweden^ who was then one 

 of the most celebrated and eminent professors of that university, be- 

 came the oracle of Li n n u s. The leftures of this learned man enriched 

 and rendered more exaft the scientific knowledge of our young student, 

 and procured him the first systematical acquirements, the principles of 

 which he had began to cultivate. Among all his pupils Linn^us dis- 

 played the greatest diligence, the utmost attention to his professor, and 

 a judgment in botany rare and egregious in a beginner. 



These qualities endeared him to Stob.^us. He was apprised of 

 and saw his indigent condition, and animated by the same generous and 

 beneficent motives as Rothmann, resolved to afford him accom- 

 modation free from all expence in his own family. 



In so good a situation Linn^us found fully fostered his love of 

 science, the only objeft of his desire. Here he met, for the first time, 

 with a well arranged colleftion of natural history, got acquainted with 

 curiosities he had never seen before, and began to keep a regular herbal 

 himself. This, though a small matter of itself, proved to him an objeft 

 of great importance. It gave him an opportunity of observing plants 

 more closely, of collefting them more diligently, of examining more 

 carefully their internal strutture, distin6live marks and properties, of 

 giving short descriptions, and comparing them with those of Tourne- 

 FORT, whom his ambition made already his pattern, and of having 

 more frequent occasions to make new observations by his penetrating 

 genius. To enrich his herbal he took excursions into all the neigh- 

 bouring 



