78 LINN^US IN HOLLAND. 



Boer HA AVE, who was then sixty -seven years old, received him with 

 gladness, and took him into his garden for the purpose of judging of 

 his knowledge. 



He showed him as a rarity the Crategiis Aria, and asked if he had 

 ever seen that tree before, as it had never been described by any bo- 

 tanist, LiNN^us answered that he had frequendy met with it in 

 Sweden, and that it had also been already described by Vaillant. 

 Struck with the young man's reply, Boerhaave denied the latter part 

 of his assertion, with so much more confidence as he had published 

 himself that work of Vaillant's (Botajiicon Parisiense, Lugd. Batav. 

 T727, fol.) with notes of his own, and firmly believed that tree had 

 not been described in it. To remove all doubts, and to give all pos- 

 sible sanction to what he advanced, Boerhaave immediately fetched 

 the work itself from his library — and to his extreme surprise found 

 the tree fully described in it, with all its distinQive marks. Admiring 

 the exa£l and enlarged knowledge of Linnaeus in botany, in which he 

 seemed even to excel hhnself, the venerable old man advised him to 

 remain in Holland, to make a fortune which could not escape his talents. 

 LiNN^us answered that he would fain follow this advice, but his in- 

 digence prevented him from staying any longer, and obliged him to 

 set out the next day for Amsterdam, on his return to Sweden. He 

 took his leave of Boerhaave, and this visit unexpectedly became the 

 source of his fortune, of his eminence, and of that botanical reform 

 which the frowns of fate, and the cares of providing for his dai'ly 

 subsistence, had not thus far permitted him to accomplish. 



What the Italian poet Metastasio says, rcspefting the happiness or 

 misfortunes of man, and the vicissitudes of destiny by which the greatest 



enterprises 



