OPPONENTS OF LINN^US. 125 



met with envious persons, who took a delight in rendering the fame of 

 originality an objed of dispute. 



Heister's malign reproaches against LiNN.f:us5 on this occasion, 

 were really unmerited. The little produftion of Burkhard, quite 

 a literary phenomenon, had never been mentioned in any botanical 

 work, had never acquired much publicity, and how could it therefore 

 be considered as the source of the modern system of Linnaeus. The 

 writings of Ju ng, or Jungius, whom we already mentioned above in the 

 history of botany, and who published them in the last century, were in a 

 similar manner alledged against the prince of botanists. But this charge 

 was of as little vahdity as that of Burkhard's letter. When LiNN^iEUS, 

 then a young student at Upsal, projefted his new botanical plan, he 

 had never once seen those works, and we can adduce convincing proofs 

 of this assertion. Doftor Gieseke at Hamburgh, -who heard the leftures 

 of LiNN^us in 1771, mentioned once, in familiar conversation, the 

 writings of Jung; and, especially, his principal botanical work — 

 Doxoscopice P hy sic ce minor es. Lin n.^ us replied that he was utterly un- 

 acquainted with it. Gieseke, after his return sent him this work, upon 

 which Li NN^us thanked him in a letter of the 24th of December 1774, 

 in the following words : " Three days ago I received your rare present 

 " of Jung's Doxoscopice which I never saw before. I thank you for 

 *' this work in the most obliging manner. I see the author has been a 

 " very laborious and ingenious man for his age." In honour to his 

 name, Linnaeus junior, called afterwards a new North-American plant, 

 Jungia. 



That some ideas of the sexes of plants had already been hinted 

 before, is an incontrovertible fa6t, and Linn/Eus did not him- 

 self 



