172 TRAVELLING PUPILS OF LINN^US. 



remember a Luther, a Voltaire ! — and who is not astonished at the 

 influence which they had over their age and over so many nations ! 

 LiNN^us kept pace with them in proportion to his science. He was 

 the reformer of botany, and became the greatest and most universal 

 promoter of natural history that ever existed. Never has so much 

 been done for that science in so short a space of time as at the period 

 in which he flourished, and immediately after him. What he did 

 direftly, for his own part, had never yet been done by any naturalist 

 before him. His le£lure-room became the nursery of eminent and ce- 

 lebrated men. The eloquence of the master enraptured and won his 

 pupils. His enthusiasm, his thirst for science, became their own, and 

 he gave them opportunities to exert those qualities. Sweden obtained 

 and acquired by him a new celebrity, — it became famous by the trans- 

 migration of the learned, unexampled in any other country. From Upsal 

 the disciples of Linnaus travelled to all quarters of the globe to 

 study nature, and to disseminate the knowledge of her treasures. T^e 

 shall here give a brief sketch of those itinerant Swedes, and of the 

 other celebrated disciples of Linnaeus, since they form one of the 

 principal and most glorious periods of his life. 



« If I lookback upon the fate of naturalists," says Linnaeus*, 

 " must I call madness or reason that desire which allures us to seek 

 « and examine plants ? The irresistible attractions of nature can alone 

 « induce us to face so many dangers and troubles. No science ever 

 « had so many martyrs as natural history. Pliny, the prince of 



nature among the Romans, plunged into the fiery abyss of Mount 

 « .^tnat, Simon Pauli from his love of plants broke his leg; 



• See C. LiNN^i, Crit'ica Botanica, p. 82. 



f Pliny died, by all accounts, on the sea shore near Stables,— 'Translator. 



2 " Cjlusius, 



