REMARKABLE OCCURRENCES 



Though the enthusiastic violence with which Linnjeus exerted him- 

 self, and the excessive study of nature, which made him forget all 

 other concerns, would often times prove detrimental to his health, — 

 yet the charms of nature as frequently helped to restore it to its pris- 

 tine vigor. When he completed his Philosophia Botanica, in the sum- 

 mer of 175I5 and in the following year, he had a most violent fit of 

 the gout, and was obliged to keep to his bed almost totally deprived of 

 the use of his limbs. It was at this period, that his pupil Kalm re- 

 turned from North-America with a great number of new plants and 

 other natural curiosities. The desire of seeing these treasures, and the 

 delight which he felt when he aftually saw them, was so great, as to 

 make the gout fortunately disappear*. The composition of the Species 

 Plantarum, the most excellent and most laborious of his works, occa- 

 sioned also an illness, which served to accelerate his death. The 

 constant silence which attended his studies, brought on the stone and 

 the most excruciating pains in his right side. When his pupil Ro- 

 land er, returned from Surinam, he felt the liveliest sensations of 

 joy. RoLANDER had brought with him the Cochineal-tree (Co^us 

 Cochenillifer), on which were to be seen alive the insefts from which 

 the red colour used in dying scarlet is extrafted. This joy was how- 

 ever soon changed into the deepest sadness, owing to a mistaken care* 



• The celebrated Peter Wargentin, Secretary of the Royal Academy at Stockholm, 

 ivho died in 1783, wrote on this subjeft to Baron Haller, August 12, 1751. — 



'< Sane Linn^UM, jam hypochondrico malo et doloribus podagricis agonizantem re- 

 " suscitavit Kalmius, ostendendo solummodo insignem numerum plantarum rarissimarum> 

 *« et quK nohdum ab alio Botanico fuerunt descripta;. Tantus amor florum !" 



LinNjEUS himself related afterwards this occurrence to a friend in the following words: — 

 *« Kalmius hie appulerat, alteroque die monstrabat thesauros colle6tos. Ego parum ad- 

 •« spexi, quum in leflo me vertere non possem, sed tamen mi rum in modum iis, quae vidi, 

 «• deleftabar, idque ad reparandam sanitatem multum contulit." 



fulness. 



