242 



REMARKABLE OCCURRENCES 



none to whom it would prove more interesting. Linnaeus penetrated 

 with sensations of gratitude, composed a catalogue of those plants', 

 which contained thirteen new genera, and upwards of forty new species. 

 At the same time, he assigned the name of his royal benefaftor to an 

 American tree, whose beauty and loftiness corresponded with the great- 

 ness of the person whose name it bore*. He called this tree Gustavia 

 Augusta. — This new appellation was the more expressive of his re- 

 speft for his sovereign, as he had never before introduced the name of 

 any monarch in the vegetable reign. 



LiNN;£us> the darling of nature, was not so fortunate as Fonte- 

 NELLE, Haller, and Voltaire, in finding her propitious to him^ 

 till his last moment. His great mind, the energy and powers of his 

 faculties, sunk into such a deep decline, that towards the last stage of 

 his life, he was- reduced to the helpless and feeble state of an infant. 

 His fate was similar to, nay worse still than that of Franklin* 

 The two last years of his existence were, it might be said, but a slow and. 

 lingering obstinate struggle with death. While he gave le&ures in the 

 month of May 1774, in the botanical graden, he had an apoplectic strokcj 

 and fell into a swoon from which he did not recover for a long timet. 



This 



♦ Plantae Surinamenses, Upal 1775; resp. J. Alm ; ii): the Amoenitat. Acad. Edit. 

 Schrebers, vol. viii. 



f A letter which Linn.«vs had written thirty-four years before this castastrophe, is said 

 to have either occasioned or accelerated this fatal disease. In 1773 appeared the first volume 

 of the letters, written in Latin, by men of literary eminence to Baron Haller. Linn^us 

 received this volume, and found that his letters and those particulars of his youth which he 

 had formerly entrusted to sacred friendship and confidence were all inserted. Amongst others, 

 he read with indignant surprise, a letter in which he had formerly described the history of his 

 love, and added many other private transadtions. (See Epist. ad HALLnn. torn. i. p. 413, 

 S(q.J~Hs had no sooner read this letter than he felt an extreme agitation, the apoplexy suc- 

 ceeded 



