OUTWARD APPEARANCE OF LINN^US. 261 



Iionour of her, described and recorded in the transaflions of the Royal 

 Academy of Sciences of Stockholm, (torn, xxiii 1762]. 



The stature of Linn/eus was a little below the comir.on size, 

 though neither lusty nor lean, yet the strufture of his frame was strong 

 and solid. He rather stooped a little when walking, and had con- 

 trafted this habit from the frequent examination of plants, and from 

 his constant search after vegetable or other natural produQions. From 

 his infancy his veins had much swelled with blood. His head was. large, 

 somewhat elevated backwards, and a traverse line separated the fore- 

 part from the hijid. His eyes were brown and fiery, his sight \vas very 

 sharp, and his ear extremely quick in catching every sound, except 

 music. It is rather singular, that the man, who was all alive to joy 

 and social harmony, should have felt an antipathy, as it were, for that art 

 which best expresses those affeflions, and has mostly been the delight 

 of great men. Even the grave and serious Boerhaave found his 

 chief comfort and recreation in music*. Another circumstance to be 

 noticed as a peculiarity in Linntf.us was,, that his memory, so excel- 

 lent and uncommonly vigorous in his youth and in the flower of his 

 2ge, — that memory which encompassed whatever was remarkable in 

 nature, — became at last a^ weak as it formerly had. been strong, and 

 began already to fall olf very considerably after he had completed his 

 fiftieth year. To the too violent exertion and overburdening of his 

 memory, its early decay ought, therefore, to be attributed. 



His memory, like all his talents and en.dov^nents was, in point of 

 science, solely devoted to natural history. He loved the Belles Letires, 



» Fessus— writes Boerhaave of himself in his diary— tcstiiclinis concentu solabatur ks- 

 jitudinem ; musices amantissimus. 



