t8o 



ANECDOTES. 



" teacher, and I acknowledge with emotion, how greatly indebted I am 

 " to him for his lessons and his friendship. 



" Besides the labour which he bestowed upon medicine, especially 

 " upon the Materia Medica and Pathology, nature was his principal oc- 

 " cupation, and proclaimed him also as the first darling of his time. 

 " Great was he in discerning and arranging the immensity of beings 

 " which cover the globe ; and perhaps greater still in the extraordi- 

 '« nary number of observations, and in the hypotheses which are founded 

 " upon them, and gradually became theoretical truths. The hypotheses of 

 " LiNN.EUs indicate most particularly the brilliancy of his imagination, 

 " and at the same time, the strength of his judgment. Some of them 

 " appear extremely bold and venturesome at first ; but upon closer 

 «' inspeftion, we find the observations in nature on which they are 

 " founded, and must acknowledge them afterwards if not as true, at 

 « least as probable and as deserving of a more minute enquiry. 



« Among his manuscripts there must certainly have been found 

 " many important remarks; I should have been very desirous of see- 

 »« ing those which relate to the general arrangement of nature. He must 

 " have collected the most interesting observations on this head. He 

 « contemplated nature with the greatest accuracy, and with so much 

 « knowledge and judicious skill, as to have penetrated into her most 

 " secret mysteries. But he dared not, as he himself assured me, publish 

 « those observations during his hfe, because he was afraid of the exces- 

 *« sive violence of the Swedish divines, who, frequently too faithful 

 « and too bigotted to their own arguments, do not consider, that na- 

 « ture as well as revelation proclaim in unison of principle, the hands 

 M of that Great Mastek, who formed both. Linn.^us had the ex- 



*« ample 



