THE LIFE OF THE YOUNGER LINN^US. 291 



tion of the rarest and most remarkable plants in the botanical garden of 

 that University, — a work, which he continued afterwards*. His father had 

 given him instruftions how to coinplete this produftion, and it became 

 the means of totally securing his subsequent fortune. On the 19th of 

 March 1763, in the twenty-second year of his age, he was nominated 

 adjunfl professor of botany, with the extraordinay promise, that after 

 the death of his father, he should succeed him in all his academical 

 funftions; — a diftinftion, a rapidity of preferment which excited in no 

 small degree the envy of his young colleagues. In order to qualify 

 himself in a proper manner, for the future exercise of all his dignities, 

 he took his degree of Do6lor of Medicine in 1765, under the presi- 

 dency of Samuel Aurivillius. . 



Young LiNNiEUs, as a public man, was now as happy as possible, 

 but not so in the circle of his relations, where he ought to have expe- 

 rienced the greatest pleasure. He began to give le£i:ures ; but his diligent 

 exertions for the benefit of the learned world, and the fondness for 

 his science, received a check, and degenerated into displeasure and 

 splenetic disgust. 



The occasion of this disgust was as sad as the thing in itself was ex- 

 traordinary, and an unnatural oddity. The son had the misfortune, in- 

 stead of being the delight of his mother, to become the objeft of hei 

 hatred. Considering him as the only son, — as a son, who distinguished 

 himself so much, it appears to be a singular phenomeon, the more soj 

 as her antipathy continued to last without the least abatement. The 



. ♦ Carou Linn^i, Filii, Decas Prima Plantarum Rariorum Horti Upsaliensis, slstens 

 descriptiones et figuras plantarum minus cognitarum, Stock. 1762. fol. Decas Secunda, ibid, 

 1763. Fasciculus primus Plantarum Rarionim Horti Upsalifnsis. He discontinued the p\ibli- 

 cation of the Fasciculi. 



p p 2 causes 



