THE LIFE OF THE YOUNGER LINNAEUS. 305 



No traveller could have accomplished the proposed end of his travels 

 more perfe6lly and more auspiciously " than Linnaeus. His peregri- 

 nation now promised to yield the richest fruits. He had augmented 

 his knowledge and experience in the most extraordinary manner, 

 established 'extensive connexions, which promised in course of time 

 to afford him great satisfaftion and advantage, and colleQed a vasi 

 -quantity of natural treasures, the produce of all quarters of the globe. 

 Exclusive of the knowledge of his late father, how many new eluci- 

 dations and enlargements in natural history could not be expefted from 

 a man who was so enthusiastically fond of his study, and so zealously 

 striving for celebrity as Li n n ;«,u s at the present period ! He was occu 

 pied with the execution of many useful plans and labours. He had 

 projefted fresh treatises upon the plants of the palm and lily kind, 

 finished a work upon the sucking-animals, and intended to publish new 

 editions of his father's System of Nature, besides his Materia 

 Medica, the Phi i.osoPHi A BoTAN icA, the Genera Plantarum 

 and the Flora Suecica. The moment was just come for him to 

 open his career with splendor, but the hand of fate suddenly arrested 

 his progress. 



In the month of August he made a journey to Stockholm. He there 

 had the misfortune to be taken ill of a bilious fever. This distemper 

 abated in a short time so much, that he found himself able to return to 

 Upsal. But as his recovery had not been quite complete, he had a relapse. 

 Soon after his illness seemed to diminish, but owing to his impatient and 

 inalterable love of nature, it gained a third time upon him, because he 

 viewed too early, and too long, his natural colleQions, which were kept 

 in a damp and cold apartment. The fever renewed its attacks with in- 



R r creased 



