ACCOUNTS RESPECTING LINNiEUS. 405 



"do well to take a trip to Upsal^ on a visit to Linn/Eus." — The 

 Count spoke in terms of the greatest veneration of LinntEus, and 

 I had in other respefts long ago resolved in my mind to have an 

 interview with him. I set out accordingly early in the morning of the 

 twenty-fourth of Odober from Stockholm, and reached Upsal on the 

 same evening. I had hardly time to rest myself for a few minutes at 

 my lodgings, before the younger Linn^us surprised me with a visit, 

 and invited me to his father's house the next day. 



Sir Charles received me with that openness, and that pleasing 

 affability of temper for which he was so strongly remarkable. Although 

 he had then attained the sixty-seventh year of his age, yet he still 

 appeared quite brisk and lively; his stature was short, but his body of 

 a strong and robust make. — " Well !" said he to me in Latin, after 

 we had exchanged the usual compliments, " What new natural curiosity 

 « do you bring me — " Alas 1" replied I, " how difficult, how bor- 

 " dering upon impossibility would it be, to bring any thing new to a 

 "LiNNvEUS." — As it happened, I had taken with me, and collefted 

 some natural curiosities by the way. I showed him therefore among 

 others, a small crab, which from the charatteristic description in his 

 system of nature, appeared to be the Cancer Hivtellus. Linnveus re- 

 cognized it to be the same, and asked me, if there was none of a larger 

 size ; he owned, that having never seen them any larger, he had assigned 

 to those little hairy crabs, the Latin diminutive hirtelli. I then showed 

 another specimen of the same kind which had not the supposed hair on 

 the back of the shell. He was surprised at seeing on the surface of 

 the back the natural figure of an human lace. Cautious and provident 

 as he was in all his researches, he now began to think that art had lent 



