MEMOIR OF LINNAEUS. 
7 
pents' skins. He found it necessary to leave the place ; for in so 
great value was this serpent esteemed, that it had been pledged in 
security for a loan of ten thousand marks, a value which this dis- 
covery by no means enhanced. Upon his arrival at Harderwick, 
he was introduced to the professors, wrote and defended his the- 
sis, and finally received his degree of M. D., with a diploma, con- 
taining testimonials of his abilities, as flattering as those given upon 
his leaving school had been discouraging. 
At the commencement of his journey homewards, the first 
place where Linnaeus remained for any time, was Amsterdam. 
Here he gained the friendship of the celebrated Boerhaave, and 
that of Dr. Gronovius ; the latter a person of still greater import- 
ance to his after fame. Gronovius was so much pleased with the 
sketch of the Systema Naturce, by our young naturalist, that he re- 
quested to be allowed to defray the expense of its publication ; 
and the request being granted, the work was immediately put to 
press, in the commodious form of tables, embraced in about twelve 
folio pages ; and in this way was the foundation laid of that sys- 
tem upon which almost all those of the present day are in many 
ways most intimately connected, and by which the arrangements 
of the older systematists were almost at once superseded. 
By Dr. Boerhaave, Linnaeus was introduced to Mr. Clifford, 
at this time the most enterprising botanist and horticulturist in 
Europe. With him Linnaeus spent, perhaps, some of his happiest 
days. Devoted with all the ardor of a young man to a favorite 
and fascinating pursuit, he was at once placed in one of the most 
favorable situations in the world for following it out. " He en- 
joyed," says Dr. Pulteney, " pleasures and privileges scarcely at 
this time to be met with elsewhere in the world — access to a gar- 
den excellently stored with the finest exotics, and to a library fur- 
nished with almost every botanic author of note ; permission to 
purchase whatever plants and books he thought worthy of being 
