LINN^US IN HOLLAND. 
85 
In the beginning of the spring 17369 Linnaeus went to the villa of 
Hartecamp , where he passed so many glorious and pleasant hours. 
There study was his greatest delight. Surrounded by treasures from 
all quarters of the globe, a great part of which he had never seen 
before, encircled with a mostseleCt and valuable library devoted to his 
use; uncontrouled in all his arrangements; seconded by a patron 
equally beneficent, and ready to procure every thing which could be 
either missing or wished for ; plants, good living, Leyden, Amsterdam , 
and Harlem in proximity — how could Linn^us, thus situated, wish 
for a more charming and more advantageous situation any where else ! 
In this Paradise, as he called it, the great projects he had conceived were 
brought to maturity. Hesitating, whether he should dedicate his ser- 
vices to Aesculapius or to Flora, he resolved to consecrate them 
wholly to the latter. 
When he sojourned at Amsterdam , he finished a small work which he 
had begun while a student at Upsad, and which was considered as the har- 
binger of his reform. It consisted of his Fundamenta Botanica, which 
appeared in 1736, on 35 pages in twelves. The theory of the science 
of botany was reduced by it to 365 aphorisms, and he displayed in these 
the basis of his new system. Fifteen years after the same work ap- 
peared, augmented with elucidations, and a description of the parts os 
plants, and their technical terms, under the title of Philosophia Bota- 
v 
mca. 
Nearly at the same time, when this elementary book appeared, 
Linnaeus published his Bibliotheca Botanica (in 153 pages in twelves), 
for the perfection of which he stood chiefly indebted to the libraries of 
Spreckelsen at Hamburgh, Burmann at Amsterdam , Gronov at 
3 Leydt n. 
