i 9 * REMARKABLE OCCURRENCES 
demical dissertations. In 1751 he published commentaries upon them, 
-which were at the same time a comprehensive view and justification of 
his whole system. This work is intituled Philosophia Botanica. After 
a short review of the principal botanists and their systems, he explains 
in twelve se£tions the different parts of the plants, furnishes examples to 
fix the characters of classes and orders, to discern the bastard species 
from the common species, to describe them accurately, and to arrange 
precisely their synonomy, &c. &c. All this displays the production or 
the hand of an experienced master, whose genius appears to be equally 
inventive, well regulated, and methodical. At the end of this valuable 
work Linnteus gives advice to young botanists, and adds instructions 
how to prepare herbals, to establish botanical gardens, and the best dis- 
positions to be adopted in excursions and philosophical tours. This 
work remains a book of precepts for the botanical world, which be- 
comes indispensably necessary to all those who wish for a fundamental 
knowledge of that science. Rousseau, mentioning this production, 
says cs It is the most philosophical book I ever saw in my life*. — Cest 
lc livrt le plus philosophique , que j'ai vu de Vtia vie . 
Two years after appeared a work, which together with his System of 
Nature , became the immortal monument of his diligence and ingenuity 
both for his own age and for posterity, and which had occupied him for 
a long series 'of years. This was his Species Plantarum, published at 
Stockholm in 1753, with his portrait, in oCtavo, containing 1,200 pages. 
1 
* John Gesner wrote on the 19th of June 1751, what follows to Haller from Zurich : 
“ Linn /ei philosophiam botanicam lcgi, plenam dodtrinae et experiential botanicae, cum mul- 
“ tis et novis et mutatis vocum determinationibus. Erant, quibus sibi multa vel nimia, aliis 
“ nimis pauca tribuere videbitur.” 
It 
