202 
REMARKABLE OCCURENCES 
arduous science. Its vestment became more appropriated to its beauty. 
Nature now gained friends among the ladies, and even on the throne. 
Besides the Queen of Sweden , there was afterwards at the head of these 
a young German Princess, who was the greatest female botanist ever 
known. This was Carolina Louisa of Baden , Princess of Hesse 
Darmstadt , whose early loss the sciences had to bewail in 1783, in 
the thirty-second year of her age. Her extraordinary love of the study 
of natural history, and her respeft for Linn a: us are most authentically 
attested in the following letter, which the lateBjoERNSTAHL, his coun- 
tryman, wrote during his residence at Carlsruhe in 1774: 
u I hear that you are spoken of every day at court. You are the 
« objeft of the conversation of the reigning Prince and Princess. 
« They are not only lovers of natural history, but so versed in 
“ that science as to excite astonishment. They can enumerate your 
u whole system according to all its,. genera and species. They know 
“ every tree, every plant in the hat-houses of this city, -which are 
“ full of foreign and domestic plants, collected in all parts of the 
“ world, and completely classed and arranged according to your me- 
•-* * 
** thod. 
« The Princess has an excellent cabinet of natural history, but she 
“ has nothing from Sweden, except the polar star, which illumines her 
« path through the whole range of nature, I mean the w'orks and writings 
« of a celebrated Knight of that order. I wish to Go o you or your son 
« would come hither! Her Highness has charged me to invite you 
“ both in her name. She promises you a fine and commodious resi- 
“ dence, and hangings as beautiful as those at Hammarby (the villa of 
LjnnausJ. Fo' I mentioned to her Highness what line flowers 
“ had 
