REMARKABLE OCCURRENCES 
242 
none to whom it would prove more interesting. Linnjeus penetrated 
with sensations of gratitude, composed a catalogue of those plants, 
which contained thirteen new genera, and upwards of forty new species. 
At the same time, he assigned the name of his royal benefaftor to an 
American tree, whose beauty and loftiness corresponded with the great- 
ness of he person whose name it bore*. He called this tree Gustavia 
Augusta. — This new appellation was the more expressive of his re- 
speft for his sovereign, as he had never before introduced the name of 
any monarch in the vegetable reign. 
LinNjEus, the darling of nature, was not so fortunate as Fonte- 
nelle, Haller, and Voltaire, in finding her propitious to him 
till his last moment. His great mind, the energy and powers of his 
faculties, sunk into such a deep decline, that towards the last stage of 
his life, he was reduced to the helpless and feeble state of an infant. 
His fate was similar to, nay worse still than that of Franklin. 
The two last years of his existence were, it might be said, but a slow and 
lingering obstinate struggle with death. While he gave leftures in the 
month of May 1 774, in the botanical graden, he had an apople&ic stroke, 
and fell into a swoon from which he did not recover for a long timet. 
This 
* Plant® Surinamenses, Upsal 1775; resp. J. Alm ; in the Amcenitat. Acad. Edit.. 
Schrebers, vol. viii. 
f A letter which Linn.eus had written thirty-four years before this castastrophe, is said 
to have either occasioned or accelerated this fatal disease. In 1 7 73 appeared the first volume 
of the letters, written in Latin, by men of literary eminence to Baron Haller. Linnaeus 
received this volume, and found that his letters and those particulars of his youth which he 
had formerly entrusted to sacred friendship and confidence were all inserted. Amongst others, 
he read with indignant surprise, a letter in which he had formerly described the history of his 
love, and added many other private transactions. (See Epist. ad Haller, tom. 1. p. 4 1 3 > 
S(rp.)—lle had ao sooner read this letter than be felt an extreme agitation, the apoplexy suc- 
ceeded 
