68 
MEMOIR, OF LINNJ5US. 
of Linnaeus, as to solicit from him the office of 
conservator of the garden of plants at Upsala ; — a 
favour which would have been granted had the 
situation been in his power to bestow. 
As botany was the earliest, so it continued to the 
last to he the favourite study of Linnaeus. His 
predilection for it is obvious to the most superficial 
observer of his life and works. From it he drew 
his greatest happiness during prosperity, and his 
sweetest consolations in adversity. The sight of a 
new plant threw him into an eestacy of delight. In 
writing, after he had passed his sixtieth year, to a 
friend in Paris, expressing his eager anxiety for a 
specimen of the Loasa, he says, “ If you can give 
me, or procure for me, a single seed, I would 
esteem it a treasure.” This passion continued un- 
abated to the close of his life; and some have 
attributed the revival of his intellectual faculties, 
to the desire he felt to describe the plants which had 
been sent him by Dalberg from Surinam. It is at 
least certain, that his latest labours had for their 
object the publication of a memoir under the title 
of Plantce Surinanienses. Well might he apply to 
himself .Rousseau’s description of the charms of bo- 
tany, — “ I owe my life and my purest pleasures to 
botany : it is my solace in the midst of disap- 
pointments, the soother of my cares, and the sun 
that sheds a smiling colour on the intervals of mis- 
fortune. Had I my own choice, I would spend my 
days in this delightful study, and even pursue it 
