for inquiries kindred to those of the alchemists of the 
Middle Ages, asserted themselves too powerfully within 
him to suffer gainsaying, and accordingly his father's 
repeated injunctions and warnings to him to shun the 
pursuit of worldly and pernicious objects of study were 
foredoomed to be of none avail. 
The choice thus made by PETER ARTEDI of natural 
science, in preference to theology and philosophy, as 
the branch of knowledge he was resolved to apply his 
energies to, was a notable one apart from the breach 
it signified with family traditions, for at that time the 
study of natural science as an end in itself may be al- 
most said to have been non-existent at Upsala; thus, 
for instance, ARTEDI is reported to have been the only 
man of his day who went in for chemistry. It should 
be mentioned that he had to attach himself to the Med- 
ical Faculty, for it was only under its auspices that 
any instruction in natural history was then imparted. 
Of the professors belonging to that faculty there were 
two who had made themselves famous for a relatively 
speaking wide acquaintance with natural history, they 
having both done some amount of original investigation. 
In 1724, however, both these professors were well advanced 
in years -and had all but retired from taking any share 
in teaching work. One of them, LARS ROBERG, was 60 
years of age when ARTEDI matriculated, and though he 
was a fair zoologist and a skilled anatomist, yet the 
teaching he did while ARTEDI was up at the university 
must have been very small in quantity; there is no re- 
cord, for instance, of his having held any course of 
public lectures at all. Moreover, what was still more 
serious, there existed at that period practically nothing 
in the way of collections or other educational materials 
for natural history study, since the few curiosities that 
ROBERG possessed can hardly be said to deserve the 
name of a collection; furthermore, in the allotment of 
subjects among the several professors, Zoology had ac- 
tually not fallen to ROBERG'S province. 
