46 
LINN/EUS 
as a New Year’s gift to his benefactor Celsius, and 
in his preface he says, “ It is an old custom to awaken 
one’s eminent patrons on New Year’s Day with verses 
and good wishes, and I also find myself obliged to 
do so. I would gladly write in verse, but must bewail 
that it is true as the old proverb has it, ‘ Poets are 
born not made.’ I was not born a poet, but a 
botanist instead, so I offer the fruit of the little harvest 
which God has vouchsafed me. In these few pages 
is handled the great analogy which is found between 
plants and animals, in their increase in like measure 
according to their kind, and what I have here simply 
written, I pray may be favourably received.” 
It is not without interest to note that though written 
superficially, these pages show the rapid development 
of the young student, his views which most people at 
that time would have regarded as bordering upon 
insanity being frankly put forward. Its full title 
is “ Caroli Linnaei . . . Praeludia sponsaliorum 
plantarum in quibus Physiologia earum explicatur. 
Sexus demonstratur, modus generationis detegitur, nec 
non summa plantarum cum animalibus analogia con- 
cluditur. [Preliminaries on the marriage of plants 
in which the physiology of them is explained, sex 
shown, method of generation disclosed, and the true 
analogy of plants with animals, concluded.] After 
first setting forth the enlivening influence of the sun 
in spring, on all bodies which have been dormant 
during the cold winter, and that love animates plants 
themselves, the author shows how the old botanists 
seemed groping through thick darkness toward sex 
amongst plants, but for the most part so unsuccess¬ 
fully, that one must shudder. Those who wish to 
see their points, may refer to the disputation, which 
is a compendium of all that the ancients said about it. 
On the other hand, later botanists found many 
analogies between peculiarities of animal and plant 
life, how they suffer the same kinds of sicknesses, 
how plants, like many animals, are dormant in winter, 
