BIRTH AND EARLY EDUCATION 7 
garden in the style of the period. This interest con¬ 
tinued undiminished after his return home, and caused 
him to lay out a garden at Pjetteryd rectory, to which 
his friends in Germany contributed by sending rare 
plants not previously cultivated in Sweden. He 
inoculated the young Nils Linnaeus with a like devo¬ 
tion, which ended only with his life. During his 
university career he learned—an uncommon attain¬ 
ment then—the Latin names of certain plants, and 
“ had himself laid in with his own hand, fifty plants 
in a ‘ herbarium vivum.’ ” He had hardly entered into 
his official residence at Rashult, before he began to 
employ his leisure hours in laying out a garden “ more 
for the sake of the plants themselves, than for any 
advantage to himself, and his young, newly wedded 
wife, who had till then hardly ever seen a garden, was 
delighted with its charm.” In accordance with the 
taste of the time, he had, with his own hands, raised 
an eminence and a surrounding border round the 
field, with plants or shrubs to represent guests, and 
flowers to adorn the table. 
When he removed to the rectory he was able to 
develop his ideas on a larger scale, making “ a fine 
garden where formerly there was not a twig, so that 
it surpassed all gardens in the province; for in it 
were several hundred different foreign plants.” Here 
the parents spent their leisure hours, and flowers 
became Carl’s first and choicest playthings. It is 
also related that “ the father took the little year-old 
son out with him sometimes into the garden, putting the 
child on the ground in the grass and leaving a little 
flower in his hand with which to amuse himself,” also 
that “ when the boy was unreasonable and by nothing 
else could be pacified, he became silent at once, so 
soon as one put a flower into his hand.” When some¬ 
what older, the child laid out a little garden of his 
own, which was always being enlarged, and there he 
had in a small plot a sample of all that was found in 
the large garden. Still later when he sat as flower 
