62 
LINNTEUS 
almost an improper and hazardous project, especially 
because of its condition and the prevailing ignorance 
in Lapland, the actual dangers from the inhabitants 
standing out in a greatly magnified shape. Before a 
definite decision was reached, therefore, Linnaeus felt 
that he must obtain his parents’ advice and consent. 
“ Mother,” relates Samuel Linnaeus, “ dissuaded him, 
fearing that so adventurous a journey might cut short 
her newly found gladness. She wrote to him with 
many reasons against his design, and quoted the old 
saying: 
In thy country born and bred, 
By God’s bounty duly fed. 
Be not lightly from it led ! * 
But father left it to Carl’s own choice. ‘ Thou hast 
no more than one life to take care of,’ he wrote, ‘ if 
thou find it advantageous to thy future call upon God 
for help. He is everywhere, even among the wildest 
fells. Trust to Him. My prayers to God shall go 
with thee.’ ” 
The result of these discussions was that Linnaeus, 
on the 15th December, 1731, handed in a long docu¬ 
ment, addressed to the President of the Royal Society 
of Science, State Councillor Arvid Bern. Horn and 
the members. Herein he set out “ that as our father- 
land, no less than all other flourishing states, are now 
provided with scientific societies (who favour and 
possess the greatest studies in the entire kingdom), 
so it is highly necessary that our Sweden, no less than 
other places in the whole world, may ere long pride 
itself in every kind of noble science and learning. 
♦This recalls the old invocation translated thus by Stopford 
Brooke from Cynewulf, about a.d. 750 : — 
Hail thou, Earth Mother of Men! 
In the lap of the God be thou a-growing f 
Be filled with fodder for fare-need of men! 
“ I dare say this hymn was sung ten thousand years ago, by 
the early Aryans on the Baltic coast.” (Early English Literature, 
i. 220.) The Swedish form seems to be a Christianized and later 
version. 
