AT STOCKHOLM 
183 
his arrival in the capital he announced his intention 
to refrain from writing, and especially to let his 
botany rest. “ They laugh/' he says in a letter to 
Haller, “ in Stockholm at my botany. How many 
sleepless nights and weary hours have I spent on it, 
but with one accord they say, that I have been over¬ 
come by Siegesbeck.” He found himself challenged 
not to let this attack pass without an answer, but he 
would not, without the counsel of his foreign friends, 
appear against the least worthy of his opponents. In 
his friend Mennander he found a person who was 
willing to appear on the title-page as author, if only 
Linnaeus himself wrote the refutation. In the mean¬ 
time nothing came of this, as subsequently the intimate 
bond of friendship was again formed between him 
and Browallius (against whom, rightly or wrongly, he 
had formerly harboured distrust), for he came forward 
as a champion on the scientific field. In the year 
1739 appeared at Abo the work “ Examen epicriseos 
in systema sexuale Linnaei auct. Siegesbeckio ” (Ex¬ 
amination of the determination in Linnaeus's sexual 
system of Siegesbeck) in which the statements in the 
named “ Epicrisis " were reduced to their true value. 
Much of it, and that the most important, was undoubt¬ 
edly from the pen of Linnaeus. Similar in some 
respects was the condition under which J. G. 
Gleditsch published his “ Consideratio epicriseos 
Siegesbeckianae " (Consideration of the Siegesbeckian 
determination) in 1740 in Berlin. This author, even 
before he began corresponding with Linnaeus, felt 
himself induced to write his answer, and to impart 
the views of other naturalists by his criticism of 
Siegesbeck's polemic. 
About the same time that Browallius’s pamphlet 
was printed at Abo, there came out another in 
Stockholm, which indeed did not bear Linnaeus's 
name, but which in reality came from his pen, and 
was seen through the press by him. At that time 
there was living in Karlscrona, Assessor J. E. Ferber, 
