PUPILS: C. TERNSTROM 
227 
There are, and always have been, teachers who 
fulfilled their duties implicitly, but never came into 
intimate relationship with their pupils. Linne was 
not of that number, for it was for him a true joy when 
an enquiring young man came to him with questions. 
“ A professor,’ 5 said he, “ can never better distinguish 
himself in his work than by encouraging a clever 
pupil, for the true discoverers are among them, as 
comets amongst the stars.” Thus he established 
round him a close intimate circle of students, for 
whom he showed a fatherly regard. A sketch of his 
relations with this select band must be touched upon, 
but in a brief fashion. 
In the first place we must look at the numerous 
youths, who, incited by Linne’s stories of nature’s life 
in foreign lands, betook themselves in high spirits and 
burning zeal to the quest of natural objects. We 
must remember the great perils which then were con¬ 
nected with such journeys, and the scanty appliances 
which could be got together for such enterprises. 
Many of Linne’s “ apostles,” as he loved to call them, 
these naturalist pioneers, suffered a martyr’s death, 
but that did not prevent others from offering them¬ 
selves to similar tasks, to the same hunger, the same 
struggle, the same death; an everlasting memorial to 
their memory, cere ferennius. 
The first of these was Christopher Ternstrom. 
Although belonging to the divinity faculty, he had 
for years accompanied O. Celsius and Linne on their 
botanic excursions, by which he had advanced so far 
in botany, that “ no one in the kingdom could be 
compared with him except Kalm.” His ardour did 
not diminish, after he had been ordained, and though 
married, and a father, he begged to be allowed to sail 
to the East Indies, partly as priest, but also to 
botanize, which permission he obtained through 
Admiral Ankarcrona. Linne gave him instructions, 
and he was especially charged to procure a tea plant 
in a pot, or at least seeds of it; to take thermometric 
