254 
LINNAEUS 
was repeated. One of the garden staff, old Lofgren, 
had the habit when going in, to blow his nose loudly; 
one day he was amazed at the parrot crying out, 
“ Blow your nose/’ 
Linne himself bore the cost of keeping these 
animals until the Consistory made an allowance for that 
purpose. 
Before leaving the subject of the garden, there is 
one matter worth mention, a by-product of Linne’s 
activity, namely the alteration which he made in the 
thermometer. Actually the centigrade thermometer in 
constant use is not that of A. Celsius, but of Linne. 
Both of them divided the difference between freezing 
and boiling points into ioo°, but Celsius made 
o° boiling point, and ioo° the freezing point, whilst 
Linne started at o° as zero and freezing point, working 
up to ioo° as boiling point. The explanation is easy; 
the physicist Celsius had his point of view, the botanist 
for plant-cultivation reversed it, as we now find the 
centigrade thermometer, having zero as the fatal 
freezing point, is of the greatest importance. 
The first time in which Linne in print mentions 
his thermometer, is in the disputation, “ Hortus 
Upsaliensis,” which was discussed on the 16th 
December, 1745. Already in June of the previous 
year he had ordered one such from the skilful 
instrument-maker, Daniel Ekstrom in Stockholm, but 
it was broken on the way to Uppsala. After repeated 
reminders and through the help of Elvius, to his great 
delight in the beginning of November, he received a 
new one, “ excellently made/’ A thermometer was 
regarded at that time in Uppsala so remarkable an 
instrument that the Consistory decided to order one 
when they saw the one belonging to Linne, which had 
cost 5 platar [15s.]. In the Uppsala observatory 
from the 1st April, 1747, daily observations were 
begun by O. P. Hiorter, and from that date the ther¬ 
mometer made its victorious way throughout the 
civilized world. In foreign lands it became known 
