Famous Men of Science. Sarah K. Bolton

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      Here is the Astronomical Observatory, the Chemical Laboratory, Anatomy Building, Academic Department, and handsome library with two hundred thousand volumes and over seven thousand manuscripts. Here we look at the celebrated "Codex Argenteus," a translation of the four Gospels by Bishop Ulfila, dating from the second half of the fourth century, written on one hundred and eighty-eight leaves of parchment – gold and silver letters on a reddish ground; and the manuscript of Frithiof's Saga, by Tegnér.

      Now we visit the Botanic Garden, which Linnæus so loved and developed, and go over the two-and-a-half-story stuccoed house, cream-colored, where the great naturalist lived and entertained princes. Under these dark poplars, enormous in size, he taught the pupils who came from all parts of the world to hear him. The dark, closed blinds are as he left them, for Sweden would not change one thing about the precious home. Too little in our own country do we treasure the homes of those who give honor to the nation.

      The history of Linnæus is, indeed, a romance. Few have had such great struggles with poverty; few have come off such conquerors. Few lives have given to the world such lessons of cheerfulness, of perseverance, and of untiring industry. He was born, May, 1707, at Rashult, in the south of Sweden, the son of a poor minister, and the eldest of five children. The father, Nils Linnæus, had obtained his education by the hardest toil, and, while he had only poverty to offer his family, he gave them what money could not buy, tender affection, and the inspiring influence of a cultivated mind that loved nature and studied her closely. His mother, Christina, a woman of sense, prudence, and good judgment, was his idol. He wrote of her in later years: "She possessed all the virtues of her sex, devoting the utmost attention to impressing on my mind the love of virtue, both in precept and example."

      From a child he was fond of his father's garden, and gathered from the fields all kinds of wild flowers. He says of himself in his autobiography: "He was scarcely four years old when he accompanied his father at a feast at Mökler, and in the evening, it being a very pleasant season of the year, the guests seated themselves on some flowery turf, listening to the pastor, who made various remarks on the names and properties of the plants, showing them the roots of the succisa, tormentilla, orchids, etc. The child paid the most uninterrupted attention to all he saw and heard, and from that hour never ceased harassing his father about the name, qualities, and nature of every plant he met with; indeed, he very often asked more than his father was able to answer, but, like other children, he used immediately to forget what he had learned, and especially the names of plants. Hence the father was sometimes put out of humor, and refused to answer him unless he would promise to remember what was told him. Nor had this harshness any bad effect, for he afterward retained with ease whatever he heard."

      When he was eight, a piece of ground was assigned him, which was called "Carl's Garden." Here he gathered plants and flowers, and introduced so many rare weeds that his father had great trouble in eradicating them! So interested did Carl become, that he had nests of wild bees and wasps, not agreeable playthings usually.

      But the play days with weeds and wasps came to an end, for the bright boy had to go to school. His first teacher was "a passionate and morose man, better calculated for extinguishing a youth's talents than for improving them," and the next "pursued the same methods, preferring stripes and punishments to encouragements and admonitions." There was little time now for the precious study of flowers. At seventeen he had to go to a gymnasium or high school, where he would be taught classics, and made ready for the ministry, like his father. He had no fondness for the languages, neither for theology or metaphysics: but having obtained two books on botany, he read them day and night, committing them to memory. The teachers and scholars called him "the little botanist."

      What was his father's chagrin, when he came to the school to visit him, to hear that Carl was quite unfit for the ministry, but would probably make a good tailor or shoemaker! Poor as he was, he had kept his boy at school for about twelve years. Now, well-nigh disheartened, he stopped, on his way home, to confer with his family physician, Dr. Rothmann. That good man suggested that the boy might like medicine, and accomplish great things in natural history. He offered to take him into his own home, and give him lessons in physiology, which kind proposal the father accepted, though with little faith. The doctor also taught him botany, and Carl grew happy under the new régime.

      The next year he was sent to the University of Lund, with the following not very creditable certificate from the head master of the Gymnasium: "Youth at school may be compared to shrubs in a garden, which will sometimes, though rarely, elude all the care of the gardener, but if transplanted into a different soil, may become fruitful trees. With this view, therefore, and no other, the bearer is sent to the University, where it is possible that he may meet with a climate propitious to his progress." Through a friend, entrance was obtained without showing the obnoxious certificate.

      Carl took lodgings at the house of Dr. Stobæus, physician to the king, who gave him access to his minerals, shells, and dried plants. Delighted at this, the youth at once began to make a collection of his own, and glue them on paper. He longed to gain access to Dr. Stobæus's library, but how should it be accomplished? Finally a young German student, to whom he taught physiology, surreptitiously gained the books needed, and young Linnæus spent nearly the whole nights in reading. The doctor's aged mother did not understand why their lodger kept his light burning into the small hours, and besought her son to investigate. He did so, and found the crestfallen Carl reading his own library books. He forgave the student, took him to his own table and treated him as a son.

      Advised by Dr. Rothmann to go to Upsala for better medical opportunities, he proceeded thither, and here began his bitterest poverty. His father could give him only forty dollars. As he was unknown, and without influence, he could obtain no private pupils. Starvation actually stared him in the face. He says, "he was obliged to trust to chance for a meal, and in the article of dress, was reduced to such shifts that he was obliged, when his shoes required mending, to patch them with folded paper, instead of sending them to the cobbler." Often hungry and half clothed, there seemed nothing before the poor Swedish lad but obscurity and early death.

      One day in autumn, as he was examining some plants in the Academical Garden, a venerable clergyman, Dr. Olaf Celsius, saw him, and asked him where he came from, how long he had been at the college, and what he knew about plants. He, too, was interested in botany, and was preparing a work on the plants mentioned in the Bible. Perhaps something in Carl's face or manner touched the minister's heart, for he asked him to go home with him, and soon offered him board in his own house, and gave him access to his valuable library.

      The tide of adversity was beginning to turn. Some pupils were obtained, and a little money flowed into the empty pockets. At twenty-two, by a close examination of the stamens and pistils of flowers, he decided upon a new method of arrangement by the sexes of plants, which, in after years, became the basis of his great fame. This procured him the appointment of Assistant Lecturer to Dr. Rudbeck in the Botanical Garden, where, but a year before, he had asked to be the gardener!

      He still had little money, but, what was equally useful, some leisure time. He began his great works, which were not completed for seven years, "Bibliotheca Botanica," "Classes Plantarum," "Critica Botanica," and "Genera Plantarum," "letting," as he said, "not a minute pass unoccupied during his residence at Upsala. For the latter work he examined the characters of eight thousand flowers."

      Scarcely had he begun this valuable labor, when the envy of one of the professors became as hard to bear as his previous poverty, and, through friends, he obtained an appointment to study the natural history of Lapland. It was a hazardous expedition for a young man of twenty-five. Now he climbed steep rocks, "which," he says, "broke loose from a spot which my late guide had just passed, and fell exactly where I had been, with such force that it struck fire as it went." Once, when floating down a river, the raft parted in the middle, and he narrowly escaped drowning. "All my food," he says, "in those fatiguing excursions, consisted, for the most part, of fish and reindeer's milk. СКАЧАТЬ