Famous Men of Science

by Sarah Knowles Bolton

Then we turn our steps to the University, the pride and hope of Sweden. Here fifteen hundred gather, not in dormitories—which were tried fifty years ago and discarded—but scattered in various homes, as in the German universities. Women are educated here on equal terms with men, and we are assured by the professors that, though admitted only a few years ago, their presence is most helpful, and the plan has proved entirely successful. No duels are allowed, these having been abolished by stringent laws two hundred years ago; a thing Germany should long since have done, and thus ended this brutal custom.

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.