CAROLUS LINNÆUS
A Tour in Lapland
I.—A Wandering Scientist
Carolus Linnæus, the celebrated Swedish naturalist, was born at Rashult on May 23, 1707. At school his taste for botany was encouraged, but after an unsatisfactory academic career his father decided to apprentice him to a tradesman. A doctor called Rothmann, however, recognised and fostered his scientific talents, and in 1728, on Rothmann's advice, he went to Upsala and studied under the celebrated Rudbeck. In 1732 he made his famous tour in Lapland. He gives a fascinating account of this journey in "A Tour in Lapland" ("Lachesis Lapponica"), published in 1737. In 1739 he was appointed a naval physician, and in 1741 became professor of medicine at the University of Upsal, but in the following year exchanged his chair for that of botany. To Linnæus is due the honour of having first enunciated the true principles for defining genera and species, and that honour will last so long as biology itself endures. He found biology a chaos; he left it a cosmos. He died on January 10, 1778. Among his published works are "Systema Naturæ," "Fundamenta Botanica," and the "Species Plantarum."
Having been appointed by the Royal Academy of Sciences to travel through Lapland for the purpose of investigating the three kingdoms of nature in that country, I prepared my wearing apparel and other necessaries for the journey.
I carried a small leather bag, half an ell in length, but somewhat less in breadth, furnished on one side with hooks and eyes, so that it could be opened and shut at pleasure. This bag contained one shirt, two pairs of false sleeves, two half shirts, an inkstand, pencase, microscope, and spying glass, a gauze cap to protect me occasionally from the gnats, a comb, my journal, and a parcel of paper stitched together for drying plants, both in folio; my manuscript ornithology, Flora Uplandica, and Characteres generici. I wore a hanger at my side, and carried a small fowling-piece, as well as an octangular stick, graduated for the purpose of measuring.
I set out alone from the city of Upsal on Friday, May 22, 1732, at eleven o'clock, being at that time within half a day of twenty-five years of age.
At this season nature wore her most cheerful and delightful aspect, and Flora celebrated her nuptials with Phœbus. The winter corn was half a foot in height, and the barley had just shot out its blade. The birch, the elm, and the aspen-tree began to put forth their leaves.
A number of mares with their colts were grazing everywhere near the road. I remarked the great length of the colts' legs, which, according to common opinion, are as long at their birth as they will ever be. I noticed young kids, under whose chin, at the beginning of the throat, were a pair of tubercles, like those seen in pigs, about an inch long, and clothed with a few scattered hairs. Of their use I am ignorant. The forest abounded with the yellow anemone (Anemone ranunculoides), which many people consider as differing from that genus. One would suppose they had never seen an anemone at all. Here, also, grew hepatica, and wood sorrel. Their blossoms were all closed. Who has endowed plants with intelligence to shut themselves up at the approach of rain? Even when the weather changes in a moment from sunshine to rain they immediately close.
Near the great river Linsnan I found blood-red stones. On rubbing them I found the red colour external and distinct from the stone; in fact, it was a red byssus.