ENCYCLOPÆDIA AMERICANA. A POPULAR DICTIONARY OF ARTS, SCIENCES, LITERATURE, HISTORY, POLITICS, AND A NEW EDITION; INCLUDING A COPIOUS COLLECTION OF ORIGINAL ARTICLES IN AMERICAN BIOGRAPHY; ON THE BASIS OF THE SEVENTH EDITION OF THE GERMAN Conversations-Lexicon. EDITED BY FRANCIS LIEBER, ASSISTED BY E. WIGGLESWORTH AND T. G. BRADFORD. VOL. VIII. BOSTON: BAZIN AND ELLSWORTH. 1859. 1333 1859 v. 8 Entered, according to the Act of Congress, in the year 1831. by In the Clerk's office of the District Court of the Eastern District of Pennsylvania. 12 ENCYCLOPEDIA AMERICANA. LEUS. (See Linné.) Lrt, Charles, but more generally desgnated by his Latinized name, Linnæus, the in celebrated naturalist of his age, was a ative of Sweden. He was the son of a ergyman, and was born May 13, old sale, 1707, at Roshult, in the province of Smaland. His father was fond of gardening, and his little domain was stocked with plants not commonly cultivated-a circumstance to which the prevailing taste of the son may be fairly attributed. He was sent to the grammar-school, and afterwards to the gymnasium of Wexio, to be educated for the ministry; but, as he disliked the studies of the school, and preferred to collect plants and catch butterflies, he remained behind his fellow-pupils in Latin and Greek, and the teachers declared to his father that he was only fit for a mechanic. The father sent him to a shoemaker; but the physician Rothmann, having discovered talents in the boy, induced his parents to let him study. As botany afforded him no prospect of a support, Linné was obliged to study medicine. In 1727, he entered at the university of Lund in Scania, whence he removed, the following year, to Upsal. During his early residence there, the narrowness of his father's circumstances exposed him to great difficulties, from which he was relieved by the patronage of Celsius, the theological professor, an eminent naturalist, who had become acquainted with him in the botanical garden at Upsal, and through whose recommendation he obtained some private pupils. He also formed a friendship with Artedi, a medical student like himself, devoted to the cultivation of natural history. He now, in bis 24th year, conceived the idea of a new arrangement of plants, or tne sexual sys- suc THE UNIVERSITY LIBRARIES OF GEORGIA |