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466
IV. EDUCATION AND MENTAL CULTURE IN SWEDEN.
the latter half of the 17th
century that botany can
be said to have attained
to an independent
position as a subject of
scientific study and
investigation in Sweden; that
period saw the production
of a great work by Olof
Rudbeck the Elder (1630,
1702) and Olof
Rudbeck the Younger (1660/
1740), entitled Campi
Elysei and containing
illustrations — for that
period eminently good ones
— of about 6,000 species.
During the following
century, botany attained
to the foremost place
among the branches of
natural science studied
in Sweden, owing to the
work of the greatest of
Swedish natural
scientists, Carolus Linnæut
(ennobled von Linné),
who was born at Råshult in
Småland, May 13, 1707.
After having taken his
M. D. degree in Holland,
he practised medicine in
Stockholm for a few years,
and, in 1741, was summoned to Uppsala as a professor, a position he continued
to hold until his death Jan. 10, 1778. Linnaeus’ services to botanical science
cannot be overrated. The existing literature on the subject was carefully examined
by him, further to develop all that was found of value. The description of
animals and plants was by him heightened into a real art, both by establishing a
normal form of diagnosis for the characterization of different species in succinct
but in their signification accurately defined terms, and by introducing the binary
nomenclature, i. e. the method of naming animals and plants both by one specific
and one generic name. His sexual system enabled him to give a very necessary
survey of the species then known; he made clear the difference between artificial
and natural systems, and showed how a natural system should be arrived at; he
also distinguished and gave names to 67 natural families. His chief works on
systems are his Systema Naturae and his Species Plantarum. In his work entitled
Philosophia Botanica he reproduces what was at that time known concerning the
external and internal structure of plants; the same work contains manifold biological
observations and an account of his views regarding phytography and the system
of plants. In his natural science work Linnæus showed himself to be rather an
arranger and svstematizer than a discoverer; it has, indeed, sometimes been urged
against him that he neglected other phases of botany, such as phytotomy and vegetable
physiology. It should, however, be remembered that Linnæus effected just what was
most urgently needed at that time in the domain of natural history investigation.
Statue of Linnæus, Stockholm.
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