A general view of the writings of Linnaeus / by Richard Pulteney.

  • Pulteney, Richard, 1730-1801.
Date:
1805
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: A general view of the writings of Linnaeus / by Richard Pulteney. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by Royal College of Physicians, London. The original may be consulted at Royal College of Physicians, London.

    61/634 (page 33)
    Edward Smith, is in the Swedish language, and dedicated to Professor Roberg. There are sketches of a few of the plants, and a rude map illustrative of the situations. As the plants are all arranged after the system of Tournefort, the author would appear to have not as yet espoused the idea of a sexual difference in the vegetable kingdom, though within three years afterwards it was sufficiently matured in his mind for the arrangement of the Lapland plants in that method*. Soon after his arrival at Upsala, Linnaeus contracted aclose friend- ship with Artedi, a native of the province of Angermanland, who had already been four years a student in the university, and, like himself, had a strong bent to the study of natural history in general, but particularly to ichthyology. He was moreover well skilled in chemistry, and not unacquainted with botany, having been the inventor of that distinction in umbelliferous plants which arises from the differences of the involucrum. Emulation is the soul of improvement; and, heightened as it was in this instance by friendship, proved a most power- ful incentive. These young men prosecuted their studies together with uncommon vigour, mutually communicating their observations, and laying their plans so as to assist each other in every branch of natural history and medicine. Our author was also happy enough to obtain the favour of several men of established philosophical character. He was in a particular manner encouraged in the pursuit of his studies by * Stoever mentions a work of Linnaeus entitled Hortus Uplandicus, which is supposed by that biographer to be the first, in order oPtime, of all his productions; but. as the date of it is ] 730, it could not have been earlier than the work mentioned above; besides, the arrangement is stated to be founded on the doctrine of a sexual difference. I do not find any mention of the Hortus Uplandicus in the catalogue of Linnaeus’s works given in his own Diary. (Editor.) F the