LINNAEUS once in despair abandoned his beloved studies, from a too irritable feeling of the ridicule in which, as it appeared to him, a professor Siegesbeck had involved his famous system.

Penury, neglect, and labour LINNAEUS could endure, but that his botany should become the object of ridicule for all Stockholm, shook the nerves of this great inventor in his science.

Let him speak for himself.

"No one cared how many sleepless nights and toilsome hours I had passed, while all with one voice declared, that Siegesbeck had annihilated me.

I took my leave of Flora, who bestows on me nothing but Siegesbecks; and condemned my too numerous observations a thousand times over to eternal oblivion.