was over. Once he was
shot at as he was gathering plants on a hillside, but happily the
Finn who did it was not a good marksman. Fish and reindeer milk were
his food, a pestilent plague of flies his worst trouble. But, he
says in his account of the trip, which is as fascinating a report of
a scientific expedition as was ever penned, they were good for
something, after all, for the migrating birds fed on them. From his
camps on lake or river bank he saw the water covered far and near
with swarms of ducks and geese. The Laplander's larder was easily
stocked.

He came back from the dangers of the wild with a reputation that was
clinched by his book "The Flora of Lapland," to find the dragon of
professional jealousy rampant still at Upsala. His enemy, Rosen,
persuaded the senate of the university to adopt a rule that no
un-degreed man should lecture there to the prejudice of the
regularly appointed instructors. Tradition has it that Linnaeus flew
into a passion at that and drew upon Rosen, and there might have
been one regular less but for the interference of bystanders. It may
be true, though it is not like him. Men wore side-arms in those days
just as some people carry pistols in their hip-pockets to-day, and
with as little sense. At least they had the defence, such as it was,
that it was the fashion. However, it made an end of Linnaeus at
Upsala for the time. He sought a professorship at Lund, but another
got it. Then he led an expedition of his former students into the
Dalecarlia mountains and so he got to Falun, where Baron Reuterholm,
one of Sweden's copper magnates, was seeking a guide for his two
sons through the region where his mines were.

Linnaeus was not merely a botanist, but an all around expert in
natural science. He took charge of the boys and, when the trip was
ended, started a school at Falun, where he taught mineralogy. It had
been hit or miss with the miners up till then. There was neither
science nor system in their work. What every-day experience or the
test of fire had taught a prospector, in delving among the rocks,
was all there was of it. Linnaeus was getting things upon a
scientific basis, when he met and fell in love with the handsome
daughter of Dr. Moraeus. The young people would marry, but the
doctor, though he liked the mineralogist, would not hear of it till
he could support a wife. So he gave him three years in which to go
abroad and get a degree that would give him the right to practis