e
medicine anywhere in Sweden. The doctor's daughter gave him a
hundred dollars she had saved, and her promise to wait for him.

He went to Harderwyk in Holland and got his degree at the university
there on the strength of a thesis on the cause of malarial fever,
with the conclusions of which the learned doctors did not agree;
but they granted the diploma for the clever way in which he defended
it. On the way down he tarried in Hamburg long enough to give the
good burghers a severe jolt. They had a seven-headed serpent that
was one of the wonders of the town. The keen sight of the young
naturalist detected the fraud at once; the heads were weasels'
heads, covered with serpent's skin and cunningly sewed on the head
of the reptile. The shape of the jaws betrayed the trick. But the
Hamburgers were not grateful. The serpent was an asset. There was a
mortgage on it of ten thousand marks; now it was not worth a
hundred. They took it very ill, and Linnaeus found himself suddenly
so unpopular that he was glad to get out of town overnight. What
became of the serpent history does not record.

Linnaeus had carried more than his thesis on malarial fever with him
to Holland. At the bottom of his trunk were the manuscripts of two
books on botany which, he told his sweetheart on parting, would yet
make him famous. Probably she shook her head at that. Pills and
powders, and broken legs to set, were more to her way of thinking,
and her father's, too. If only he had patients, fame might take care
of itself. But now he put them both to shame. At Leyden he found
friends who brought out his first book, "Systema Naturae," in which
he divides all nature into the three kingdoms known to every child
since. It was hardly more than a small pamphlet, but it laid the
foundation for his later fame. To the enlarged tenth edition
zooelogists point back to this day as to the bed-rock on which they
built their science. The first was quickly followed by another, and
yet another. Seven large volumes bearing his name had come from the
press before he set sail for home, a whole library in botany, and a
new botany at that, so simple and sensible that the world adopted it
at once.

Dr. Hermann Boerhaave was at that time the most famous physician in
Europe. He was also the greatest authority on systematic botany.
Great men flocked to his door, but the testy old Dutchman let them
wait until it suited him to receive them. Peter the Great had to
cool his hee