ls in his waiting-room two long hours before his turn
came. Linnaeus he would not see at all--until he sent him a copy of
his book. Then he shut the door against all others and summoned the
author. The two walked through his garden, and the old doctor
pointed proudly to a tree which was very rare, he said, and not in
any of the books. Yes, said Linnaeus, it was in Vaillant's. The
doctor knew better; he had annotated Vaillant's botany himself, and
it was not there. Linnaeus insisted, and the doctor, in a temper,
went for the book to show him. But there it was; Linnaeus was right.
Nothing would do then but he must stay in Holland. Linnaeus demurred;
he could not afford it. But Dr. Boerhaave knew a way out of that. He
had for a patient Burgomaster Cliffort, a rich old hypochondriac
with whom he could do nothing because he would insist on living high
and taking too little exercise. When he came again he told him that
what he needed was a physician in daily attendance upon him, and
handed him over to Linnaeus.

"He will fix your diet and fix your garden, too," was his
prescription. The Burgomaster was a famous collector and had a
wondrous garden that was the apple of his eye. He took Linnaeus into
his house and gave him a ducat a day for writing his menu and
cataloguing his collection. That was where his books grew, and the
biggest and finest of them was "Hortus Cliffortianus," the account
of his patron's garden.

Armed with letters from Dr. Boerhaave and the Burgomaster, he took
one stronghold of professional prejudice after another. Not without
a siege. One of them refused flatly to surrender. That was Sir Hans
Sloan, the great English naturalist, to whom Dr. Boerhaave wrote in
a letter that is preserved in the British Museum: "Linnaeus, who
bears this letter, is alone worthy of seeing you, alone worthy of
being seen by you. He who shall see you both together shall see two
men whose like will scarce ever be found in the world." And the
doctor was no flatterer, as may be inferred from his treatment of
Peter the Great. But the aged baronet had had his own way so long,
and was so well pleased with it, that he would have nothing to do
with Linnaeus. At Oxford the learned professor Dillenius received him
with no better grace. "This," he said aside to a friend, "is the
young man who confounds all botany," and he took him rather
reluctantly into his garden. A plant that was new to him attracted
Linnaeus' attention and he asked