Return to Sweden.--After an absence of three and one-half years, Linnæus returned to his native country in 1738, and soon after was married to the young woman who had assisted him and had waited for him so loyally. He settled in Stockholm and began the practice of medicine. In the period of his absence he had accomplished much: visited Holland, England, and France, formed the acquaintance of many eminent naturalists, obtained his medical degree, published numerous works on botany, and extended his fame over all Europe. In Stockholm, however, he was for a time neglected, and he would have left his native country in disgust had it not been for the dissuasion of his wife. Professor in Upsala.--In 1741 he was elected professor of anatomy in the University of Upsala, but by a happy stroke was able to exchange that position for the professorship of botany, materia medica, and natural history that had fallen to his former rival, Rosen. Linnæus was now in his proper element; he had opportunity to lecture on those subjects to which he had been devotedly attached all his life, and he entered upon the work with enthusiasm. He attracted numerous students by the power of his personal qualities and the excellence of his lectures. He became the most popular professor in the University of Upsala, and, owing to his drawing power, the attendance at the university was greatly increased. In 1749 he had 140 students devoted to studies in natural history. The number of students at the university had been about 500; "whilst he occupied the chair of botany there it rose to 1,500." A part of this increase was due to other causes, but Linnæus was the greatest single drawing force in the university. He was an eloquent as well as an enthusiastic lecturer, and he aroused great interest among his students, and he gave an astonishing impulse to the study of natural history in general, and to botany in particular. Thus Linnæus, after having passed through great privations in his earlier years, found himself, at the age of thirty-four, established in a position which brought him recognition, honor, and large emolument. [Illustration: Fig. 34.--Linnæus at Sixty, 1707-1778.] In May, 1907, the University of Upsala celebrated the two hundredth anniversary of his birth with appropriate ceremonies. Delegations of scientific men from all over the world were in attendance to do honor to the memory of the great founder of biological nomenclature.