Hero Tales of the Far NorthRiis, Jacob A. (Jacob August)
History
Hero Tales of the Far North
Riis, Jacob A. (Jacob August)
Scandinavia -- History
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,
Rosén, 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 Linnæus flew
into a passion at that and drew upon Rosén, 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 Linnæus
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.
Linnæus 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. Linnæus was getting things upon a
scientific basis, when he met and fell in love with the handsome
daughter of Dr. Moræus. 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 practise
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
Linnæus found himself suddenly so unpopular that he was glad to get
out of town overnight. What became of the serpent history does not
record.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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