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 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.
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