Up to his time it had three names and one of them
was _Gramen pratense paniculatum majus latiore folio poa
theophrasti_. Dr. Rydberg, of the New York Botanical Gardens, said
aptly at the bicentenary of his birth, that it was as if instead of
calling a girl Grace Darling one were to say "Mr. Darling's
beautiful, slender, graceful, blue-eyed girl with long, golden curls
and rosy cheeks."
The binomial system revolutionized the science. What the lines of
longitude and latitude did for geography Linnaeus' genius did for
botany. And he did not let pride of achievement persuade him that he
had said the last word. He knew his system to be the best till some
one should find a better, and said so. The King gave him a noble
name and he was proud of it with reason--vain, some have said. But
vanity did not make the creature deny the Creator. He ever tried to
trace science to its author. When the people were frightened by the
"water turning to blood" and overzealous priests cried that it was a
sign of the wrath of God, he showed under the magnifying glass the
presence of innumerable little animals that gave the water its
reddish tinge, and thereby gave offence to some pious souls. But
over the door of his lecture room were the words in Latin: "Live
guiltless--God sees you!" and in his old age, seeing with prophetic
eye the day of bacteriology that dawned a hundred years after his
death, he thanked God that He had permitted him to "look into His
secret council room and workshop.
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