Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 71.djvu/329

Rh the eighteenth century no poet thought of writing about the birds and flowers, or if he did, of using anything but stilted and conventional phrases. In such an age, long before Burns and Wordsworth, before even Rousseau, Linné leaves the conventional city for the garden, the äng, the barrskog, the fjäll; he is bold enough to neglect the conventionalized nightingale in his joy over the thrush; he ignores the conventional rules and models of writing, and in his own simple and direct way sets down truthfully the things he has seen with his own eyes and felt with his own heart; he leads the way not only for a more scientific study of nature, but also for a more poetic love for nature. With the eighteenth-century world sleeping through a musicless night, Linné's enthusiastic love for nature, so joyously and continuously expressed, must have come like the dawn song of birds calling to awake. And it is not unreasonable to suppose that through his writings and through the hundreds of students who were held at Upsala by his powerful magnetism, something of his inspiring love for nature should have been spread through Europe and all the world and have helped in leading men back to the great outdoors.

To some it may seem curious that Linné looked upon flowers and nature, at the same time from the scientific and the poetic points of view. We have, of course, plenty of amateurs who have a love for nature without a true knowledge, and we have scientists who see only the material object under their microscope and who feel or love nothing. But the examples of such scientists as Linné and Agassiz and many more show us that a scientist need not be fossilized, nor a mere instrument for dissecting, recording and classifying. A little of the poetic feeling, a little of the love and enthusiasm of Linné need not interfere with the worth of scientific work.

With the love for nature developed more, and, perhaps with the scientific attitude developed somewhat less, we have the naturalists, men like Gilbert White, Thoreau, Burroughs and Muir. These are the men who with loving and appreciative eyes observe what is near at hand. Their value lies in that they see clearly, accurately and with a true sympathy, and in that they let us share in their joy over nature, Reading their writings is like walking through the fields and woods. It opens our eyes and ears, it opens our hearts and souls, and makes us feel with David Starr Jordan: "Nowhere is the sky so blue, the grass so green, the sunshine so bright, the shade so welcome, as right here, now, to-day." Welcome indeed are the words and example of every observer who can help us see and enjoy for ourselves our own sky and grass and sunshine. Linné does this, and therefore is to be placed with the naturalists.

With the emotional, imaginative side of the love for nature still more developed, but with the same close observation and appreciation of