, one of the scientific travellers, employed by the late empress of
, one of the scientific travellers,
employed by the late empress of Russia to explore her
vast dominions, was born in Westrogothia, a province in
Sweden, about 1727. He studied medicine in the university of Upsal, and went through a course of botany under
the celebrated Linnæus, to whose son he was, tutor. He
publicly defended the dissertation (in the Linnaei “Amcenitates Academics
”) which that famous botanist had composed on a new species of plants, which he called astromeTi'a. In 1760, he was so deeply affected with depression
of spirits, that Linnæus, in order to amuse his mind, sent
him to travel over the island of Gothland, to make a collection of the plants it produces, and the various kinds of
corals and corallines which the sea leaves on its shores;
but this journey was attended with no diminution of his
distemper, which found a continual supply of aliment in a
sanguine melancholy temperament, in a too sedentary way
of life, and in the bad state of his finances.