Linnaeus, the student, at home

When he returned from his expedition to Lappland Linnaeus moved to a room that soon came to look like a natural history museum. One of his friends, Johan Browallius, has described it:

”My dear Reader, you should have seen his museum, which was kept open for his audience and, highly entertained and full of admiration, you would have loved the host. The ceiling was decorated with booty taken from birds, on one wall was the Saami costume, on the other the larger plants and a collection of shells. The two remaining walls were splendidly decorated with books on medicine and natural history and with scientific instruments and rock specimens.

In the corners of the room were great branches of trees, on which he had taught tamed birds of nearly 30 species to perch. The window-sills, finally, were occupied by large clay pots filled with soil to nourish rare plants. Moreover you could with great pleasure behold a so-called Herbarium (collection of dried plants) collected in Sweden, containing more than 3000 species of plants, growing in the wild and in gardens. Add to that the exceedingly rare Lappland flora, no less than 1000 species of Sweden's insects and finally nearly the same number of rock specimens from Sweden contained in small compartments and in the most exquisite order which may be learnt from Linnaei own, totally new system of arranging rocks, founded on his own experience.”