Three Programmatic Speeches

In the three years that followed his return to Sweden, Linnaeus indicated how he saw the direction of his future work. As the first and, by then, retiring president of the Academy of Sciences, he addressed an audience in the House of the Nobility’s Auditorio Illustri on the subject of “Curious Features of Insects” on 3 October 1739. His theme was set in the quotation from Job 12:7: “But ask now the beasts, and they shall teach thee; and the fowls of the air, and they shall tell thee.” The speech was, of course, about entomology and the usefulness of