Linnaeus admits that he deserved some blame for not wanting to forward letters to his closest friend. Linnaeus will send them one after the other, and if Abraham Bäck wants to show some to Carl Hårleman or Anders Johan von Höpken, it is all right. However, Bäck should not show them to Linnaeus’s enemies; Bäck knows who they are. There is quite a lot of new and useful information there.
Bäck often praises Linnaeus, who feels like a tired horse who does not feel like obeying the whip.
Dodecatheon grows nicely in the garden, but there is only one plant.
Linnaeus wonders what he should do in Stockholm. Most of his friends are gone or changed, only Bäck remains, with whom Linnaeus could talk for some hours, but Bäck is busy with his practice. Going there just to see that the world has changed is not enough, for Linnaeus knows that already. Linnaeus is satisfied to know that the King [Adolf Fredrik had succeeded his predecessor Fredrik I, who had died a month earlier], is well and the country is at peace.
Gummi Arabicum, which is sold in pharmacies here in large quantities, is not the true one. People can eat the real one and stay alive with only that for food for months in countries where it is native. Linnaeus has got a plant from seeds sent by Michel Adanson in Senegal. He calls it Mimosa aculeata floribus polyandris spicatis.
Linnaeus is making a series of observations of a plant that daily sinks to the bottom of a lake or rises in the water just like a barometer, and this all by itself.