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4 



49 



medium of a foreign language, may be justly offered as an excuse 

 for some inaccuracies ; while an useful warning may be derived from 

 them, as to the caution with which we should, ourselves, in distant 

 countries, form our judgements. 



In the present instance, the mistakes to which we allude are of 

 so trifling a kind, and are so amusing, that we only vvish our En- 

 glish travellers always erred in an equally charitable and cheerful 

 manner. 



After a passage of twenty-four hours across the Channel, we 

 landed at Harwich on the 26th day of August, Here we had an 

 immediate opportunity of experiencing the vexatious interpretation 

 of a regulation which, under Napoleon's government, would have 

 been cried out against by the English as an invention of military de- 

 spotism; but which in this land of liberty, as it is called, has subsisted 

 for these hundred years. This law lays a tax of several pence on 

 I every pound-weight of books imported into the kingdom. Now we 

 had with us on board the packet half a dozen folios, for the purpose 

 f of drying within their pages the plants which we should collect on 

 our journey; and although these were only old works oh Law and 

 Divinity, which were useless except as paper for specimens, we were 

 required nevertheless to pay a tax amounting to thirty florins ; and 

 this merely because they were in the form of books. Much playful 

 argument and some serious remonstrance were employed on this 

 occasion ; and we at length prevailed on the ignorant officer, who 

 could not even read the titles of these works, to allow them to re-. 

 main in his hands, (where they would probably be useless except to 

 curl his old red wig withal,) by means of which arrangement we 

 escaped the heavy impost, but were compelled to take our plants, 

 one by one, out of these folios, and to purchase, at a high price, fresh 

 paper in Ipswich ; thus losing both time and money by the bad 

 interpretation of a worse law. May this our unlucky experience 

 serve as a warning for such botanists as shall hereafter travel in 

 England, not to dry the plants which they may collect on their 

 journey in old books with brass clasps. 



We passed up the river Orwell with 



the 



E 



