MOXOECIA. / 



the poles, and it is also employed to make common 

 chair bottoms. 



Of its use and importance in Lapland, Linnneus 

 has given a very interesting account, of which this is 

 Mr. Curtis's translation. 



" Thou wilt wonder, perhaps, carious reader, in 

 what manner human beings are capable of preserving 

 life during an immense severity of a winter's frost 

 in Lapland, a part of the world deserted on the ap- 

 proach of winter by almost every kind of bird and 

 beast. 



" The inhabitants of this inhospitable climate are 

 obliged to wander with their Rein- deer flocks con- 

 tinually in the woods, not only in the day time, but 

 through the longest winter nights ; their cattle are 

 never housed, nor do they eat any other food than 

 liver- wort 3 s hence the herdsmen, to secure them 

 from wild beasts, and other accidents, are of necessity 

 kept perpetually with them. The darkness of their 

 nights is, in a degree, overcome and rendered more 

 tolerable by the light of the stars reflected from the 

 snow, and the Aurora-borealis, which in a thousand 

 fantastic forms nightly illumines their hemisphere. 

 The cold is intense, sufficient to frighten and drive 

 us foreigners from their happy woods. No part of 

 our bodies is so liable to be destroyed by cold as the 

 extremities, which are situated farthest from the heart; 

 the chilblains of the hands and feet, so frequent with 



-■» This liver-wort is the Rein-Deer Lichen, Class XXIV. 



