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NOTES FROM THE LOG-BOOK OF AN ERRATIC MAN. 



The series of papers of which the present one is the commencement are offered 

 to the readers of the Florist with a hope that they may serve to beguile a 

 leisure moment, when they shall be seated in their arbours, after the swallow 

 has returned to us from over the sea. It must be understood that some of 

 the number wull bear no more relation to horticulture than a fish-hook does 

 to an anchor. After this statement, if they are objected to, the Superin- 

 tendent has but to consign the remainder to the fire. 



No. I. 

 THE SCARLET GERANIUM AT SEA. 



In the year 1825 I sailed for America in a ship conveying emi- 

 grants to Canada, all of them humble people from a rural district, to 

 whom the inside of a ship or the waves of the sea were as strange 

 objects as a sight of the man in the moon would have been, or a slice 

 of the green cheese of which, according to nursery traditions, it is 

 composed. Fine hearty sturdy country people they were, as rich in 

 children as they were poor in pocket. Most of them had connexions 

 in the land they were going to ; but beyond a belief that there were 

 no taxes in America, and consequently there could be no want, their 

 ideas on the subject of emigration were vague enough. 



It was an amusing sight to an unreflecting young fellow, as 1 

 then was, to see their bits of furniture brought on board, — the old 

 carved chests containing their wardrobes, their various cooking uten- 

 sils, and the little things with which they could not part, because 

 " they had had them so long." Amongst these were various birds, 

 a cat or two, and a dog ; one little girl had a tield-mouse in a cage ; 

 and a nice matronly woman had a Scarlet Geranium. 



Now my mother had been fond of Geraniums, and she had often 

 permitted me when a child to water them as they stood near a spot 



