INTRODUCTORY. 7 



way did not seem long to the little halting-place of 

 Briinneli. The fields and orchards past, the more dis- 

 tinctly pasture and park-like lands began to abound with 

 flowers. Sweet Orchises and a blue Phyteuma or Ram- 

 pion, with a multitude of others, mixed with the tall 

 grass, and the yellow Foxglove showed itself here and 

 there. In respect of the Foxglove, England exceeds 

 Switzerland ; for the purple Digitalis, one of our hand- 

 somest British plants, is not properly wild there. This 

 yellow kind is, of course, a novelty ; but it is large to 

 dry, and not pretty. Much the same may be said of 

 the blue and the yellowish Monkshood, Aconitum, The 

 Trollius, the old Globe Ranunculus, does not dry much 

 better, but it is a pretty flower. We gathered all of 

 these, and, as the sun was beginning to grow hot, we wel- 

 comed the shade of the tall pine wood, whose mossy 

 banks contained new treasures. Among them was the 

 curious but not pleasing blossom of Paris quadrifolia. 

 Herb Paris, or True-love, rising from its four Greek-cross- 

 like leaves, and the pretty Pyrola rotundifolia, the round- 

 leaved Winter-Green, not very common in England; the 

 still rarer one-flowered Pyrola, with its single squarish 

 flower instead of the chime of bells possessed by many of 

 the species, and which gives them, when in bud, rather the 

 look of the Lily of the Valley. Not far off was the two- 

 flowered Violet, its shape making it impossible to mistake 



