35^ Prof. Schultes on the 



which were useless except as paper for specimens, we were 

 required nevertheless to pay a tax amounting to thirty tlorins; 

 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 remain in his hands, (where they 

 would probably be useless except to curl his old red v'ig 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 inter-' 

 pretation of a worse law. May this our unlucky experience 

 serve as a warning for such botanists as shall hereafter travel 

 in England, not to drj' the plants which they may collect on 

 their journey in old books with brass clasps. 



We passed up the river Orwell with the tide, to the little 

 dull town of Ipswich ; admiring in our way the beautiful banks 

 which skirted this stream, and which seemed to form one 

 grand park. What particularly struck us here was the deep 

 full verdure of the meadows, and the almost black green of 

 the trees, shrubs and plants, which grew in the hedges. We 

 have frequently heard censures passed, and even made them 

 ourselves, on the intense colours of the figures of plants in the 

 Flora Londincnsis, and English Botany; but we now plainly 

 perceived that our complaint was unfounded, the prevailing 

 hue of the vegetation being even of a deeper tone than it is 

 represented in those plates. Except Ulex europcciis. Genista 

 miglica, and a species of Ricbi/s, (which, though called by all 

 the botanists of this country R.J'ruticosus, is not the plant which 

 bears that name on the continent, of which the corollas are al- 

 ways pale red,) we observed nothing in the Flora of the road- 

 sides which struck us as being different from that of Germany. 



On the 27tb, about noon, we proceeded in the mail-coach 

 from Ipswich to Norwich, wheie, by a fortunate circumstance, 

 we accomplished the object of our journey thither. Sir James 

 E. Smith, to whom we made this pilgrimage, had just returned 

 home from the country, and was on the point of again visiting 

 his friends when we called on him at his beautiful house. Our 

 joy was great at finding this most respectable man so far re- 

 covered from the severe illness which had threatened his life, 

 as to be again enabled to devote his leisure hours to the mria- 

 bilis scientia. He was then employed in revising some jirinted 

 sheets of the third edition of his Introduction to the Study of 

 Botany. Sir J. E. Smith displayed to us the treasures of his 

 collection, (in reality the only one of its kind.) with a courtesy 



and 



