124 The Life and Writings of 



your skin with pimples and sores. Spiders, gallineps, horse-flies, 

 and other obnoxious insects, will often beset you, or sorely hurt 

 you. Hateful snakes are met, and if poisonous are very dangerous ; 

 some do not warn you off like the Rattle-snakes. You meet rough 

 or muddy roads to vex you, and blind paths to perplex you, rocks, 

 mountains, and steep ascents. You may often lose your way, and 

 must always have a compass with you as I had. You may be 

 lamed in climbing rocks for plants, or break your limbs by a fall. 

 You must cross and wade through brooks, creeks, rivers and swamps. 

 In deep fords or in swift streams you may lose your footing and 

 be drowned. You may be overtaken by a storm ; the trees fall 

 around you, the thunder roars and strikes before you. The winds 

 may annoy you; the fire of heaven or of men sets fire to the grass 

 or the forest, and you may be surrounded by it unless you fly for 

 your life.&quot;* 



But the true botanist and the student and lover of 

 Nature has the ascendancy in the end ; that Rafinesque 

 felt this, and that he had often realized it is very clear 

 from his description of the counterpart of the toils and 

 dangers just enumerated. Says he :f 



&quot;The pleasures of a botanical exploration fully compensate 

 for these miseries and dangers; else no one would be a travelling 

 botanist, nor spend his time and money in vain. Many fair days 

 and fair roads are met with, a clear sky or a bracing breeze inspires 

 delight and ease, you breathe the pure air of the country, every 

 rill and brook offers a draught of limpid fluid. What delight to 

 meet with a spring, after a thirsty walk, or a bowl of cool milk out 



*New Flora of North America, Part I, Introduction, p. n, et seq. 

 t Ibidem, p. 14, et seq. Quoted from Gray in American Journal of Science, 

 Vol. XL, 1841, pp. 223, 224. 



