26 FIELD AND HEDGEROW. 



expedition, and it contains nothing about botany. It 

 tells you about the canoes, and the hard cheese, and 

 the Laplander's warehouse on top of a pole, like a 

 pigeon-house ; and the innocent way in which the 

 maiden helped the traveller in his bath, and how the 

 aged men ran so fast that the devil could not catch 

 them ; and, best of all, because it gives a smack in the 

 face to modern pseudo-scientific medical cant about 

 h>'giene, showing how the Laplanders break every ' law,' 

 human and 'divine,' ventilation, bath, and diet — all the 

 trash — and therefore enjoy the most excellent health, 

 and live to a great old age. Still I have not succeeded 

 in describing the immense labour there was in learning 

 to distinguish plants on the Linna^^an system. Then 

 comes in order of time the natural system, the geo- 

 graphical distribution ; then there is the geological 

 relationship, so to say, to Pliocene plants, natural 

 selection and evolution. Of that let us say nothing ; let 

 sleeping dogs lie, and evolution is a very weary dog. 

 Most charming, however, will be found the later studies 

 of naturalists on the interdependence of flowers and 

 insects ; there is another work the dandelion has got to 

 do — endless, endless botany ! Where did the plants 

 come from at first ? Did they come creeping up out of 

 the sea at the edge of the estuaries, and gradually run 

 their roots into the ground, and so make green the earth ? 

 Did Man come out of the sea, as the Greeks thought ? 

 There are so many ideas in plants. Flora, with a full 

 lap, scattering knowledge and flowers together ; every- 

 thing good and sweet seems to come out of flowers, up 

 to the very highest thoughts of the soul, and we carry 

 them daily to the very threshold of the other world- 

 Next you may try the microscope and its literature, and 

 find the crj-stals in the rhubarb. 



