58 THROUGH THE FIELDS WITH LINN&US 



or not much, forthcoming. He ate his goat's-milk 

 cheese it was his breakfast and his flat round rye 

 biscuit, as large as our largest-sized dinner-plates, that 

 he had slung round his shoulders by a string threaded 

 through the hole in the centre. This is the Swedish 

 bread of everyday life. He ate and felt better. His 

 hand formed a cup at any stream. No, he was not 

 lonely, his old friends were about him. The undulating 

 ground here is still lined with whortleberry plants and 

 polypodiums. One tasselled spruce above a rock reflected 

 itself in the lake mirror ; boulders were standing up in 

 the shallow water ; the lake was still surrounded by fir 

 woods. Sm&land does not level into Sk&ne all at once 

 in a hard sharp line : it melts away, blending two forms 

 of beauty. The graceful white-flowered bird cherry, 1 

 as they translate the Swedish hagg, a favourite tree of 

 LinnaBus, and the aspen are still very common. 



A lake with boats upon it, all setting southward, in- 

 vited Carl to step into one of the fishing-craft and work 

 his passage for about half a Swedish mile. The swallows 

 flew dipping and curving by the low banks on the 

 eastern shore. As they rowed away from these rocky 

 slopes towards the west the signs of prosperity came 

 thicker on ; more linen webs were spread out to bleach, 

 and boulders were cropping out among the corn what 

 was a sign of poverty to them was to him a token of 

 wealth : he was more used to seeing the stones crop out of 

 the whortleberry masses. Carl bought caraway biscuits 

 1 Prunus padus. 



