330 THROUGH THE FIELDS WITH LINNAEUS 



the sensibility to perceive them.' Perhaps it is the 

 English lack of ready sympathy that causes what struck 

 Dr. Arnold so strongly in travelling abroad i the total 

 isolation of England from the European world.' Hence 

 one writer has found this only to record of Linneeus in 

 England : ' Of his observations nothing is preserved 

 but the tradition of his rapture at the golden bloom 

 of the furze on Putney Heath.' Did he think the 

 gorse at Putney like glorified juniper buds of his own 

 Sm&land commons ? They should have told him of 

 the old saying that ' when gorse is out of season 

 kissing is out of fashion,' and that is never. Though 

 the golden flood of the Maybloom is brightest and 

 sweetest, there are nearly always some blossoms to be 

 seen upon the gorse. Linnseus was always an admirer 

 of the furze, and vainly tried to preserve it through a 

 Swedish winter in his greenhouse. The most likely 

 explanation of his extreme emotion lies in the fact of a 

 great resemblance of Putney Heath to some parts of 

 his native country ; not SmSland itself, but some of the 

 Upland scenery near Upsala. The numerous wind-tost 

 birches and the heather-clad waves of common-land 

 cause a great similarity of landscape. 



After his being so long used to the flat fens and 

 sluggish airs of Holland the fresh perfumed breeze 

 playing direct from the Surrey hills would in any case 

 have caused an intoxication of rapture and more excite- 

 ment than the sight of the gorse itself. 



