WASTGOTA RESA ROUND LAKE VENERN 183 



Falkoping, and Legz Magnus Tengemark, who had 

 travelled with him three days, took their leave. 



He had a rather dismal day's travelling in the wet, 

 without his admiring and talkative companions, across 

 the dreary moors clothed with sphagnum moss known 

 as the 'famine lands.' Can nothing be done for these 

 wastes ? thinks Linnaeus, journeying along, with divers 

 projects, which have each to be dismissed in turn as 

 impracticable. The cosmopolitan modern mind declines 

 to entertain the subject, preferring to destroy the forests 

 in North America. Yet it would be fine work to rescue 

 the Svaltor from their stigma. Science has not yet 

 achieved its highest end that of turning bad land into 

 good. It shrinks from ' this task of turning a savage 

 immensity into arability, utility, and readiness for be- 

 coming human/ 



On July 3 he is cheered up a bit : he had an excel- 

 lent cup of tea Kopp Thee, as the Swedes call it 

 almost the first word of the language the Englishman 

 understands. Dried green tea -flowers l had been 

 brought from China to give the tea a good flavour. 

 Linnaeus analysed the flowers, and enjoyed a chat with 

 a Mr. Blackwell, an English writer on ceconomics. He 

 went on to Flabarg, where the ground rises to 740 

 feet above the sea-level. He went slowly over this 

 part of the road, partly because it was difficult travel- 

 ling, and partly because he was considering and examin- 

 ing it so carefully. He did not arrive at Borgstena till 

 1 Thea riridis, Linn. 



