202 THROUGH THE FIELDS WITH LINNAEUS 



by the sunlight's flaming belt ; all fading off to paler, 

 tenderer tints towards home. 1 



At Roshult Linnasus notes the Garduus lanceolatus, 

 one of the three sorts of thistle perennial in Upland and 

 Bohuslan. 



Soon the pretty white church of Mellerud with the 

 step gables came in sight, and from the higher slopes of 

 the rising ground Liiina3us, and we, looked over the 

 long blue line of hills by the Venern's melancholy 

 shore, with nearer ranges of grey craggy rock, broken 

 by magnificent tall pines. The cottages hereabout are 

 not often red but weather-grey ; the land is clothed with 

 heather, called in Norwegian lyng 2 and the marshes full 

 of wild-duck. 



The chains of purple hills formed of shale are very 

 bleak and rugged on the Norwegian side, except where 

 rounded by former glacier action. The rivers are fiords 

 rather than streams ; the people of these fells and dales 

 are few and poor, and there is little cultivated land. 



On with daylight across the Kopmannefjall, a ridge 

 t)f mountains four Swedish miles broad and twelve Swe- 

 dish miles long, on the Norwegian frontier. Linnseus 

 crossed the bridge over the Kopmann, keeping the side 

 of the Westgotha Dal (and Wermland Dal) by Torparne 



O 



to AmSl, a small town near the Venern, in the heart 

 of the longest, dreariest, and most monotonous line 

 of travel in all Sweden ; the only town, however, he 

 says, in the whole Dal. He arrived here on July 26, 

 1 England in the south-west. 2 Ljung in Swedish. 



