250 THROUGH THE FIELDS WITH LINNAEUS 



It is needless to repeat the account of his passage 

 through Upland and Westmanland, although his diary 

 teems with fresh observations ; one would fancy the 

 country was as new to him as on his first journey. He 

 leaves home some three weeks earlier than in his pre- 

 vious tours, and the less advanced state of the vegetation 

 leaves him time to descant on the numerous fires lit on 

 Walpurgis Eve (the last day of April) in the country 

 round Westerns, which he considers relics of the Flora- 

 lia of the ancients, of which we have also a trace in 

 the famous Flora Day 1 of Helston, Cornwall. 



He passed, as before, by Koping, Arboga, and 

 Orebro. It seems to have been an unusually mild 

 spring and early summer ; as he passed southward a full 

 vegetation welcomed him. He notes hearing the cuckoo 

 for the first time on May 3, in Nerike, and records his 

 meeting with oil-beetles. 2 



He varies his route down through East Gothland 

 as much as may be, taking in many new and insignifi- 

 cant places, which he with his tutored eyes always 

 finds full of interest. He speaks of the Swedes using 

 the abundant young green nettles in place of cabbage, 

 but he is not enthusiastic about their merits for the 



not even in the translation of Stoever's biography, though the 

 journal of the tour was twice translated from the original Swedish 

 into German. Klein's translation is less known, though better, than 

 Schreber's, but Schreber's has plates of plants, methods of training 

 trees, &c. l May 8. 



2 An insect of the genus Meloe, from the joints of the legs of 

 which exudes an oily yellowish liquor, used in rheumatic com- 

 plaints. BAIRD. 



