Introduction 



west of Pecatonica. ... To me all plants are 

 more precious than before. My poor eye is not 

 better, nor worse. A cloud is over it, but in 

 gazing over the widest landscapes, I am not 

 always sensible of its presence." 



By the end of August Mr. Muir was back 

 again in Indianapolis. He had found it con- 

 venient to spend a "botanical week'' among 

 his University friends in Madison. So keen 

 was his interest in plants at this time that an 

 interval of five hours spent in Chicago was 

 promptly turned to account in a search for 

 them. "I did not find many plants in her tu- 

 multuous streets," he complains; "only a few 

 grassy plants of wheat, and two or three species 

 of weeds, — amaranth, purslane, carpet-weed, 

 etc., — the weeds, I suppose, for man to walk 

 upon, the wheat to feed him. I saw some 

 green algae, but no mosses. Some of the latter 

 I expected to see on wet walls, and in seams on 

 the pavements. But I suppose that the manu- 

 facturers' smoke and the terrible noise are too 

 great for the hardiest of them. I wish I knew 

 [ ziii ] 



