TKAVIXLING WITHOUT MOVING. 55 



which are believed to be discovered every day, each has its 

 fixed and infrangible limits; during the last twenty years, 

 forty leagues, perhaps, have been sown with the seeds of 

 dahlias, without one blue one ever being produced, although 

 violet ones are common enough. I will not venture to say 

 what has been done to procure a blue rose. The rose has the 

 advantage of the poppy, there being many beautiful yellow 

 roses. 



One poppy stem produces more than thirty thousand 

 seeds; they are always contained in the red, the white, and 

 the violet. Many gardeners talk of green roses, produced by 

 grafting the rose upon the hoUy; and of black roses made 

 by grafting upon the black cun-ant : these are nothing but 

 absurd tales ; there are no black flowers, and very few green 

 ones, particularly of a bright green : I know scarcely any of 

 them that are really pretty, except the daphne-laurel, which 

 grows in the woods, and bears charming green odoriferous 

 flowers, the centre of which is occupied by stamens of a fine 

 orange-yellow; it blossoms in the month of February; the 

 berries of it, when ripe, are a deep purplish-black. 



Now, here is a delightful journey I am taking, my friend, 

 without changing my place. When you ai-e in a boat, it 

 seems that the boat is motionless, and that the two banks 

 fly on each side of you, unrolling, as it were, a panorama of 

 their shores, their poplars, their willows, and the various 

 flowers and the houses which border them; this is a thing 

 that has been remarked a hundred times; but people are so 

 determined to see only that which they have read, that 

 I have never seen it set down anywhere that if the banks of 

 the river appear to pass in a contetry direction to that of the 

 boat, this iUusion only extends to a certain distance, and that 

 if there are, nearer to the horizon, other trees and other 

 buildings, the latter seem, on the contrary, to take the direc- 

 tion of the boat, and that these two lines of trees and houses 

 cross with a simultaneous passage in opposite directions. 



It appears to me that I am the sport ot an illusion similar 

 to that which we experience in a boat, when I see the flowers 

 appear, each in its turn, around me; I almost fancy I am 

 travelling; it would appear, in fact, that I changed my place* 

 as often as I see the decorations, the actors, and the scene 



