A Thousand-Mile Walk 
of Burns’s poems, Milton’s Paradise Lost, and 
a small New Testament, he waited for me, 
handed back my bag, and returned down the 
hill, saying that he had forgotten something. 
I found splendid growths of shining-leaved 
Ericacee [heathworts] for which the Alleghany 
Mountains are noted. Also ferns of which Os- 
munda cinnamomea [Cinnamon Fern] is the 
largest and perhaps the most abundant. Os- 
munda regalis [Flowering Fern] is also common 
here, but not large. In Wood’s* and Gray’s 
Botany Osmunda cinnamomea is said to be a 
much larger fern than Osmunda Claytoniana, 
This I found to be true in Tennessee and 
southward, but in Indiana, part of Illinois, and 
Wisconsin the opposite is true. Found here 
the beautiful, sensitive Schrankia, or sensitive 
brier. It is a long, prickly, leguminous vine, 
with dense heads of small, yellow fragrant 
flowers. 
1 Alphonso Wood, Class-book of Botany, with a Flora of 
the United States and Canada. The copy of this work, carried 
by Mr. Muir on his wanderings, is still extant. The edition 
is that of 1862. 
[18 ] 
