26 FIELD AND HEDGEROW, 
expedition, and it contains nothing about botany. It 
tells you about the canoes, and the hard cheese, and 
the Laplander’s warehouse on top of a pole, like a 
pigeon-house; and the innocent way in which the 
maiden helped the traveller in his bath, and how the 
aged men ran so fast that the devil could not catch 
them ; and, best of all, because it gives a smack in the 
face to modern pseudo-scientific medical cant about 
hygiene, showing how the Laplanders break every ‘ law,’ 
human and ‘divine,’ ventilation, bath, and dict—all the 
trash—and therefore enjoy the most excellent health, 
_and live to a great old age. Still I have not succeeded ° 
in describing the immense labour there was in learning 
to distinguish plants on the Linnzan system. Then 
comes in order of time the natural system, the geo- 
graphical distribution; then there is the geological 
relationship, so to say, to Pliocene plants, natural 
selection and evolution. Of that let us say nothing; let 
sleeping dogs lie, and evolution is a very weary dog. 
Most charming, however, will be found the later studies 
of naturalists on the interdependence of flowers and 
insects; there is another work the dandelion has got to 
do—endless, endless botany! Where did the plants 
come from at first? Did they come creeping up out of 
the sea at the edge of the estuaries, and gradually run 
their roots into the ground, and so make green the earth? 
Did Man come out of the sea, as the Greeks thought? 
There are so many ideas in plants. Flora, with a full 
lap, scattering knowledge and flowers together ; every- 
thing good and sweet seems to come out of flowers, up 
to the very highest thoughts of the soul, and we carry 
them daily to the very threshold of the other world. 
Next you may try the microscope and its literature, and 
find the crystals in the rhubarb. 
