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 
[ xiii ] 
