272 
THROUGH NORWAY WITH THE VESEY CLUB. 
Dec., 1890. 
schistose, boggy slopes the most extraordinary assemblage of 
alpine, boreal, and arctic plants lies scattered. Our day here 
will live in our memories when many other things have long 
faded away. In the Driva valley, and close to its ice-cold 
glacier waters, we found the so-called “Iceland poppy”— 
Papaver nudicaule, at home—and with it Artemisia norvegica , 
the proprietor of as strange a geographical distribution as 
plant could desire to have. On the shoulders of Knutshoe 
one of our first finds was the densely-tufted Diapensia 
lapponica , followed shortly after by that minutest of 
buttercups, Ranunculus pygmceus, I suppose our guides were 
used to that sort of thing, but the sight of four full-grown 
botanists (Mr. Stone, Dr. Fraser, Dr. Wilson, and myself) on 
hands and knees, in the driving rain and sleet, grubbing up a 
plant which a few good-sized rain-drops could have hidden 
from view, was calculated to disturb their faith in our 
complete sanity. After the excitement of our finds, a lunch 
on the open mountain-side, fully exposed to all the elements, 
with sloppy sandwiches and limp biscuits for our fare, caused 
no special comment. We worked our way up to the snow, 
administering occasional vivifying doses of brandy neat, 
trusting to its quite sufficient dilution by the water which was 
doing its best to enter our bodies from the exterior, and 
picking up from time to time some new treasure; but 
with these I propose to deal in a subsequent and special 
article. 
Two sheet anchors we acquired in this expedition. One, 
a belief in the sufficiency of Knutshoe for an entire summer’s 
holiday to itself; and the other a complete faith in the 
trustworthiness of the Norwegian horse for riding purposes. 
We shall not easily forget the last, and supreme, fragment of 
our descent of Knutshoe, when, our horses and ourselves 
alike fagged by a long day’s work, we came to a piece of rough 
slope, steeper than the roof of many a house. Once on the 
slope, it seemed safer to keep on than to try to get off, yet one 
by one we tumbled off out ef sheer desperation, and 
floundered down on foot. Arrived safely at the bottom, 
Dr. W. and I, who were behind, compared notes. My saddle 
had slipped forward about five inches, but his so far that it 
only a little overlapped its own saddle-mark ! Yet the horses 
had faced it all cheerfully enough. I verily believe that a 
Norwegian pony could climb the wall of a Norwegian house, 
provided only that the weather-boarding were upside down. 
While we were up Knutshoe the bulk of our party had 
faced the weather and gone up the mountains in search of a 
Lapp encampment, a herd of a hundred or so of the reindeer 
