[1] "The lark that tirra-lirra chaunts."
Shakspear's Winter's Tale.
[2] So I understand the original, which is Lapis marmoreus polyzonos.
[3] Tournefort by this definition probably meant to compare the shape of the leaves, with the ears of some animal. In the criticism of Linnæus respecting the natural affinity of this plant, we may observe how his own system, professedly artificial, and yet so affectedly despised by some botanists for not being natural, led him to the real truth. In fact, some truth is to be learnt from every system and every theory, but perfection is not to be expected from any one.
May 13.
Here the Yew (Taxus baccata) grows wild. The inhabitants call it Id or Idegran.
The forest abounded with the Yellow Anemone (Anemone ranunculoides), which many people consider as differing from that genus. One would suppose they had never seen an Anemone at all. Here also grew Hepatica (Anemone Hepatica) and Wood Sorrel (Oxalis Acetosella). Their blossoms were all closed. Who has endowed plants
with intelligence, to shut themselves up at the approach of rain? Even when the weather changes in a moment from sunshine to rain, though before expanded, they immediately close. Here for the first time this season I heard the Cuckoo, a welcome harbinger of summer.
Having often been told of the cataract of Elf-Carleby, I thought it worth while to go a little out of my way to see it; especially as I could hear it from the road, and saw the vapour of its foam, rising like the smoke of a chimney. On arriving at the spot, I perceived the river to be divided into three channels by a huge rock, placed by the hand of Nature in the middle of its course. The water, in the nearest of these channels, falls from a height of twelve or fifteen ells, so that its white foam and spray are thrown as high as two ells into the air, and the whole at a distance appears like a continual smoke. On this branch of the cascade stands a saw-mill. The man employed in it had a pallid countenance, but he did not
complain of his situation so much as I should have expected.