Tormentil (Tormentilla officinalis) here always grows in boggy ground, which is remarkable. Its root is chewed along with the inner bark of the Alder, and the saliva thus impregnated is applied to leather, to dye it of a red colour. Thus their harness, reins, girdles, gloves, &c. are tanned.
The extensive pine forests here grow to no use. As nobody wants timber, the trees fall and rot upon the ground. I suggested the advantage of extracting pitch and tar from them, but was answered by the judge of the district that, from the remoteness of
the situation, what could be obtained from them would not pay for the trouble. But as no place in the whole Swedish territories can afford so much, and it might easily in winter be conveyed twenty miles, surely it deserves attention.
In a grassy spot near the river I found a rare species of Ranunculus, with a three-leaved calyx and a little yellow upright flower, which appears to be nondescript. I met with it but twice or thrice in this neighbourhood and no where else. (This is R. lapponicus Fl. Lapp. n. 231. t. 3. f. 4.)
In the marshes I remarked that what I had previously found on the hills, and taken for a kind of white Byssus, had here possessed itself of the tops of the Bog-moss (Sphagnum), and bore flesh-coloured shields, so that an inexperienced observer might easily be so far deceived by it as to think those shields the fructification of the Sphagnum. (Lichen ericetorum. See Fl. Lapp. n. 455.)
It is remarkable that the Juniper here
always grows in watery places. The berries are scantily produced, nor are the people of the country at all acquainted with the method of making a spiritous liquor from them, as in other places.
I showed them how to make a kind of brandy of the young tops of the fir, as a little improvement upon their usual watery beverage[35], but they thought the scheme impracticable; nor could they conceive it possible to obtain any thing drinkable from the sap of the birch. They seemed determined to keep entirely to water.
I could not observe that the nights were at all less light than the days, except when the sun was clouded.
The poor Laplanders find the church festivals, or days of public thanksgiving, in the spring of the year, very burthensome and oppressive, as they are in general obliged to pass the river at the hazard of their lives. The water at that season is