and fishing-places, where nothing is to be caught, unless by those who come unexpectedly. Their discourse moreover ran on that useful sort of witchcraft by which a thief is put to his wit's end and detected. The origin of these fables may partly be traced in history, and the rest is to be attributed to invention.
The fishes of this neighbourhood are the Crusian (Cyprinus Carassius), the Miller's Thumb (Cottus Gobio), the Bream (Cyprinus Brama), the Asp (Cyprinus Aspius) called in this part of Lapland Kuroupek, the Stäm (Cyprinus Grislagine), the Three-spined Stickleback (Gasterosteus aculeatus), the Laxäkel, a species of Trout (can this be the small or young Salmon, mentioned in Fauna Suecica n. 345?), the Rud (Cyprinus erythrophthalmus), and the Holken (what this last is I know not).
In the island of Longoen, three miles from Old Pithoea, I was lucky enough to find, growing under a Spruce Fir, the Coral-rooted Orchis (Ophrys corallorrhiza, Engl. Bot. t. 1547.) in full bloom, which had
never fallen in my way before. It is a very rare plant, and grows so sparingly, that, after finding one specimen, there is little hope of soon meeting with another[49].
The root is throughout of the thickness of a very small quill, white, smooth, fleshy,
almost horizontal, branched and subdivided like a coral; the branches obtuse, and very slightly compressed, destitute of capillary fibres. Stem erect, simple, smooth, six inches high. Leaves none, except three sheaths, each longer and narrower than that below it, which reaches above its base, and all cylindrical, of a pale flesh-colour. Flowers generally about eight or ten, spreading in three rows, occupying an inch and half of the upper part of the stem; all equidistant, sessile, each with an acute scale at its base, cloven with an obtuse sinus. Germen oblong, striated, curved slightly outwards, but at length becoming erect and rugged. Calyx of three oblong, narrow, acute, purple-tipped, concave, equal leaves, longer than the petals, one of them being superior, the others inferior. Petals three: two of them ovate, adhering by their edges, constituting an upper lip; their summits reddish: the lowermost a flat, reflexed, obtuse, white lip, sprinkled with purplish dots near its base.
[48] See his Historia Plantarum, v. 1. 655, which Linnæus here correctly quotes from memory.
[49] In the Flora Lapponica this plant is said to be very frequent in Lapland. In other countries it is usually reckoned extremely rare; but I was favoured by Mr. Edward John Maughan, a young botanist of Edinburgh, in the summer of 1807, with a copious supply of specimens and living roots, gathered amongst willows in a peat bog, a little to the south of Dalmahoy hill, about nine miles from Edinburgh. Some of the roots blossomed in my garden.