Lachesis Lapponica; Or, A Tour in Lapland, Volume 1Linné, Carl von
History
Lachesis Lapponica; Or, A Tour in Lapland, Volume 1
Linné, Carl von
Lapland -- Description and travel; Natural history -- Lapland
He showed me the skins of blue and black Foxes, and also of the variety
called _Korssraf_, Cross Fox (_Canis Vulpes β Faun. Suec._), which is of
a yellow colour except the shoulders and hind quarters, and they are of
a greyish black. He told me he had lately sent the king a live _Jarf_
(_Mustela Gulo_), and that he had once had another of that species so
much domesticated, that when he would have turned it into the water, at
the first cutting of the ice, it would not leave him, nor would it feed
on any kind of fish alive.
In the garden the Governor showed me the garden orache, sallad, and red
cabbage, which last thrives very well, though the white will not come to
perfection here; also garden cresses, winter cresses (_Erysimum Barbarea
β Fl. Suec._), scurvy-grass, chamomile, spinach, onions, leeks, chives,
cucumbers, columbines, carnations, sweet-williams, gooseberries,
currants, the barberry, elder, guelder-rose and lilac. Potatoes here are
not larger than poppy-heads. Tobacco managed with the greatest care, and
when the season is remarkably favourable, sometimes perfects seed. Dwarf
French beans thrive pretty well, but the climbing kinds never succeed.
Broad beans come to perfection; but peas, though they form pods, never
ripen. Roses, apples, pears, plums hardly grow at all, though cultivated
with the greatest attention. The garden however affords good radishes,
mustard and horse radish, and especially leeks, chives, winter cresses,
columbines, goose-tongue (_Achillea Ptarmica_), rose-campion
(_Agrostemma coronaria_), scurvy-grass, currants, gooseberries,
barberry-berries, wild rose, and lovage (_Ligusticum Levisticum_),
though scarcely cherries, apples or plums.
Barley in some of the neighbouring fields was now beginning to spring
up, but in others it was not yet sown.
The Governor informed me of a singular opinion prevalent here concerning
the clay in the sand-hills, that it increases and decreases with the
moon, so that by digging during the full moon clay may be obtained, but,
on the contrary, when the moon is in the wane, sand only will be found
in the same spot. The same gentleman remarked that cracks or chasms in
the ground are observable in fine or dry weather, which close in cloudy
or wet seasons, and may have given rise to the above idea.
Near the water side I caught an _Ephemera_, of which I made a drawing
and description. It was however of a distinct genus from the proper
_Ephemera_, having the wings inclining downwards, not erect, the tail
with two bristles instead of three, and the _antennæ_ bent near the
extremity. (This appears to have been a small specimen of the _Phryganea
bicaudata_.)
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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