[1] The discovery of the plant in question is related in the _Flora Lapponica_ in so interesting a manner, that we cannot refrain from translating the passage. See the second edition, p. 135. "I met with this plant but once, and that throughout a journey of four hours, over the celebrated mountain of Wallivari in the district of Lulea, towards a tract of country which lies about half way between the northern and western part, where it grew in great abundance. "Whilst I was walking quickly along, in a profuse perspiration, facing the cold wind, at midnight; if I may call it night when the sun was shining without setting at all; still anxiously inquiring of my interpreter how near we were to a Lapland dwelling, which I had for two hours been expecting, though I knew not its precise situation; casting my eager eyes around me in all directions, I perceived as it were the shadow of this plant, but did not stop to examine it, taking it for the _Empetrum_. But after going a few steps further, an idea of its being something I was unacquainted with came across my mind, and I turned back; when I should again have taken it for the _Empetrum_, had not its greater height caused me to consider it with more attention. I know not what it is that so deceives the sight in our Alps during the night, as to render objects far less distinct than in the middle of the day, though the sun shines equally bright. The sun being near the horizon, spreads its rays in such a horizontal direction, that a hat can scarcely protect our eyes: besides, the shadows of plants are so infinitely extended, and so confounded with each other, from the tremulous agitation caused by the blustering wind, that objects very different in themselves are scarcely to be distinguished from each other. Having gathered one of these plants, I looked about and found several more in the neighbourhood, all on the north side, where they grew in plenty; but I never met with the same in any other place afterwards. As at this time they had lost their flowers, and were ripening seed, it was not till after I had sought for a very long time that I met with a single flower, which was white, shaped like a lily of the valley, but with five sharper divisions." [2] This strange passage is presumed to allude to a little gun, four or five inches long, still shown in the arsenal at Stockholm, with which vulgar report says the famous Queen Christina used to kill fleas. [3] It is not impossible that Linnæus might be misled here by the prejudices of his time, or by those of the people from whom he obtained his account. [4] The whole of this account of the hay consists, in the manuscript, of such concise, disjointed, and obscure notes, that we are by no means certain of having preserved the exact sense.