[5] La Motraye, after describing the Lapland sledge, observes that "it is attached by a single trace or thong, passing under the belly of the reindeer, and fixed to a leather collar which goes round the animal's neck. A long cord made of twisted fir bark, tied to his horns, serves, when pulled in a straight line, to stop his course, or, when drawn toward either side, to turn him in that direction. When this cord is made to strike him gently, by a vertical motion, on the back, it urges him to greater speed. The overturn of the sledge, where the road is uneven, is prevented by a stick, which serves, like the oar or paddle of a boat, to guide its course." [6] Linnæus records this misfortune in his _Flora Lapponica_, at n. 42, see ed. 2. p. 27, where, in speaking of _Arundo Calamagrostis_, he says he "presumes the synonyms are rightly applied, though he had no opportunity of comparing his plant with books and descriptions, having lost the specimen, with various other natural productions, by being cast away as he was descending one of the great rivers of Lapland." The synonym of Morison at least, which he has thus by memory applied, proves to be erroneous. [7] This account does not agree with the description in the _Flora Lapponica_, but is the most correct. [8] This also is correct. [9] A few further remarks on the above subject, printed in the _Flora Lapponica_, may be acceptable to the English reader. "This disease made no regular progress, nor was it communicated by infection from one animal to another. The cows are driven all together in the spring to feed in a meadow, near the town, to the southwest, on the other side of a creek of the river, in which I was informed the greatest mortality happened. The symptoms differ in different cases; but all the cattle, feeding indiscriminately, are seized with a swelling of the abdomen, attended with convulsions, and die with horrid bellowing, in the space of a few days. No person dares venture to flay the recent carcases, it having been found by experience that not only the hands, but even the face, in consequence of the warm steams from the body, became inflamed and gangrenous, and that death finally ensued. "I was asked whether this disease was a kind of plague; whether the meadow in question produced any venomous spiders; or whether the yellow-coloured water was poisonous. "That it was no plague appeared from its not being contagious, and from the spring being its most fatal season. I saw no spiders here, except what are common throughout all Sweden; nor was the yellow sediment of the water any thing more than a common innocent ochre of iron.