In the forest here we saw innumerable pine-trees with trunks of ample girth but no proportionate height. The lowest branches were as long as the uppermost and the tops were missing. It looked as if all the branches came from one central point as on a palm-tree, and the upper branches looked as though they had been pruned. I attribute this to the nature of the soil and am filled with wonder that even nature seeks to clip its trees; I therefore call them ‘Pinus plicatae’.11
LӒBY, 8 1/4 miles. In the forest here we saw numerous bearberry plants already coming into flower. We also came upon a large pinewood, quite barren since the plants of the earth were being smothered by a layer of dry needles, except for some ‘Erica’ [Heather] and ‘Muscus pariet. coralloides’ [moss]’.12 The topsoil here was scarcely 2 fingers thick and below it lay pure sand.
There was a large rune-stone standing by the highway 2 1/2 miles beyond the inn but I did not waste time copying it as I saw that it had recently been read.
4 1/2 miles beyond the inn, close to a boundary marker of an odd construction in which 4 stones were standing upright and close together in a rectangle with a 5th stone in the centre, I saw a large stone of multi-striated marble. Since I wanted to split it apart, I found another smaller stone and discovered that that one, too, was of the same kind. I could not shatter the larger one but the smaller one broke and in it I found prismatic crystals, extremely fine-grained and transparent, of which some were white and some were a very dark yellow.
Before I came to the next inn, a croft lay on the right-hand side, immediately across the high road from a small pool in which they do the washing. I saw here a smooth, sloping washing-stone which was made of white granite but in which there were 3 large squares of black granite as if inlaid by a skilful stonemason. These squares, however, run right through the stone, as can be seen at one end where the stone is broken off.
Immediately before Yvre there runs a small river whose water would scarcely flow above your shoes these days, but the banks are so deep – fully 10 feet – that either the water has been continually sweeping the loose sand away with it or, as I believe more likely, the river itself has shrunk.
‘Chrysoplenium’ [Alternate-leaved Golden Saxifrage] was in flower here. Tournefort, quite erroneously, says it has ear-shaped leaves, but the leaves are quite unlike that. It has 8 stamens arranged in a rectangle and 2 pistils, and it is obvious, therefore, that it comes closer to the saxifrages as earlier scholars thought than to the bellflowers.
YVRE, 13 1/2 miles. Here I saw small kid-goats that, below the chin where the throat starts, had 2 wart-like growths as some pigs have. These were an inch long, covered with sparse hairs and as thick as the teat of a suckling sow; and there were also 2 teats on the scrotum. But I do not know why they are like that. The cloud had been increasing all day and we had occasionally been threatened by a light scatter of rain. It now began to rain so hard that I was compelled to remain here for a couple of hours.
When I reached the church at TIERP, I came to a fast-running stream with a bank which, on the outside of a curve, was very high and steep like a wall. I attribute this to the alders that are standing there right by the water. I have seen places where lakes erode away the soil more and more and, by so doing, gradually threaten great castles and churches etc., so that buttresses have to be built on the shore at the cost of much effort. To no great effect, however. But where alders have been standing on the shore, the water has been able to accomplish little or nothing.
I saw various small ancestral mounds on both sides of the church.
Night came on now and I therefore hastened to Mehede.
13th. MEHEDE, 14 miles. Here I saw ‘Taxus’ growing wild: they call it yew or yew-tree. ‘Anemonoides’ [Wood Anemone] was growing everywhere in the forest. Some people – quite absurdly -make a distinction between it and ‘Anemone’ and one can only suppose that they have never seen ‘Anemone’. ‘Hepatica’ and ‘Oxys’ [Wood-sorrel] were also growing here. It is interesting that all their flowers were closed today. Who has given the plants the intelligence to cover themselves against rain as all these three do? They do so even when the weather changes moment by moment from sunshine, which causes them to unfurl their tapestries, to rain, when they cover them.
The cuckoo, harbinger of sweet summer, now made its voice heard for the first time.
Having heard so much talk of Ӓlvkarle Falls, it seemed worthwhile making some small diversion from the route in order to view them, especially as they could be both seen and heard from the road; and, indeed, the mist from them was hanging in the air like smoke around a chimney above a large fire of wood-chips. When I reached them, I saw that the river was split into 3 channels by an island formed of solid rock that divides the current. The falls owe nothing to the hand of man, being a creation of nature, which has placed a solid cliff in the middle of the river and over this the water in the nearest of the 3 channels (which also drives a sawmill) falls for a height of 25 to 30 feet. This turns the water into white foam, causing it to roar as if in rage and to throw its droplets many feet into the air so that a smokelike cloud hangs permanently about it. The sawmill worker, who has to stand in this cloud the whole time, looked pale to me but he did not complain of any particular ailment.
These falls drop over a cliff of black bedrock which it is impossible to examine more closely. Downstream from the falls, after the water in the channels has become a little calmer, there is a salmon fishery with a square wickerwork enclosure which projects 2 feet above the water. The salmon enter this and cannot get out.
There are oak trees growing on the highest rocks on the banks and I was amazed that they could find sufficient moisture there, but I concluded that the moisture that was seeping from the earth and running on the surface down over the rocks was what was also feeding their roots.