After a violent storm of thunder with much rain, I went, about four in the afternoon, to the new town of Pithoea, and examined several gardens, in order to learn what plants are able to stand the severe winters of this inhospitable climate. Among them were the Burnet (_Poterium Sanguisorba_) and the Costmary (_Tanacetum Balsamita_). Some young oaks had been raised from acorns the preceding year, the greater part of which were killed by the winter frosts. A few of them only had put forth a fresh shoot just above the ground. The apple-trees were almost entirely destroyed.
I set out very early in the morning on a sea voyage to explore the natural productions of the tract called Skargarden and the islands belonging to it. The water a mile out at sea was scarcely salt, on account of the numerous rivers which here discharge themselves into the bay. No plants worth notice were to be found, though I searched carefully every place likely to afford any. Near the beach, where the tide often rises in winter ten or twelve fathoms, I observed an Alder thicket now white with little patches of _Trientalis_ and _Mesomora_ (_Trientalis europæa_ and _Cornus suecica_), whose snowy blossoms were a great ornament to the shore. Ray therefore justly mentions[48] the latter plant as growing in maritime places in Sweden. Here likewise grew the Male and Female Lychnis (_L. dioica_), for the most part with red flowers, very rarely with white; as well as the _Gramen miliaceum_ (_Milium effusum?_), and a Rush two feet high, with its sharp stem reaching a span above the panicle, which is lateral, and divided into three principal branches. Of this there was also a smaller variety. (This Rush must have been the _Juncus effusus_. See _Fl. Lapp. n. 117_.)
[48] See his _Historia Plantarum, v. 1. 655_, which Linnæus here correctly quotes from memory.
The people hereabouts talked much of mountains haunted by hobgoblins, particularly the hill called Svenberget, situated between new and old Pithoea; also of seas 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.