Gray's Manual of 1848,—the same textbook which Thoreau used in 1861: "Desor, who has been among the Indians at Lake Superior this summer, told me the other day that they had a particular name for each species of tree (as the maple), but they had but one word for flowers. They did not distinguish the species of the last." In the lack of such specific distinctions they were like the peasants of Attica, when I rambled about Greece in 1890 and 1893. Show them a common wildflower and ask them its name in Greek, these compatriots of Theophrastus could only reply, "Oh, Loulouthia,"—Posies.
June 24, at Red Wing. Went in the forenoon to the bluffs south and southwest of the town. Found a larger species of Tradescantia on the sharp-ridged bluff; also azure larkspur, and especially a kind of Acerates or hornless milkweed, on the same. Potentilla anserina in a marsh by the Mississippi. A coriander-like plant in fruit on the sharp-ridged bluff; and on the same the grass with the long beard and hard, sharp point, Stipa spartea (porcupine grass); the side of the same
[ 62 ]
