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the lovely Inn. The Inn suggested parts of the upper Potomac, but not so wild and rocky. I begin to recognize some of the trees now,hemlocks, birches, small oaks,(leaves still clinging), alders(?) with millions of catkins swinging, and little willows with fat pussies. The terraced fields of the Rhine valley looke d like shingles, they were so small and evenly laid. There is such a neatness about Germany. For hours it was a succession of little factory towns (as it is coming across northern Ohio) but the factories and surroundings were all so neat and tidy, and the houses so prim. I saw none of the dirty squalor we always see from trains in our little factory towns. There are garden patches between railroad tracks, and everything seem s to be either, gravelled, flagged, or cultivated,poor picking for a botanist, probably, but it looks so neat and trim.----- At the custom house at Salzburg they were curious about my abundance of envelopes and the various manuscripts. "Warum so viel Korrespondenz?" the man asked. "Sie sind nicht fur Briefen, sondern fur kleine Examplaren von Pflanzen." I told him. I had practiced saying "Ich reise nach Wien, Botanik zum studieren," so I said that glibly. They not ask about the medicines. Only hand baggage was examined.-----It is raining again; it snowed for a while in Germany, about Munich. Along the railway embankments in Normandy I saw pale yellow primroses in thousands, and what looked like Caltha palustris in ditch borders. So many places were just right for skunk cabbage I half kept an eye out for the little twisted heads. Is it American only? There was a shrub with short needle-like crowded leaves (held over winter I judge) and clusters of gold-yellow sessile flowers. Gorse, I wonder? In Germany I saw no primroses (spring in less advanced), but there is a little yellow flower in bunches (Crucifer?), and [[underlined]] snowdrops [[/underlined]] growing on the railway embankment. There was a little slender leafless shrub with covered with tiny purplish-pink flowers. I saw Cornus mas in bloom, too.

Transcription Notes:
* it looks like the very bottom part of a "12" is at the top of the page (moved the translation down here: "why so much correspondence?" "They are not for letters, but for small examples of plants." "I travel to Vienna to study Botany")