But he did not like botany--he knew nothing about it.

He even, quite naturally, held flowers in aversion, under the pretext that some of them permit themselves to imprison the insects in their corollas, and poison them with their venomous juices.
At times, the forest became marshy.

They felt under foot quite a network of liquid threads, which would feed the affluents of the little river.

Some of the rills, somewhat large, could only be crossed by choosing fordable places.
On their banks grew tufts of reeds, to which Harris gave the name of papyrus.

He was not mistaken, and those herbaceous plants grew abundantly below the damp banks.
Then, the marsh passed, thickets of trees again covered the narrow routes of the forest.
Harris made Mrs.Weldon and Dick Sand remark some very fine ebony-trees, much larger than the common ebony-tree, which furnish a wood much blacker and much stronger than that of commerce.