The Online Library of Liberty

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• Introduction
• Jeremy Bentham and James Mill
• Rationale of Judicial Evidence
• Analysis of the Phenomena of the Human Mind
• Botanical Writings 1840–61
• Calendar of Odours April 1840
• Rare Plants In West Surrey June 1841
• Isatis Tinctoria June 1841
• Notes On Plants Growing In the Neighbourhood of Guildford, Surrey August 1841
• Cnicus Forsteri September 1841
• Additional Guildford Stations September 1841
• Polygonum Dumetorum November 1841
• Rarer Plants of the Isle of Wight November 1841
• Corrections and Additions In Mr. Mill’s List of Plants In the Isle of Wight January 1842
• The Phytologist; a Botanical Magazine December 1843
• Notes On the Species of Oenanthe February 1845
• Correction of an Error In the “notes On the Species of Oenanthe” April 1845
• Observations On Isatis Tinctoria and Other Plants May 1856
• Plants Growing Wild In the District of Luxford’s Reigate Florajune 1856
• Note On West Surrey Plants July 1856
• Reigate Plants October 1856
• Plants Growing On and Near Blackheath April 1857
• Late (early?) Flowering Plants: Plants In Flower In the District of Eltham and Chiselhurst, In November, 1857 January 1858
• Hutchinsia Petraea May 1858
• Leucojum Aestivum July 1858
• Clifton Plants July 1858
• Plants On Sherborn Sands, Blackheath, and Other Stations September 1858
• Some Derbyshire Plants September 1858
• Linaria Purpurea September 1858
• Faversham Plants October 1858
• Lepidium Ruderale April 1859
• Wallflower Growing On the Living Rock May 1860
• Spring Flowers of the South of Europe: Remarks On Some of the Spring Flowers of the South of Europe, and On Their Representatives In the British Isles October 1860
• Botany of Spain. a Few Days’ Botanizing In the North-eastern Provinces of Spain, In April and May, 1860 August 1861-february 1862
• Verbascum Thapsiforme October 1862
• Medical Reviews 1834, 1842
• Dr. King’s Lecture On the Study of Anatomy November 1834
• Carpenter’s Physiology January 1842
• Appendices
• Appendix A: Wills and Deed of Gift 1853-72
• Appendix B: the Vixen, and Circassia April 1837
• Appendix C: The Spanish Question July 1837
• Appendix D: Questions Before the Select Committee On Metropolitan Local Government 1867
• Appendix E: Mill At the Political Economy Club 1840-65
• Appendix F: Textual Emendations
• Appendix G: Index of Persons, and Works Cited, With Variants and Notes

BOTANICAL WRITINGS

1840–61

Botanical Writings

Calendar of Odours

APRIL 1840

the brilliant colouring of Nature is prolonged, with incessant changes, from March till October; but the fragrance of her breath is spent before the summer is half ended. From March to July an uninterrupted succession of sweet odours fills the air by day and still more by night, but the gentler perfumes of autumn, like many of the earlier ones here for that reason omitted, must be sought ere they can be found. The Calendar of Odours, therefore, begins with the laurel, and ends with the lime.

March—Common laurel.

April—Violets, furze, wall-flower, common broad-leaved willow, apple-blossom.

May—Lilac, night-flowering stocks and rockets, laburnum, hawthorn, seringa, sweet-briar.

June—Mignonette, bean-fields, the whole tribe of summer roses, hay, Portugal laurel, various species of pinks.

July—Common acacia, meadow-sweet, honeysuckle, sweetgale or double myrtle, Spanish broom, lime.

In latest autumn, one stray odour, forgotten by its companions, follows at a modest distance—the creeping clematis which adorns cottage walls; but the thread of continuity being broken, this solitary straggler is not included in the Calendar of Odours.

Rare Plants in West Surrey

JUNE 1841

ribes rubrum and nigrum, the former in many places, the latter abundantly in one place, by the side of the Mole near Esher: perfectly wild and completely naturalized. Turritis glabra, abundant and fine by the road-side between Hampton and Sunbury. Diplotaxis tenuifolia, a rare plant in Surrey, is very abundant above Walton Bridge. Cerastium arvense, on banks by the side of the Thames below Walton Bridge.

Isatis Tinctoria

JUNE 1841

isatis tinctoria is now growing in prodigious luxuriance in the chalk-quarries close to the town [of Guildford]. It grows (in many instances) out of clefts in the precipitous chalk cliff, and makes almost a bush of flowers from the same root. Geranium lucidum I again found in my old locality, near St. Catherine’s Hill.

Notes on Plants Growing in the Neighbourhood of Guildford, Surrey

AUGUST 1841

impatiens fulva. At whatever period introduced, this plant is now so thoroughly naturalized, that it would be pedantry any longer to refuse it that place in the English Flora, which has been accorded on less strong grounds to many plants originally introduced from abroad. For many miles by the side of the Wey, both above and below Guildford, it is as abundant as the commonest river-side plants, the Lythrum Salicaria or Epilobium hirsutum; and my friend Mr. Henry Cole¹ informs me that it is found in various places by the same river all the way to its junction with the Thames. It is equally abundant on the banks of the Tillingbourne, that beautiful tributary of the Wey; especially at Chilworth, where it grows in boundless profusion: and near Albury, where I saw it for the first time in 1822. The plant stated by Sir J.E. Smith to be growing near Guildford,² under the name of Impatiens Noli-me-tangere, is doubtless no other than this plant. The Noli-metangere, which I have seen growing about Windermere, in the Pyrenees, and in Switzerland, is very distinct from this.

Geranium lucidum; in most of the lanes about Guildford.

Fumaria capreolata; near Losely, and by the roadside between Guildford and Merrow.

Fumaria parviflora; in corn-fields on the summit and southern declivity of the Hog’s Back; and in lanes at its foot.

Valerianella dentata (or Fedia dentata); corn-fields on the chalk hills on both sides of Guildford, abundantly.

Isatis tinctoria; in great perfection in the chalk-pits close to the town, on the Shalford road; as noticed in The Phytologist, p. 30.³

Hippuris vulgaris; in one of the ponds in Clandon Park.

Bupleurum rotundifolium. This plant grew, last summer, in a corn-field on the brow of the hill by the path leading from Guildford to Martha’s Chapel. The field having been sown this summer with a green crop, which was removed early, the plant cannot now be found.

Campanula hybrida; abundant in the lower part of the same field.

Corydalis claviculata. This plant formerly grew close to Martha’s Chapel, but I have sought for it this year in vain.

Dipsacus pilosus; most abundant near Chilworth, especially in the hanging wood.

Androsaemum officinale; near Albury, but sparingly.

Saponaria officinalis; near Shere.

Stellaria glauca. This interesting and elegant plant grows in marshy meadows by the river Wey, near the foot of St. Catherine’s Hill.

Menyanthes trifoliata; now (whatever may formerly have been the case) a rare plant in Surrey. It grows on Gomshall Common, in the vale of Albury; where I also once found a double variety of Cardamine pratensis.

Papaver hybridum; in corn-fields between Guildford and Martha’s Chapel. Papaver dubium is as common in the neighbourhood as P. Rhoeas.

Lepidium sativum; naturalized by the side of the Wey.

Nasturtium sylvestre and Barbarea praecox: not unfrequent by the side of the Wey.

Rhamnus catharticus and Frangula; the former not unfrequent on the downs, the latter abundant in a wood near Compton.

Orobanche major; at Martha’s Chapel.

Listera Nidus-avis; in a heathy wood between Guildford and Martha’s Chapel. With this exception I have not been able to find near Guildford any of the less common Orchideae so numerous near Dorking.

Salvia verbenaca. St. Catherine’s Hill; Merrow Church-yard; and various other places.

Cistopteris fragilis and Asplenium Ruta-muraria. These ferns grow in considerable abundance on a wall by the road-side at Albury, where I first found them in 1824, and again this summer.

Marchantia polymorpha; on the perpendicular face of the cutting on the road to Godalming, at the foot of St. Catherine’s Hill. Geranium lucidum grows on an old wall on the opposite side of the road.

Cnicus Forsteri

SEPTEMBER 1841

cnicus forsteri I saw growing by hundreds last month in a piece of marshy ground formerly part of Ditton Common; at least it was the plant I previously found near Weybridge and sent to Sir W. Hooker.¹ It was growing with various numbers of flowers from one up to four, each on a separate and generally a long stalk. On comparing it with the books both English and foreign, and especially with Decandolle’s description of his Cirsium anglicum² (our Cnicus pratensis), I have little doubt that it is merely a variety of that, and that C. Forsteri, as you suggested, has no existence as a species.

Additional Guildford Stations

SEPTEMBER 1841

since the publication of the list of Guildford plants in the last number of The Phytologist,¹ Fumaria claviculata has been refound in its old locality, Martha’s Chapel, and likewise on the extensive common near Shalford, called Blackheath. Epipactis latifolia has been found at the Sheepleas, and Cuscuta Europaea in an osier holt by the river Wey, a short distance above Guildford, entwined round nettles, the Spiraea Ulmaria, and the osiers themselves.

Polygonum Dumetorum

NOVEMBER 1841

polygonum dumetorum grows copiously in the hedges on more than one part of the road from the Woking-Common station to Guildford.^*

Rarer Plants of the Isle of Wight

NOVEMBER 1841

i observed the following less common plants in the Isle of Wight, during a week’s tour in July, some years ago.¹

MARITIME PLANTS

Matthiola, (no doubt) incana, or Cheiranthus incanus, in inaccessible places on Compton Cliffs, Freshwater Bay. The same plant grows most abundantly in places overhanging the sea on the promontory of Posilipo, and other similar situations near Naples, where it flowers copiously in February, and little children collect bouquets of the plant at great apparent risk, to sell to passers by.

SALT MARSHES NEAR YARMOUTH

IN A MARITIME BOG AT EASTON, NEAR FRESHWATER

MISCELLANEOUS

Poa bulbosa. Alum Bay.

Mentha rotundifolia. This plant, so common on the continent, but comparatively so unfrequent in England, grows on the Undercliff, in a maritime situation, near Puckaster Cove.

Lathyrus sylvestris and Rubia peregrina. Common in hedges on the Undercliff. The former grows in profusion on the landslip near Bonchurch.

Iris foetidissima. As common on the Undercliff, and (if I recollect right) in other parts of the island as in Devonshire.

Inula Helenium. By the side of a lane between Yarmouth and Freshwater Bay, but sparingly.

PLANTS COLLECTED SHORTLY AFTERWARDS ON THE COAST OF HAMPSHIRE, OPPOSITE TO THE ISLE OF WIGHT

Atriplex portulacoides. Abundant in salt marshes at Lymington.

Bartsia viscosa and Fumaria capreolata. Roadside between Lymington and Exbury.

Euphorbia stricta. Cornfields near Beaulieu river.

Campanula hederacea. New Forest, near Ashurst Lodge.

Parnassia palustris, Drosera longifolia and Myrica Gale. In various parts of the Forest.

Corrections and Additions in Mr. Mill’s List of Plants in the Isle of Wight

JANUARY 1842

Phytologist, I (Jan. 1842), 132-3. No. 97 in Art. XLV, “Varieties.” Signed “J.S. Mill; Kensington, December 20, 1841.” The corrections and additions are to the previous item, pp. 262-3 above. Not republished. Not listed in Mill’s bibliography.

line 34, for Triticum Nardus read T. junceum. Tamarix gallica, (line 37) has most probably been introduced into the locality near Yarmouth. Poa bulbosa (line 42) must be erased from the list: the mistake arose from an imperfect specimen of a grass from Alum Bay having been compared by a friend with continental specimens of Poa bulbosa, in its viviparous state. The Alum Bay plant was afterwards found to be an Agrostis. To the plants growing in salt marshes at Yarmouth, add Triglochin maritimum and Potamogeton pectinatum. To those of the New Forest add Triglochin palustre.

The Phytologist; a Botanical Magazine

DECEMBER 1843

we think it highly desirable that such lovers of botany as are not yet aware of the fact, should be apprised that there has now existed, for nearly two years, a botanical magazine, at the low price of one shilling. This little periodical is not intended to compete with the large works which are addressed to the scientific public, and are the appointed vehicles for the more recondite discoveries and discussions of vegetable physiology. Without excluding such discussions when they can be brought within the limits of the work, the Phytologist addresses itself less to scientific physiologists than to naturalists in the more popular acceptation of the term; and especially to such as wander over the hills and fields of our native country in search of its rarer plants, or who delight in observing their habits and peculiarities. Of the merits of the work in this capacity it is almost a sufficient recommendation that Mr. Newman, the author of the accurate and interesting History of British Ferns, has made its pages the vehicle for giving to the botanical public, as a sequel to that work, a similar history of the British Lycopodiaceae Equisetaceae, and adjacent families, which is now nearly complete, and not inferior in excellence to the British Ferns.¹ In the genus Equisetum especially, Mr. Newman has corrected serious mistakes, and cleared up important ambiguities.

The Phytologist has contained various interesting and valuable discussions on other British plants, as, for example, that by which it was for the first time conclusively shown, by Mr. Luxford and others,² that the Monotropahypopitys is not, as it was so long supposed to be, a parasitical plant. The value of this journal to local collectors of plants is very great, as almost every number contains a local flora, or catalogue of the plants growing in some particular district. An account is also regularly given of the contents of the more interesting papers read before the Linnaean Society, and published in its transactions. And under the head of Varieties, admission is given to the briefest notice of any fact interesting to the lover of botany.

We are the more desirous of calling the attention of our botanical readers to this periodical, as we perceive with regret a statement in a recent number that it does not yet pay its expenses, and without an increase of its sale cannot be much longer continued.³ It will be a real discredit to the growing class of botanical amateurs, if they suffer so useful a medium for mutual communication among themselves to perish for want of the very trifling support which would continue it in existence.

Notes on the Species of Oenanthe

FEBRUARY 1845

the readers of The Phytologist, and all botanists, are much indebted to Mr. H.C. Watson for his careful, and I believe accurate investigation, in the January number, of the three species of Oenanthe, hitherto confounded under the names of peucedanifolia and pimpinelloides (Phytol. ii. 11).¹ I have long been convinced that there was some unknown quantity to be determined among the English species of this very interesting genus, which has until lately received very little critical investigation in this country. It is not generally known that one of these three species grows abundantly in so familiar and much frequented a locality as Battersea fields. I have observed it there for more than twenty years past, in a small patch of grass land, which is passed through in crossing the fields diagonally from Nine Elms, at an acute angle with the direction of the river. Valeriana dioica and Polygonum Bistorta grow copiously near the spot. I have never yet been able to procure the fruit, as the grass is always cut before the plant is out of flower. But the leaves, the tubers, and the bracteae, agree in their characters with Mr. Watson’s Oe. Smithii, and quite differ from those of Oe. Lachenalii. The same plant, or one apparently the same, has been seen by me many years ago, as well as lately, in meadows adjoining the river Wey, near Weybridge. Neither of these stations appears to be known to Mr. Watson; to whom I can also contribute an authentic station for his Oe. pimpinelloides, viz. a maritime bog at the little village of Bishopstone, near Seaford, in Sussex, where I gathered unquestionable specimens in July, 1827.²

While I am on the subject of this genus, I should be glad if any of your correspondents could inform me whether they have ever found the Oe. crocata with the yellow acrid juice, which until lately has been attributed to it by all botanists. I have examined numberless living specimens of the plant in Surrey, and other counties around London, for the express purpose, and have never, in any one single instance, discovered the smallest vestige of such a juice. The assertion is a curious example of the servile manner in which even scientific observers copy each other’s statements, without verifying them.

Correction of an Error in the “Notes on the Species of Oenanthe”

APRIL 1845

since my note on the species of Oenanthe was printed (Phytol. ii. 48), my specimens from Battersea, Weybridge and Seaford have had the advantage of being examined by Mr. Watson. That gentleman confirms my statement respecting the Battersea and Weybridge plants, which he decides to be his Oenanthe Smithii, the peucedanifolia of Smith. The plant from Seaford, which I had classed as the pimpinelloides, he pronounces to be Oenanthe Lachenalii; and he has fully satisfied me, both by his high authority, and by a comparison of specimens with which he has most courteously supplied me, that I was previously unacquainted with the true Oe. pimpinelloides.

Observations on Isatis Tinctoria and Other Plants

MAY 1856

in the “Descriptive British Botany,” publishing in the Phytologist, it is stated, under the initials of Mr. Irvine, that he has never observed Isatis tinctoria (except an occasional straggler) on the west side of the river Wey.¹ It will be agreeable to this accurate and trustworthy investigator of localities (by whose indications many others as well as myself must have been often guided to rare plants) to be informed that this fine plant grew in the utmost profusion in 1849 (and doubtless grows still) in the great chalk-quarry near Compton, on the south side of the Hog’s Back, a place easily overlooked by a passing botanist from being masked by a Larch-wood in front.

It is also stated that Iberis amara grows in fields in Berkshire—Pangbourne and Streatley.² The range of this very local plant is considerably wider than these words would import, as it is also found in Oxfordshire and Buckinghamshire; especially, and most plentifully, in the range of country north of the Thames, from Henley to Maidenhead.

My experience agrees with that of your Tring correspondent (p. 105) as to the botanical poverty of the Chiltern Hills,³ a fact the more remarkable as the southern portion of the same chalk district is one of the richest in the midland counties. Alchemilla vulgaris however grows in the woods of Chequers; and I have found Paris quadrifolia in a woody ravine adjoining Stokenchurch Common. Buxus sempervirens helps to adorn the steep chalky declivities near Ellesborough, and grows also on the hills between Tring and Dunstable. Pyrola minor I have gathered on the same range of hills, further south, near Nettlebed; and in great profusion in various parts of the woody region towards Wycombe and Marlow.

As you have thought it worth while to print a new Surrey locality for Lycopodium Selago,⁴ which has been found in that county by several botanists, you will perhaps allow me to mention one which I believe not to be generally known. The Lycopodium grows in considerable abundance on the east side of a sort of pass through and over Chobham Ridges, leading in the direction of Frimley. The path goes directly through the large field which Mr. Watson, some years ago, pointed out as a habitat of Arnoseris pusilla;⁵ and in the same field I found, in October, 1849, a moderate quantity of Linaria purpurea, a plant of which the indigenousness has been doubted, but this situation closely resembles the continental localities of the plant.

The Phytologist very judiciously directs much of its attention to the geographical distribution of plants. On this subject much may be learnt by the careful examination of a single county, and there are counties and even smaller districts in England which deserve particular notice as forming the transition between two distinct botanical regions, or combining portions of both. The Isle of Wight is an example of the first kind, Surrey of the second. That county, besides its great variety of geological structure and of vegetation as thereon dependent, contains within its narrow limits an eastern and what may be termed a sub-western flora. The domain of the latter is the tract of heath and sand extending from Esher and Moulsey diagonally to Hindhead and Haslemere. While a great proportion of the plants of the eastern region are wanting in this, it possesses many which are not found further east, and is still more distinctly characterized by the abundance of several, of which only stragglers are found in the region of Croydon, Godstone, Reigate, and Dorking. It is the chosen seat of Apera Spica-Venti; Silene anglica; Hypochoeris glabra (which abounds there, while I have seen it nowhere else in Surrey except a few straggling plants on Reigate Heath); Erysimum cherianthoides and Marrubium vulgare (both found near Reigate, but in no similar abundance); Athyrium Filix-foemina, more profuse there than elsewhere; Myrica Gale; Senecio sylvaticus; Geranium lucidum; Rhynchospora alba; I believe I might add Hieracium rigidum, but the Surrey Hieracia, though less numerous, require revision as much as those of Yorkshire. Campanula Rapunculus is plentiful in one corner of the district. Among its varieties are Campanula patula; Comarum Palustre; the two Elatines, Hydropiper and hexandra; Chaetospora nigricans, which I had the good fortune to rediscover in its old recorded locality, Bagshot Heath; Hippuris vulgaris; Utricularia minor; Arnoseris pusilla; Linaria purpurea; Leonurus Cardiaca; Allium vineale; Zannichellia palustris; Ceterach officinarum.

Has Calamintha Nepeta been ever really found in Surrey? Several botanists have thought they had found it, but by no search in the localities indicated have I discovered anything nearer to it than Calamintha officinalis. A Calamintha taller than officinalis, but with much smaller leaves, resembling those of Origanum vulgare, and with a stem not erect, but ascending from a bend near the root, which I believe to be C. Nepeta, I have seen in various places on the Continent, among others especially near Rouen; and this plant grows, or did grow in 1843, by the side of the road from Marlow to Hedsor and Clifden. I last year recognized what seemed the same plant (but did not botanically examine it) between Eynsford and Farningham, in Kent. Perhaps some one among your correspondents, who has attended to the subject, would give your readers the benefit of his experience.

Plants Growing Wild in the District of Luxford’s Reigate Flora

JUNE 1856

(the district extends from Leith Hill on the west, to Godstone and its neighbourhood on the east.)

Thalictrum flavum. By the Mole below Sidlow Bridge.

Ranunculus parviflorus. On the steepest part of Brockham Hill, in Elder thickets about half-way up the hill, abundantly.

Fumaria capreolata. Near Buckland, by the footpath leading to the chalk hills.

Nasturtium sylvestre. Most plentiful in the dry bed of the Mole, between Mickleham and Leatherhead, and in streams north of Leatherhead.

Barbarea praecox. By the road from Dorking to Capel, near the commencement of the Holmwood.

Arabis hirsuta. Juniper Hill, Mickleham Downs, Box Hill, and other parts of the chalk hills near Dorking. This plant is so characteristic of the Surrey Hills, that its not having been found in the immediate neighbourhood of Reigate is a curious anomaly.

Erysimum cheiranthoides. Copiously in a cultivated field near Doover’s Green, to the left of the Brighton road. By the Mole, near the footpath from Betchworth to Brockham. (This plant, common in the north-western half of the county, is rare in the south-eastern.)

Camelina sativa. Among wheat in the open upland fields between Ashtead and Leatherhead, in one spot, plentifully, 1849.

Spergula nodosa. On the grassy slope of Box Hill, plentifully.

Geranium pyrenaicum. About Leatherhead, Dorking, and Reigate, not unfrequent.

Petroselinum segetum. By the side of the Brighton road, on the ascent of Cockshot Hill, sparingly, 1845.

(Archangelica officinalis, banks of the Mole, near Brockham, I hesitate to insert, not having seen it there since 1824, and being unable to answer for my having correctly determined it at that distant date.)

Caucalis daucoides. In a cornfield adjoining Norbury Park, on the summit of the hill (1822).

Onopordon Acanthium. Merstham. This fine Thistle occurs in many other parts of the county, but I have not observed it elsewhere in the Reigate district.

Silybum marianum. Corner of Earlswood Common, near the church (1845), but possibly an outcast. This Thistle, being rather frequent in the adjoining parts of Kent, will probably be found permanently established somewhere in East Surrey.

Hypochaeris glabra. Sparingly on Reigate Heath, near the race-course (1849). One of the characteristic plants of the north-western district of Surrey.

Campanula Rapunculus. In a shady lane on Cockshot Hill, sparingly (1845).

Verbascum Lychnitis. Sparingly at the foot of the chalk-coomb near Quarry Farm. I have found this handsome Mullein nowhere else below the hills, though not uncommon above them, both in East Surrey and in West Kent.

Mentha rotundifolia. Ashtead Park.

Melissa officinalis. Sparingly in Coldharbour Lane, Dorking (1849). This naturalized plant has now several authentic stations in Surrey. The only one known to me in which it is sufficiently abundant to hold out much promise of permanency, is a bank by the private road which connects the high-road from Kingston to Leatherhead, with the church and village of Chessington.

Chenopodium rubrum (or urbicum?). By the road from Reigate to Dorking, near Betchworth; also near Nutfield.

Sagittaria sagittifolia. In the Mole at the foot of Box Hill.

Lemna polyrrhiza. Dorking mill-pond; and ditches in various places.

Potamogeton perfoliatus. In the Mole near Sidlow Bridge.

Potamogeton pusillus, β. major (compressus, Sm.). Ditch in the valley of Nutfield Marsh.

Luzula sylvatica. In the wood below Headley Church, towards Walton-on-the-hill.

Scirpus caespitosus. Earlswood Common.

Carex divulsa. Cockshot Hill and other places.

Carex pallescens. In long grass on the south side of the Merstham ponds (1849). This rich locality, unexplored at the time of the publication of Luxford’s Flora, contains Typha angustifolia (in the western pond), Epipactis palustris (in ditches adjoining), Astragalus Glycyphyllos (on the border of Warwick Wood), and Lathyrus sylvestris (clustering on the copse itself).

Carex binervis. Broadmoor (Leith Hill).

Carex vesicaria. In the Mole, at Sidlow Bridge.

(Carex axillaris has been found near the foot of Colley Hill by Mr. Hanson, of Reigate.)¹

Avena fatua. Found near Littleton in 1845.

Koeleria cristata. Brockham Hill (1824). Not found (to my knowledge) since that time in the Reigate district; but grows abundantly above the hills, between Warlingham and the Woldingham and Marden Park district.

Catabrosa aquatica. Ditches at Leatherhead, near the great rise of clear water in the bed of the Mole.

Brachypodium pinnatum. About the roots of Box Hill; and copiously by the grassy side of the road from Epsom to Headley, between Hundred-acre Field and the great chalk-pit at Ashtead.

Triticum caninum. Hedges by the roadside between Woodhatch and Sidlow Bridge.

Equisetum sylvaticum. In the swampy wood below Coldharbour on the north side of the range (one of the finest Fern localities in Surrey, especially for Osmunda).

Equisetum palustre. Frequent in ponds and by wet roadsides. Its omission in Luxford’s Flora can only be accidental.

Chara vulgaris. In a clear pool by the footpath from Wray Common to the Merstham Road. On the top of the chalk-hills between Walton and Headley Heaths.

Chara flexilis. In the great rise of water at Leatherhead.

The following are omitted stations of Plants included in the Flora, or in Mr. Holman’s Supplementary List:—

Aquilegia vulgaris. On the summit of Box Hill, in the wood; and in other woods, as well as by the sides of fields, near Dorking.

Berberis vulgaris. Near the summit of either Reigate Hill or Colley Hill, in 1826 or 1827: not seen since that time.

Corydalis claviculata. About the base of Boar Hill, and in the swampy wood north of Coldharbour.

Cardamine amara. In the swamp at Whiggey; near Buckland; by the stream above Wonham Mill; and (sparingly) in various places near Dorking.

Thlaspi arvense. On the summit of Redstone Hill (1848).

Reseda Luteola. Along the foot of the chalk hills towards Godstone.

Viola palustris. In the swamp at Whiggey, copiously. At the lower extremity of Broadmoor, and in the ravine which descends from Leith Hill to Wotton.

Dianthus Armeria. In the vale of Mickleham.

Silene anglica. Border of a field, in the bottom intervening between Walton and Headley Heaths.

Hypericum Androsaemum. Near the cascade of Fillbrook, in the grounds of Tillingbourne, at the foot of Leith Hill.

Hypericum Elodes. In a bog at Coldharbour, and in wet parts of Broadmoor.

Geranium Pratense. By the Mole near Mickleham, sparingly.

Radiola Millegrana. Abundant near the summit of Leith Hill.

Rhamnus cathartica. Box Hill, Mickleham Downs, and other places on the chalk hills.

Rhamnus Frangula. In the woody and bushy parts of Boar and Leith Hills.

Genista tinctoria. Found in 1822 near Dorking, on the side next Boar Hill; the exact place forgotten. This plant is rather abundant near the Godstone railway station, and being common in Kent, both above and below the hills, is likely to be found near Reigate; probably in the Weald.

Anthyllis Vulneraria. Chalk hills towards Godstone.

Lathyrus Nissolia. In a shaw near Doover’s Green, to the left of the high-road.

Lathyrus sylvestris. This very ornamental plant is not confined to Warwick Wood, but clothes the thickets and hangs in festoons at intervals along the base of the chalk hills nearly to Godstone.

Spiraea Filipendula. Abundant on Mickleham Downs, Box Hill, etc.

Tormentilla reptans. Holmwood.

Rubus Idaeus. Summit of Box Hill. Boar Hill.

Rosa rubiginosa. Box Hill. Mickleham Downs. Chalk hills towards Godstone.

Epilobium angustifolium. Boar Hill.

Sedum acre. In dry, bare places on the steep sides of Brockham Hill. Box Hill. Juniper Hill, and the intervening ravine.

Silaus pratensis. Plentiful in meadows near Dorking; Betchworth and Reigate.

Asperula cynanchica. Very common on the chalk hills near Dorking.

Valeriana dioica. Bog near the Mole at Brockham.

Erigeron acris. Lower slopes of Buckland Hill. Box Hill, copiously. Westhumble.

Gnaphalium sylvaticum, β (S. rectum). Betchworth Hill. Kingswood warren. Boar Hill woods.

Serratula tinctoria. Woods about Headley and Walton.

Phyteuma orbiculare. Mickleham Downs. In the great Ashtead chalk-pit, plentiful. On the ridge of the chalk hills between Merstham and Catherham in abundance.

Ligustrum vulgare. Box Hill. Leith Hill woods.

Vinca minor. Copiously, and certainly wild, in a hollow road on the south slope of Park Hill. I have this winter found it in an exactly similar situation (the steep side of a deep cutting in a sandy soil), about a mile from St. Mary Cray, on the road to Chelsfield, in Kent. I notice this circumstance as bearing on the question respecting the indigenousness of the plant.

Chlora perfoliata. Copiously on Box Hill, Buckland Hill, and the chalk hills near Quarry Farm, between Merstham and Godstone.

Menyanthes trifoliata. Bogs about Leith Hill.

Atropa Belladonna. Norbury Park; Brockham Hill; steep chalky side of Box Hill. Profusely about the roots of the hills near Quarry Farm.

Hyoscyamus niger. Lane between Brockham and Gadbroke.

Orobanche major. Summit of the hill named Dorking’s Glory (1823).

Antirrhinum Orontium. Frequent in the Weald.

Pedicularis palustris. Leith Hill.

Veronica montana. Woods about Boar and Leith Hills.

Salvia verbenaca. Near Leatherhead.

Scutellaria minor. Abundant on Leith Hill.

Nepeta Cataria. Sidlow Bridge. Road to Buckland.

Ajuga Chamaepitys. Brockham Hill, and between Leatherhead and Headley.

Anagallis tenella. Leith Hill abundantly.

Littorella lacustris. New Pond on Earlswood Common.

Euphorbia stricta. By the Mole near Betchworth Park Mill, sparingly (1845). Fields near Woolver Farm, in the Weald. Field adjoining Earlswood Common. Field at the foot of Boar Hill, near Coldharbour Lane. I have some difficulty in believing the identity of this plant with the hairy Euphorbia platyphylla.

Orchis Morio. Meadows about Headley, Mickleham, and Reigate occasionally.

Aceras anthropophora. Profusely on Colley and Buckland Hills, and between Box Hill and Juniper Hill.

Ophrys apifera. Copiously in the same localities as the last, and on the lower slopes of the hills near Quarry Farm.

Ophrys muscifera. Same localities, and chalk hills near Godstone.

Epipactis latifolia. Copse to the right of the Merstham Road, beyond Wray Common. Box Hill.

Epipactis purpurata. Grove near Merstham Church, sparingly.

Allium ursinum. Woods of Marden Park most profusely.

Actinocarpus Damasonium. Ponds on Headley and Walton Heaths in abundance.

Butomus umbellatus. In the Mill-pond at Dorking; and in the bed of the Mole between Mickleham and Leatherhead, abundant.

Triglochin palustre. In ditches near the rise of water at Leatherhead.

Lemna trisulca. Pool in a dense thicket a little beyond the Merstham ponds.

Lemna gibba. In Dorking Mill-pond so abundantly as to be piled up in heaps on the edge.

Scirpus setaceus. Earlswood Common. Ravines of Leith Hill.

Carex paniculata. In boggy shaws at Wonham Mill.

Carex stellulata. Leith Hill.

Carex flava. Broadmoor.

Carex pendula. Boggy wood between Reigate Heath and the Buckland Road. Most abundant at the foot of the chalk hills near Oxted.

Carex Pseudo-cyperus. In the pond of Gatton Park (1826 or 1827).

Triodia decumbens. Reigate Heath. Broadmoor. Abundant on the summit of Leith Hill.

Molinia caerulea. Broadmoor.

Nardus stricta. Leith Hill.

Equisetum fluviatile. Profusely by the Merstham Road and in Gatton Park.

Lastrea Oreopteris. Leith Hill, copiously; and about the roots of Boar Hill towards Coldharbour Lane.

Polystichum aculeatum and angulare. Lanes in the valley of Nutfield Marsh. In the swampy wood north of Coldharbour, already mentioned.

Athyrium Filix-foemina. Leith Hill, abundantly. Reigate Heath. Thicket near Littleton. Hedges by the Buckland Road. Swampy wood north of Coldharbour.

Asplenium Trichomanes. On trunks of trees near Betchworth.

Blechnum boreale. Leith Hill, Boar Hill, etc., copiously.

Osmunda regalis. Foot of Boar Hill (north side). In the swampy wood north of Coldharbour, forming large and tall thickets visible at a great distance.

Note on West Surrey Plants

JULY 1856

if you print my Plantae Rariores of North-western Surrey,¹ it may be as well to add Cirsium anglicum (Carduus pratensis), which has two good habitats in the district; and also (though belonging to its extreme point) that decidedly western plant Scilla autumnalis, which I have seen growing on Moulsey Hurst, where it grew in Ray’s time.²

Reigate Plants

OCTOBER 1856

this list of plants is in a great degree superseded by the new Reigate Flora, just published by Mr. Brewer;¹ which, as might be expected, contains most of the plants which I have mentioned, with many others which I had not detected. I had however the good fortune of finding some which have escaped even Mr. Brewer. Of one of these (Catabrosa aquatica) I have observed a new station, much nearer to Reigate, even since the publication of Mr. Brewer’s work, viz. in the swamp at Whiggey, on the west side of the Brighton road, at a very short distance from the stile: so difficult is it to exhaust this rich botanical district, in which I do not believe there is anywhere a square quarter of a mile not containing one or several rare plants.

Might I take the liberty of asking Mr. Brewer, through your journal, whether Alchemilla vulgaris is set down as growing in “damp meadows on the banks of the Mole, and in other places in the neighbourhood of Dorking,”² from his own observation, or on the authority of Luxford’s Flora?³ I have always suspected a mistake on the part of Mr. Luxford’s informant, not as to the plant, but the locality, as I can hardly imagine that a plant so conspicuous, and incapable of being mistaken for any other, can exist in some abundance in that neighbourhood without my having seen it in thirty-five years’ botanical knowledge of the locality.

Permit me to ask a similar question respecting Carex teretiuscula near Whiggey, which has been suspected to be an error of Mr. Luxford.⁴

Mr. Brewer locates Carex ovalis in “damp situations on Reigate Heath and Redhill.”⁵ To these may be added Earlswood Common, which is at present covered with it.

In my list I omitted one of the habitats of Sagittaria sagittifolia—near the Merstham ponds.

Has any of your correspondents attended to Veronica with the variegated corolla of V. agrestis and the large flower of V. Chamaedrys? It is not very uncommon in Surrey, and I last year observed it in great abundance in cornfields on the heights overtopping Smitham bottom, between Croydon and Beggar’s Bush. Is this a permanent variety of agrestis? and is it not often mistaken for V. Buxbaumii, reports of which are now starting up everywhere, though wanting not only the uniformly blue colour of Buxbaumii, but the broadly divergent lobes of the fruit?

Plants Growing on and near Blackheath

APRIL 1857

torilis nodosa.—On the grassy slope above Hyde Vale.

Trifolium striatum.—Very abundantly along the road crossing the heath diagonally towards Morden College, and the prolongation of that road into Blackheath Park (June, 1856).

Trifolium (or Trigonella) ornithopodioides.—Very scantily by the same road, in front of the Paragon, in 1853. Not seen since; but Blackheath being one of the recorded stations of this small inconspicuous plant, it probably still exists on some other part of the heath.

Tragopogon porrifolius.—In some abundance in a corner of a meadow by the prolongation (already mentioned) of the diagonal road into Blackheath Park. The plant has been completely established in the locality for some years past. There is nothing to show its origin; but it is to be feared that the progress of building will shortly root it out.

Senecio viscosus.—A weed on the glebe-land at Lee, in profusion (1851). The land is now covered with houses, but the plant has survived this peril, being still found in considerable quantity by the roadside.

Late (Early?) Flowering Plants: Plants in Flower in the District of Eltham and Chiselhurst, in November, 1857

JANUARY 1858

In flower in December:

The following may be added to the list of December flowering plants:

All of these which are not in the list for November (except perhaps Euphorbia exigua) are freshly come out.

Hutchinsia Petraea

MAY 1858

plants in bloom on March 29: Anemone nemorosa, Veronica hederaefolia, Nepeta Glechoma, Salix Caprea, and Taxus baccata. Hutchinsia is very fine and abundant in the old place.

Leucojum Aestivum

JULY 1858

i have seldom enjoyed a greater botanical pleasure than in finding yesterday, for the first time, the Leucojum in the Plumstead Marshes. I had always missed it hitherto by seeking for it above Greenwich, according to the fallacious indication (no doubt true once) of Curtis and Smith.¹ I was delighted to see that in two different swamps, both already well known to me, this beautiful plant exists in such profusion that all the botanists in England would scarcely exhaust it; and as both places are within the practising-ground of the Arsenal, they are not likely to be drained and built over.

Clifton Plants

JULY 1858

i have just returned from Bristol, where I found Arabis stricta, Trinia vulgaris, Potentilla verna, Geranium sanguineum, Convallaria Polygonatum, the last not yet in flower.

Plants on Sherborn Sands, Blackheath, and Other Stations

SEPTEMBER 1858

. . . i foundElymus abundant about Sherborn Sands, which, it may be new to you to hear, are now shut up; but the key can be had for asking for, without the bore of an attendant. I have investigated the corner of Blackheath, and soon sighted Geranium pratense. Being thus satisfied that I was in the right place, I sought and found, among a profusion of Trifolium striatum and minus, three Medicagines, being lupulina, maculata, and another, prostrate, with spinous fruit and unstained leaves. This last could not be minima, as it was far from having entire stipules; but on comparing it with undoubted specimens of maculata, though I could find no difference in the fruit, I flattered myself that there was somewhat more of denticulation on the stipules, and that it might be denticulata. But alas! next day I found others exactly like, except that they had no more denticulation, and here and there a trace of stain on the leaves. On the whole, I fear this is not the denticulata of foreign botanists, or else, as you surmise, theirs does not differ from maculata. I do not think there are any other Medicagines in the locality this year.

I see in British Plants you date the discovery of L. Martagon in Headley Copse from 1840.¹ If so, I can claim earlier discovery, as I have known it there from 1826. For a year or two it puzzled me grievously, as I dared not think it could be Martagon; but about 1829 I found it in flower, and, I believe, wrote to Sir W. Hooker about it; but he, as you know, repudiated it as a British plant.² I should like to know if I was also the first to notice Impatiens fulva. I found it below the bridge at Albury, in 1822, but mistook it for Noli-me-tangere. Apropos, I searched last Monday the skirts of Weston Wood for Arundo Epigejos, but fruitlessly. I see you consider Adiantum a maritime plant;³ I suppose therefore it is so in the British Islands; but I have never known it as such, its habitats in the Alps, Italy, etc., being those of Scolopendrium,—damp walls, vaults, very shady and moist ruins, the spray of waterfalls, etc., and in no way affecting maritime localities.

Some Derbyshire Plants

SEPTEMBER 1858

. . . i have been out for a few days, with some botanical results. You have probably found, like myself, that when one goes to a neighbourhood known for rare plants one seldom finds those one seeks for: one finds others which one did not expect. It has not so happened with me this time, for during a day at Matlock I found one of the two special rarities of that place, Thlaspi virens, Bab. (alpestre, Sm.), still not entirely out of flower; and I have plenty for you as well as myself, if you would like to have any. The other plants worth mentioning which I found at Matlock were Arenaria verna, still spangling the hillsides with its blossoms; Cardamine impatiens, plentiful; Convallaria majalis, Arabis hirsuta, Campanulalatifolia, and Geranium pratense, all in abundance: its usual northern substitute, G. sylvaticum, I did not see.

Other plants in Derbyshire:—Silene nutans, Dovedale and Wyedale; Vaccinium Vitis-idaea, Chatsworth; Rosa villosa and R. tomentosa, Monsal Dale and its vicinity; Myrrhus odorata, Millersdale; also, I believe, between Castleton and Hathersage; Cochlearia officinalis and Thalictrum flexuosum (or rather, perhaps, T. calcareum), abundant on rocks above Castleton; Viola lutea (which I prefer calling, with De Candolle, V. sudetica,¹ as it has a blue variety), on all mountains and hills near Castleton; the blue variety occasionally; Polypodium calcareum, in clefts of rocks between Bakewell and Buxton; Cystopteris fragilis, in similar situations there, and near Castleton; Carduus heterophyllus, plentiful in wet ground by the river Wye, near Cowdale turnpike, two miles from Buxton, on the Bakewell Road; Polemonium coeruleum, on rocks by the same road, one mile from Buxton, but so difficult to be got at that I only secured one specimen. . . .—July 30th, 1858. I will send Silene along with Thalictrum. My specimens are not from Dovedale, though I saw the plant there, but from Wyedale, about a mile above Ashford, near Bakewell. The leaf of the Viola from New Brighton is very much like that of some specimens I brought from Italy under the name of V. montana or Ruppii, both of which are considered forms of canina. . . .—Among the Derbyshire plants which I saw I omitted Allium vineale, near Matlock (at the very top of the High Tor), and Saxifraga hypnoides, in various places, but always much past flower, even in places where Cardamine pratensis was still flowering.

Linaria Purpurea

SEPTEMBER 1858

touching the murality of Linaria purpurea, the only two places where I have seen it undoubtedly wild were cornfields: one near Frimley, in Surrey, in the large cornfield noted by Mr. Watson as a station of that thumping plant Arnoseris pusilla;¹ the other was on the Mont des Alouettes, a richly cultivated eminence in La Vendée, along with Lathyrus angulatus, a plant which will probably some day find its way here as an agrarian plant. The exact similarity of the habitat in these two cases satisfied me that L. purpurea has as much right to be considered a British as a French plant.

Faversham Plants

OCTOBER 1858

. . . i have made my projected excursion to Faversham, and have been rewarded by finding Peucedanum in the very place mentioned in Smith’s English Flora,¹ a very little way out of the town, on the east bank of the river or creek which descends from it to the sea. It is so abundant as to be in no danger of extirpation, and, as you have never been there, it is worth while going to see it. The other plants I found in that neighbourhood are Calamintha Nepeta, almost as profusely as you have described your having found it in Essex;²Verbascum Lychnitis on a wall, and Hippuris vulgaris. I next went to the Isle of Sheppey, where I enriched myself with Inula crithmoides, a plant I never before saw growing. I saw also Spartina stricta, and I should like to consult you on an erect Chenopodiaceous plant. I cannot even tell if it is an Atriplex or a Chenopodium. The enlarged calyx has not yet appeared, but perhaps it is not sufficiently advanced, though it sheds small, flat, dark-coloured seeds in abundance. When passing Strood, I went down to the old place by the river and found Lepturus, which I never happened to find in England before. The place is sadly cut up, not only by the railway, but still worse by brickmaking: however, there is still abundance of all the plants that used to be there—even Glaux maritima—except Juncus maritimus, which I did not see. I shall be happy to send you specimens of Peucedanum or Inula.

Lepidium Ruderale

APRIL 1859

lepidium ruderale, stated in the Report of the Greenwich Natural History Society¹ to have been growing, last year, in the lane which goes out of the south-west corner of Kidbrook Common, is there in profusion this year also; and so many-seeded a plant having found a locality propitious to it, has every chance of remaining there till the botanist’s crack of doom, “a trowell ticking against a brick.”²

Mentha Pulegium, another plant in the Society’s general list, is flourishing round a small pond on the eastern edge of Chiselhurst Common.

I have had a day in Tilgate Forest, and have succeeded in finding Cicendia. As it was not abundant, I was sparing of it.

Wallflower Growing on the Living Rock

MAY 1860

it seems to be noticed as remarkable (see Phytologist, vol. iv, p. 6) that Mr. Sim found Cheiranthus Cheiri on the living rock.¹ It grows profusely on the precipitous part of St. Vincent’s Rock, at the end next Bristol.

Spring Flowers of the South of Europe: Remarks on Some of the Spring Flowers of the South of Europe, and on Their Representatives in the British Isles

OCTOBER 1860

the english botanist who has resided or travelled in the countries of southern Europe, and has filled his herbarium with the treasures of their copious Flora, must often have thought, with almost envious regret, of the comparative poverty of our own. But as we have no power to change the lot which in this matter the general arrangements of Nature have assigned to us, we shall do well to look at its brighter side, and find matter for congratulation in some points of superiority which our indigenous Flora, meagre though it be in comparison with those of France and Italy, nevertheless possesses over the richest regions of the basin of the Mediterranean. Two of these points have particularly impressed me in the course of a tolerably extensive wandering over the south of Europe, and I will communicate them here for the benefit of those who may not already have adverted to them.

The first is our pre-eminence in Ferns. Though the species of Phaenogamous plants in (for instance) the French Flora, outnumber ours almost in the ratio of four to one, the species of Ferns in the two countries are about equally numerous, and indeed nearly identical. In the excellent Flora of MM. Grenier and Godron the only Ferns which are not (under the same or some other name) included in the fourth edition of Mr. Babington’s Manual, are two Nothoclaenae, N. Marantae and vellea (the last found only in Corsica), Pteris cretica (also confined to Corsica), Cheilanthes odora, and Scolopendrium Hemionitis.¹ Two more, Ophioglossum lusitanicum and Grammitis leptophylla, are, as British plants, limited to the Channel Islands. On the other hand, Lastrea Foenisecii, Hymenophyllum Wilsoni, and Trichomanes radicans, among the most precious of our ferny treasures, have not hitherto been discovered in France. We are thus scarcely outnumbered in species of Ferns by the whole of France, Corsica included. But when we compare this country, not with all France, but with the part of it which in most branches of botany we have greatest reason to envy,—the Mediterranean provinces,—we find that they, in this particular department, have cause to envy us, their powerful sun and dry atmosphere, to which they owe their vegetable riches, being unfavourable to the growth of nearly all the more beautiful Ferns. It is only the damper, Atlantic provinces of France, the west and north-west, which offer any parallel in this particular to our green commons and moist hedgesides. Our numerous Lastreas, our Lady-Fern, our Polystichums, our Blechnum, our Osmunda, in the true South are scarcely to be met with out of the mountains. Our Sussex Hymenophyllum, except an indication in Corsica, is known as a French plant solely in Brittany. Even our common Brake, the Pteris aquilina, is rarely met with in the plains of the Mediterranean region. The only Ferns which are at all widely diffused in that portion of France, are the Ceterach, which, as in our western counties, abounds on walls and rocks; the commoner Aspleniums (Trichomanes, Ruta-muraria, and Adiantum-nigrum), the universal Polypodium vulgare, and, most beautiful of all, the Maidenhair, Adiantum Capillus-Veneris, which haunts the spray of falling water, and lines all cavities which combine dampness with depth of shade. Here, then, is one of the loveliest families of the Vegetable Kingdom, one of those which by their verdure, grace, and conspicuousness, and by their abundance in climates suited to them, do most to beautify the face of nature, and in which the opulent South cannot be for a moment compared in wealth with our modest northern latitudes.

Another advantage which we possess, and which has not perhaps been so much remarked upon, is our striking superiority over the South, considered generally, in the flowery beauty of our spring. We are indeed greatly surpassed in the mere number of species which flower at that, as at every other season. But the multitude and splendour of gregarious flowering plants which constitute the floral brilliancy of the South, and to which our mild summer can show nothing comparable, does not really begin until the Cisti are in bloom. Nearly the whole glory of an English April and May is derived from plants which, universal with us, are scarcely, or not at all, known in the South, except as mountain plants. We may count on our fingers the few ornaments of our spring which are common to us with the Mediterranean provinces of France. They possess the Celandine and the Sweet Violet in abundance. They have our Daisy, and our three common Buttercups, R. repens, R. acris, and R. bulbosus. Cardamine pratensis is found, but not, as with us, in almost every wood or hedge; only in irrigated meadows and by the sides of streams. Our common Symphytum abounds, and so does the common Polygala; and, best of all, the Blackthorn and the Whitethorn are as much at home in their hedges and thickets as in ours. Now, however, I am at the end of the list. I do not believe I have omitted anything of importance. On the other hand, mark the catalogue of our spring plants which (except in the mountains, or in some very peculiar localities) do not grow in the southern countries of Europe.

Of wood plants they have neither our Wood Anemone (A. nemorosa), nor our Wood Sorrel (Oxalis Acetosella), nor our Woodruff (Asperula odorata), nor our Primrose (Primula vulgaris), nor our Hyacinth (Endymion nutans), nor our Lily-of-the-valley (Convallaria majalis), nor the graceful Adoxa Moschatellina, nor the beautiful Allium ursinum. Of meadow plants they want the Cowslip (Primula veris), the Daffodil (Narcissus Pseudo-narcissus), the Marsh Marigold (Caltha palustris), and both our early Orchides, O. mascula and O. Morio. Of the plants which adorn our hedges and banks, they have neither the Wood Violet (V. canina, or V. sylvatica), the wild Strawberry (Fragaria vesca), the delicate Ranunculus auricomus, the elegant white Potentilla Fragariastrum, the starry Stellaria Holostea, the fragrant Ground-ivy (Nepeta Glechoma), the cheerful Mercurialis perennis, nor the bright-eyed Germander Speedwell (Veronica Chamaedrys). There are but few of our water plants which flower in spring, but they want the loveliest of these, Hottonia palustris. Of early heath plants they have neither our Bilberry (Vaccinium Myrtillus), nor our brightly coloured Pedicularis sylvatica. Among flowering trees they have not at all, or but rarely, either the Crab-apple (Pyrus Malus) or the splendid White Beam-tree of our chalk-hills, the Pyrus Aria. A still greater deficiency is the absence of the two plants which by their masses of deep yellow, convert many of our spring landscapes into the likeness of Turner’s pictures—the Furze (Ulex europaeus) and Broom (Sarothamnus scoparius). The former they do not possess at all, the latter nowhere in the plains, except occasionally about the roots of the mountain ranges.

It will be said, if they have not these plants, they have equivalents: and this is true, but the equivalents are seldom equally beautiful, and scarcely ever so abundant and so universal. The case of the Anemones is one of the most favourable which can be cited. The equivalent of Anemone nemorosa in central Italy is A. apennina, one of the doubtful plants of our Flora; and this is certainly as beautiful and nearly as abundant, where it prevails, as A. nemorosa, but it prevails only in a limited range. In southern Italy the place is occupied by the starlike A. hortensis. But neither of these is found, except as a rarity, in the south of France. The blue and red Anemone of our gardens, A. coronaria, is the most widely diffused of all the Anemones of the South, and in the places where it is most abundant, it is one of the most gorgeous flowers of the year. But this, though commoner than the two others, is but partially distributed in Mediterranean France. The substitutes for our Broom and Furze are much more inadequate. There is a small Furze, Ulex provincialis, (parviflorus of Grenier and Godron,)² extremely local in its distribution, neither so large nor so beautiful as our dwarf Furze, and which can at most be allowed to pair off with Genista anglica. In almost every part of Europe, however, there is some prickly Leguminous plant, which in early spring colours the landscape with its yellow blossoms. In Sicily it is Calycotome spinosa, formerly a Cytisus. In the south of France and the neighbouring provinces of Spain, it is Genista Scorpius, a low bush, whose thorny branches, spreading on every side, are very rough to handle. Later in the year those regions are dotted over with the stately and powerfully fragrant Spartium junceum, the Spanish Broom of our gardens; but this is a summer ornament, a plant of the Cistine period. Still later the Genista tinctoria displays itself with a beauty and luxuriance far greater than in our colder climate. Advancing from the plains to the mountain regions of the Cevennes and the eastern Pyrenees, and leaving the Spartium junceum at their foot, we come first upon the English Broom in the lower zone of the mountains, among the Chestnut and Beech woods; then, above these, another Broom, more bushy, tougher, coarser, but still beautiful, Sarothamnus purgans. All these plants are highly gregarious, and colour great spaces of country in a similar manner to our Furze and Broom; but, if we except S. junceum, they are far inferior. Not one of them has either the height, the size of flowers, the delicate enamel-like polish of corolla, nor combines so rich a verdure with its golden inflorescence, as those matchless ornaments of our spring.

The Narcissi are perhaps the greatest riches of the vernal meadows in the South. The Daffodil is indeed absent, but N. poeticus is frequent, though nowhere but in the mountains have I seen it in any profusion: the meadows of the Pyrenees are positively white with its blossoms. Some of the many-flowered species of this genus are met with in the plains; in some localities N. Tazetta is frequent; the gorgeous N. stellatus, or orientalis, is found in others; and there is a Narcissus near Naples—probably N. serotinus—in flower all the winter, and with which I have seen the plain of Paestum quite covered in February. All these, however, are very local. Veronica Teucrium comes near in beauty to V. Chamaedrys, but is scarcely equal to it, and not nearly so universal. Oxalis corniculata (itself a British plant) is a poor substitute for Oxalis Acetosella; while, for the Primrose, Cowslip, Hyacinth, Woodruff, and Lily-of-the-valley, there is no equivalent at all. When we consider the exquisite beauty of all these, and the immense abundance of the three first in almost all neighbourhoods, and of the two last in some, the assertion will not appear paradoxical that the South, with all its number and variety of species, is on the whole poorer in those flowering plants which make spring beautiful, than our otherwise less favoured botanical region of the earth.

In what precedes, I have been speaking of the south of Europe generally. But there are particular places in it which, from local circumstances, combine much of the character of northern vegetation with that of the more sunny regions which surround them, and these places are the paradise of the botanist, as they are of the lover of Nature. I will endeavour to give an account of one of these, and will begin by describing its situation, since this determines the main peculiarities of its botanical character, and the richest Flora is almost always found among the most splendid scenery.

Whoever has been at Rome is familiar with at least the appearance of the group of noble though not very lofty mountains (for, indeed, it is visible from many streets of the city,) which stands isolated at some distance from the sea on one side, and from the mountain barrier of the Campagna on the other, and is the delight of painters by the aerial purple tint with which it fills up one-half of the southern side of the landscape. Almost all the part of these mountains which is visible from Rome is clothed with thick forests, but nearly their whole base on the northern and western sides is studded, at a small elevation above the plain, with a succession of small towns which, and their neighbourhood, are the resort of the richer Romans and resident foreigners during the unhealthy season. Omitting Frascati and other places which face to the north, the western base is occupied by Albano, La Riccia, and Gensano: Albano, which forms the angular point, being alone visible from Rome. Both in scenery and in vegetation this place, more, perhaps, than any other in Italy, combines the peculiar character and features of southern Europe with a large share of those of England. Its elevation is sufficient to command the whole breadth of the Campagna, and a considerable space of sea beyond. The view from the western side of the town has the solemn, though not sombre, but cheerful, stateliness characteristic of Italian landscape, while on the land side the forests range from the summits of the mountains to the very border of the town, and on the boundary which separates the two regions, an avenue of full-grown forest trees, so rare in most parts of the Continent, stretches along the whole length of the winding road leading from Albano to the beautiful village of Castel Gandolfo, situated on the rim of the crater which holds the blue volcanic lake of Albano. Beyond Castel Gandolfo are grassy downs, which combine with the forest to produce the likeness of verdant England in the centre of Italy, and the resemblance extends to botany as well as to scenery. The spring Flora of this region is of an almost English character, though the particular species are mostly such as are either rare, or do not grow at all in England. On the downs of Castel Gandolfo are found Hesperis (now Arabis) verna, with its flower resembling Virginia Stock, and one of the most graceful of the Irides, I. tuberosa. Along the circuit of the lake, Lunaria biennis, the “Honesty” of our cottage-gardens, exhibits its lilac, cross-like flowers, and its large, flat, almost nummular, pods. Nearer to the town, Lithospermum purpureocoeruleum puts forth its bright, metallic-looking blossoms. The woods abound with the yellow Anemone ranunculoides; the light-blue Scilla bifolia, with its hyacinth-like leaves; Pulmonaria officinalis, another plant of cottage-gardens, and indigenous in England, with its flowers of various hues on the same stalk, and its broadly-spotted leaves; the snowy Allium pendulinum; the rarer of our two species of Solomon’s-seal (Convallaria multiflora); one of the smaller Aristolochiae (A. longa); the four-whorled and delicate-leaved Asperula taurina, a plant of the Alps; and the smaller of the two English Symphyta, S. tuberosum. Further on in the woods, towards La Riccia, we meet with Narcissus poeticus. Further still, near Gensano, we come upon the Bladder-nut of our shrubberies, Staphylea pinnata; Dentaria bulbifera, one of the finest of our rarer indigenous plants; and the blue Iris of our gardens, I. germanica. If we would ascend the highest member of the mountain-group, the Monte Cavo, we must make the circuit of the north flank of the mountains by Marino, on the edge of the Alban Lake, and Rocca di Papa, a picturesque village in the hollow mountain-side, from which we climb through woods abounding in Galanthus nivalis and Corydalis cava, to that summit which was the arx of Jupiter Latialis, and to which the thirty Latian cities ascended in solemn procession to offer their annual sacrifice. The place is now occupied by a convent, under the wall of which I gathered Ornithogalum nutans, and from its neighbourhood I enjoyed a panoramic view, surely the most glorious, in its combination of natural beauty and grandeur of historical recollections, to be found anywhere on earth.

The eye ranged from Terracina on one side to Veii on the other, and beyond Veii to the hills of Sutrium and Nepete, once covered by the Ciminian forests, then deemed an impenetrable barrier between the interior of Etruria and Rome. Below my feet, the Alban mountain, with all its forest-covered folds, and in one of them the dark-blue lake of Nemi: that of Albano, I think, was invisible. To the north, in the dim distance, the Eternal City; to the west, the eternal sea; for eastern boundary, the long line of Sabine mountains, from Soracte, past Tibur, and away towards Praeneste. The range then passed behind the Alban group, and became invisible, but reappeared to the south-east as the mountain-crescent of Cora and Pometia, enclosing between its horns the Pontine marshes, which lay spread out below as far as the sea-line, extending east and west, from Terracina in the bay of Fondi, the Volscian Anxur, to the angle of the coast where rises suddenly, between the marshes and the sea, the mountain promontory of Circeii, celebrated alike in history and in fable. Within the space visible from this one point the destinies of the human race were decided. It took the Romans nearly five hundred years to vanquish and incorporate the warlike tribes who inhabited that narrow tract, but this being accomplished, two hundred more sufficed them to complete the conquest of the world.

Botany of Spain. A Few Days’ Botanizing in the North-Eastern Provinces of Spain, in April and May, 1860

AUGUST 1861-FEBRUARY 1862

No. I.

Catalonia

there is hardly any country inEurope whose floral treasures are less known to botanists than those of Spain. That country has produced few indigenous botanists. She possesses, practically speaking, no local Flora; the only one known to Europe being the old, rare, and costly work of Cavanilles, in which, along with such of the native plants as were known in his time, descriptions and figures are given of the American and other exotics cultivated in the Madrid Botanical Garden.¹ There is another book, which the present writer had never heard of, but which he saw on a bookstall at Barcelona; a Flora of Spain, bearing a date soon after the middle of the last century, in which the names given to species are Linnaean, but the genera are arranged on the simple and primitive plan of alphabetical order.² M. Boissier, to whom the botany of the Mediterranean basin is so much indebted, has made excursions in several parts of Spain, the botanical results of which have been published.³ And this is nearly all which has been done for Spanish botany. Yet the country is one of the most largely endowed in our quarter of the globe, with the conditions on which variety of indigenous vegetation depends. It reaches further south than any country in Europe; the rock of Gibraltar being some fifty miles nearer to the Equator than the most southern promontories of Sicily or Greece. The low latitude of the northern provinces, compared with England, Germany, and the greater part of France, is more than compensated by their mountainous character, which renders their vegetation a copious sample of all northern climates, to the Arctic inclusive. Modern investigation has shown that there is as marked a difference between the western and eastern Floras, as between the northern and southern; and of this distribution also, both branches are fully represented in the Peninsula. Its northern and western coasts, especially if we include Portugal, are the typical example of the western or Atlantic Flora; while the dry eastern districts, from the Pyrenees to Carthagena (and no doubt the south coast also), belong in all respects to the Mediterranean portion of the eastern botanical region. Of soils there are all varieties, from the richest alluvion to the barest granitic or calcareous rock; and the proportion of waste is probably unequalled in any European country, Greece and Turkey excepted.

That a country with these attractions to botanists, should have been so little explored by them, is an effect, doubtless, of the same causes which have made, until lately, the resort of travellers thither, for any but commercial purposes, comparatively infrequent; the disturbed state of the country through civil war, the danger from banditti, and the absence of the facilities for travelling afforded by roads, inns, and means of conveyance. The first two of these hindrances have completely, and, it is to be hoped, permanently disappeared. Civil wars are ended, and brigands are now never heard of. The remaining difficulties are in a course of rapid removal. Security and freedom—for in spite of the imperfections of her institutions and of her administration, Spain is a free country—are producing their natural fruits. The impulse given to the national mind by political emancipation; the freedom of speaking and printing which has been enjoyed for nearly a generation; the downfall of the Inquisition, and the decline of the great enemy of modern ideas, the Catholic hierarchy (for Spain, though still a Catholic, is no longer a priest-ridden country) have brought that fine people once more into the full current of European civilization. In the material department of national improvement, Spain is rapidly recovering her lost ground. Instead of the desolate and neglected appearance which we are taught to expect, every province which I visited, except the naturally arid and unfertile plain of Aragon, wore the appearance of diligent and careful agriculture, and not unfrequently of active and successful manufacturing industry. The soil of Spain will soon be completely intersected by railroads. The lines from Madrid to Valencia and Alicante, from Cadiz through Xeres and Seville to Cordova, are open throughout. Of those from Madrid to the French frontier, at both extremities of the Pyrenean chain, large portions have been opened, as well as many shorter and branch railways. The common roads are now numerous, and some of them good. The diligences surprise one by their number. Their rapidity was already noted at a time when the state of the road seemed hardly compatible with that quality. But what most surpassed my expectation was the inns. My experience is indeed limited to a few provinces. There, however, they are not only, in the great towns, very tolerable, but even in small roadside places we found them equal to the small country inns of France. The hotels of Madrid, indeed, cannot be compared to those of the great towns of France, and are inferior to those of some places in Spain itself; but Madrid, except in being the seat of the government and Court, is the capital of Castile rather than of Spain. At Barcelona, Valencia, and Zaragoza, there are hotels about on a par with those of provincial towns of secondary rank in France; while not only at places like Tarragona or Guadalaxara, but even at an insignificant village like Alcolea, on the plateau of Castile, a hamlet distinguished by nothing but by being one of the stopping-places of the diligences from Madrid to Zaragoza, we found a roadside inn at which it was possible to sleep and even to make some stay in comfort. I should not indeed advise any one to travel in these provinces in the months of August and September, both on account of the heat, and of the plague of insects which might at that season be expected. But these months are later or earlier than a botanist in the south of Europe has any inducement to travel. Botanists, walking tourists, and all who are accustomed to penetrate into the nooks and corners of a country, will find Spain, in the present day, no more closed to them than any other part of Europe.

I should not presume to offer as worthy of attention, such fragmentary notices as I could pick up in a mere run through any country whose botany was known, and which possessed local Floras. Even as regards Spain, my passing observations have little of the value which would belong to those of a profound botanist. My only qualifications are delight in the subject, and some acquaintance with a considerable portion of the general Flora of Southern Europe. I have therefore to apologize beforehand for many deficiencies, and doubtless for some errors. It requires a really good botanist to investigate the plants of a country, with a universal “Species Plantarum” for his sole guide: neither can a traveller carry about with him De Candolle’s Prodromus and Kunth’s Enumeratio,⁴ which, moreover, even joined together, are not complete; and to determine plants by them afterwards from dried specimens, is a task of which every one knows the difficulty. The books I had with me were the Flore de France, by Grenier and Godron; Woods’ Tourist’s Flora (in which Spain is not included);⁵ and by way of a general Flora, the Compendium of Persoon,⁶ which, notwithstanding the extreme brevity and frequent want of precision of its descriptions, enabled me to determine some plants which I could not otherwise have identified. I must premise further, that the only mode of travelling in Spain (except on horseback) being by public conveyances, want of time, and of information as to halting-places, confined us for the most part to journeys from one large town to another; and the rapid pace of the diligences precluded even that common resource of Continental travelling, taking advantage of hills for pedestrian exploration of roadsides. My experience therefore of Spanish botany was mostly confined to the immediate vicinity of considerable towns. Of the intermediate spaces I saw, in general, only what could be seen from a diligence drawn by from ten to sixteen mules at full gallop, or through the windows of a railway carriage; and thus, although I passed a whole month in Spain, I had but a few days of real botanizing during that period, which extended from the middle of April to the middle of May, in an extremely backward season. It is a proof of the botanical riches of the country, that with only these opportunities and such imperfect qualifications, I can still furnish a respectable list of plants.

The province which I first visited, and of which I saw most, was Catalonia; which, both botanically and geologically, may serve as a representative of the whole north-east region of Spain. It differs from Aragon and Valencia chiefly in being more mountainous. Its northern portion is a confused heap of mountains; and all the way to Barcelona these come down to, or very near, the sea. Towards Barcelona they open out into a crescent of no great depth, leaving a semicircular plain, in the centre of which, on the sea, stands this fine city, rich in the signs of prosperous industry, and hemmed in by a girdle of populous villages as prosperous as itself. Close beside it, on a hill cultivated to the top, is the celebrated but not formidable-looking fortress of Monjuich, the scene of so many exploits in the old wars. The plain is rich and fertile, without artificial irrigation, at least in the usual Spanish manner, by canals. Such irrigational apparatus as I saw (all of which was quite close to Barcelona) consisted of those curious irrigation-towers, the work of the Saracens, which form a conspicuous, and, at first sight, a puzzling feature in the country about Palermo. The plain is crossed here and there by gullies, cut deep into the soil by the torrents of rain which must descend at certain seasons from the adjacent mountains.

The conditions of soil and climate in Catalonia, are much the same as in the Mediterranean provinces of France, and the botany accordingly is very similar. It is the country of the Olive, the Fig, the Vine, and, further south, of the spreading and shady but stiff-leaved Caruba (Ceratonia Siliqua) but not of the Orange and the Myrtle. The aloe (Agave americana), and the Prickly Pear (Cactus Opuntia) are found; but not, as in Sicily, in wild abundance, forming a great feature in the landscape. The first chiefly appears in the form of hedges (as in Roussillon); and the Cactus I did not observe further north than Tarragona. There too I first came upon the Palmetto (Chamaerops humilis), the dwarfish representative of the mighty family of Palmae; that stiff low prickly bush which half covers with its chevaux-de-frise of fan-like leaves the vast wastes of Sicily. It abounds also on the line of road from Tarragona to Valencia, and its fibres are made into a kind of matting, the production of which is part of the domestic industry of the country. The plants of the Catalonian landscape were chiefly those of the rocky calcareous wilds of Languedoc and Provence, called locally Garrigues, from the provincial name (according to M. Léonce de Lavergne) of the dwarf evergreen Oak which covers them;⁷ the Quercus coccifera, in which the Kermes insect, the European variety of the cochineal, elaborates its brilliant dye. This, and Quercus Ilex, are the principal representatives of the old Order Amentaceae. Pistacia Lentiscus, the Mastic-tree of Scripture⁸ (to my surprise I saw little of the still finer P. Terebinthus, though equally or more common in the south of France); the fragrant Tree-Heath (Erica arborea); the still more powerfully odorous woody Thyme (Thymus vulgaris), inferior in beauty, but superior in odour to our T. Serpyllum (which grows there also); that common southern plant, the Rosemary (Rosmarinus officinalis); the Spanish Broom of our gardens (Spartium junceum) with its intoxicating perfume; the prickly Broom of the south of France (Genista Scorpius), which though humbler in stature than our tall Furze, colours the landscape in spring with similar masses of brilliant yellow, while it projects its sword-like flowering branches vertically and laterally, like the dwarf autumnal Furze of our commons; these form the most conspicuous clothing of the uncultivated ground in the coast region of Catalonia. The honeyed Koniga maritima, in flower at all seasons, and especially after other flowers have disappeared, covers the ground, both waste and cultivated, to great distances from the sea; and another winter plant, Diplotaxis erucoides (which is brought into Rome by cartloads in full flower throughout January), adorns the cultivated lands with its light-grey cruciform blossoms. If to these we add several species of Cistus and Helianthemum (of which hereafter), a tolerably complete idea is given of the vegetation, as it exhibits itself at this season to an eye merely wandering over the face of the country.

To proceed to local details; the plants of Barcelona may be divided into those of the plain, and those of the crescent of low calcareous mountains which overlook it. The brightest flower of the plain, in these spring months, is Hypecoum procumbens, a Papaveraceous plant, with a flower like that of Chelidonium majus, and about as large, though the plant itself is small in comparison. It has a long, crooked pod, and its leaves are cut like those of an Erodium. Notwithstanding the name procumbens, the plant, though spreading, is erect, and grows copiously among the corn, in appearance like an agrarian Ranunculus, of greater size and finer quality than R. arvensis. I found this plant in other parts of Spain, and I had already found it near Perpignan. I will not affirm that some of it may not be H. grandiflorum, if there be any real difference between the two. I met with another undoubtedly different Hypecoum further south, which will be commemorated in its place. Of Ranunculi I noticed near Barcelona only R. bulbosus, and the aquatic but not batrachian species muricatus, allied to sceleratus, but with a fruit of a somewhat similar character to arvensis. A fine Fumaria, with large white and purple flowers (which I also saw near Perpignan), seemed to be muralis of Grenier and Godron;⁹ but those authors, I observe, have on reconsideration decided their plant to be not one species but three, none of them the true muralis of Sonder.¹⁰ The Cruciferae I noticed were those common plants of southern France, Sisymbrium irio and obtusangulum, and Lepidium Draba. Reseda Phyteuma, a plant nearly resembling odorata, but without its smell, was here, as in most parts of the south of Europe, abundant. This plant reaches so far north in France, that it might well have been looked for in England. The family Geraniaceae is represented by Erodium malachoides. Oxalis corniculata, and the brittle bush Coriaria myrtifolia, with its currant-like racemes clothing its dry-looking branches long before the leaves come out, are here common. Of Leguminous plants, the most worthy of notice is Lathyrus Ochrus, a procumbent species, with large oval leaflets, (like a greater and paler L. Aphaca,) which haunts, as in Sicily, low moist places in the alluvial ground. The place of our Lotus corniculatus is taken by another Sicilian plant, the equally yellow and not less elegant L. ornithopodioides. Another Leguminous plant, with oval leaflets and round leaf-like stipules, is Arthrolobium (formerly Ornithopus) scorpioides. Of Rosaceae, the principal is that happily ubiquitous shrub, the Hawthorn; I did not examine whether in both its forms or only in one. It is curious that the form monogyna is sometimes the only one found in a large tract of country. According to Gussone, there is no other in Sicily.¹¹ The only Potentilla I saw was P. verna, which is rather frequent. The Composites were those common in the south: Sonchus tenerrimus, like our common Sowthistle, but much more fragile and delicate; Picridium vulgare, with its urceolate flowers and hard scarious phyllaries; that ornament of banks, Urospermum Dalechampii, and the coarser U. picroides; the small Marigold, Calendula arvensis; this last is found as far north as Normandy, and I believe no botanist knows, any more than myself, why it does not grow in Kent. Who can tell why Specularia Speculum, the Venus’s Looking-glass of our gardens, comes up to the very Straits of Dover as a cornfield plant, while, though so generally cultivated in England, we never see it wild, even as an escape from culture?—or why Orlaya grandiflora, which I have gathered in cornfields between Boulogne and St. Omer, should not be found in England at all?—or why that commonest of Continental weeds, even on the sands opposite the English coast, Eryngium campestre, should be the rarest of rare plants in England, and should not spread even when introduced as a ballast plant. These secrets of vegetation will, perhaps, be some day unveiled. The only Thistles in flower near Barcelona, at this early season, were the same as in Sicily; Carduus pycnocephalus (allied to C. tenuiflorus) and the elegant Galactites tomentosa. Of Boragineae, I observed the common Borage, and a fine Echium, perhaps the violaceum of the Channel Islands, but it was not sufficiently advanced to enable me to distinguish it with perfect certainty from E. plantagineum, one of the handsomest of the tribe, which, as well as others, has been confounded under the name violaceum. The Scrophularineae were Antirrhinum Orontium; the brilliantly yellow Linaria supina; Scrophularia peregrina of Italy and Sicily; S. canina of southern and middle Europe. The genus Euphorbia was largely represented: E. Peplus and helioscopia of course; those fine plants serrata and Characias, the first common in the south of France, the second everywhere in the South (E. Cyparissias and gerardiana, so frequent in southern Europe, I did not see); but the principal Euphorbia of the plain of Barcelona is E. terracina, less striking in appearance than some of these, but more curious when examined. The calycinal glands characteristic of the genus, which in this, as in many other species, are of a crescent form, are terminated in E. terracina by a pair of setae, exactly resembling the antennae of an insect. The Monocotyledoneae which I noted were that common weed Muscari comosum, the wild original of one of the ornaments of our gardens, and Asphodelus fistulosus, the smallest European species of its genus, not general in the south of France, though not unknown there, but most plentiful here as well as in Sicily. Of Ferns, no abundance could be expected in these dry climates, but the Ceterach grew plentifully here and elsewhere, as did also the Maidenhair (Adiantum Capillus-Veneris), wherever there was local dampness and depth of shade.

The mountain Flora of Barcelona is much more copious, and as I explored it twice, at some interval of time, I can give a rather fuller account of it. Apart from their form and composition, these heights would scarcely be entitled to a more ambitious name than that of hills. The range, at least this part of it, is of small breadth, and the line of summit looks down upon a wide extent of country, rugged and rocky enough, but of little elevation, though varied with occasional eminences, among which the lofty and many-pinnacled ridge of Monserrat is supreme. The rocks of the maritime range are calcareous, like those of Bas-Languedoc and Provence, and the mountain sides are cut through by deep ravines, of which the gullies that intersect the plain are a continuation. The rocks, though in most parts thickly clothed with bushy shrubs, show few trees, except a pine-grove here and there. The species of the Pine I did not verify, but it had the aspect of P. halepensis, the common Pine of the Mediterranean provinces of France. The remaining wood was chiefly Ilex, kept low and bushy by the woodcutters. The floral treasures of this range are considerable. Leguminosae are the most abundant. Besides the thorny Genista Scorpius and the Spanish Broom, I noticed two other plants of kindred character: the Furze which fills so large a place in the winter Flora of Provence (Ulex parviflorus, or provincialis), and the thorny Cytisus, which covers Sicily in March with its yellow blossoms, Calycotome spinosa, unless I am mistaken in this last, which was not yet in flower. Of non-thorny Cytisi there were as many as three: C. candicans (Genista of some authors), one of the most elegant, and here the most flowery of this elegant genus; C. triflorus, a shrub of the height of a man, which blackens in drying, and with which all who have botanized near Naples must be familiar; and the dwarfish C. argenteus (by some called Argyrolobium linnaeanum), one of the Garrigue plants of the south of France. Anthyllis was represented by A. tetraphylla, a Palermo plant; Trifolium, by the well-named T. stellatum; Medicago by several, which, for want of sufficiently developed fruits, I did not determine, but which were apparently some of the common ones of the south of France,—M. minima, denticulata, praecox, Gerardi, orbicularis, or marginata. The commonest of the Coronillae of southern France, C. Emerus, made a large display of its loosely hung blossoms. Here, as everywhere in Spain, the Hippocrepis comosa, the charm of English chalk hills, brought pleasant remembrances of the floral beauties of Surrey and Kent, though often, doubtless, confounded with H. glauca, a plant equally common, and if specifically different, perfectly resembling comosa in habit and general appearance. The Lathyri were represented by the delicate and slender L. setifolius, and the large-flowered L. Clymenum (tenuifolius of Gussone),¹² which I have also found at Perpignan and at Palermo. Vicia presented me with V. tenuifolia of Roth,¹³ an improved likeness of V. Cracca; and the much less beautiful triflora of Tenore,¹⁴ the first plant I met with which is not a native of France. Astragalus offered a species rather insignificant in appearance, A. sesameus, a plant not unlike, at the first glance, to Bisserrula Pelecinus; and another, the commonest, but one of the most gorgeous of this splendid genus, which grows in Normandy, and ought to grow in Kent, A. monspessulanus. My Catalonian specimens were not of the usual colour, but paler, and with a mixture of yellow; a character attributed to the neighbouring A. incanus, but not, so far as I know, to any form of monspessulanus; this plant, however, seemed to possess the essential characters of the more common species. Among Leguminosae not yet in flower, I may mention two common plants of southern Europe, the bushy Dorycnium suffruticosum, with its small round heads of pale flowers, which I have known to whiten at a distance large spaces of ground; and the trefoiled Psoralea bituminosa, with its elegant flowering clusters, and long axillary peduncles.

The greatest ornaments however of these bushy hills were the Cisti, which form in some places a great part of the whole vegetation. Without reckoning Helianthemums, there were four species of Cistus proper; bushes covered all over with large and brilliant blossoms; the decumbent salviaefolius, with its milk-white cups; the erect albidus, with its grey foliage and delicate mallow-coloured flowers, larger than the largest wild Rose; the stiffish, narrow-leaved monspeliensis, with flowers rather smaller than salviaefolius, flat and wheel-like, instead of cup-shaped; and a rarer species than any of these, C. Ledon, which, with monspeliensis, by their viscous touch, and rich resinous smell, form a transition to the real European Gum Cisti, C. ladaniferus and laurifolius. The Cisti, happily for Spanish landscape, are, like the Ericae, gregarious plants, and, of all Cisti I know, none are so gregarious as C. Ledon. Near Perpignan, and on the plateau of Morières, near Avignon, it covers acres of ground. Of Corolliflorae not previously mentioned, I noticed a Verbascum, probably V. Boerhavii; the deep blue Lithospermum purpurocaeruleum, not unknown in England, and one of the most frequent as well as beautiful of the wood and thicket plants of the South in April and May; Veronica Teucrium, which vies with, if it does not surpass our beautiful Chamaedrys; that curious plant, Lavandula Stoechas, named, like several other plants, from the isles of Hyères, but tolerably general in the south of Europe; and Stachys hirta, a plant in France confined to the extreme south-eastern corner. Other plants in flower were, a rare but rather dull-looking Polygala, P. rupestris, growing in clefts of the rocks; Paronychia argentea, one of the ornaments of Sicily, carpeting the ground with its silvery inflorescence and herbage; Osyris alba, a scraggy bush of the family Eleagneae, abundant in the South, which, covered at this season with yellow blossoms, fills the air all around with a powerful fragrance like that of the Galia. At the back of the ridge, looking towards the north and north-west, I came upon plants of a decidedly English character. Euphorbia Characlas and serrata were replaced by E. amygdaloides; and I found here the first Orchid I saw in Spain, Cephalanthera ensifolia, a rare, but still a British species. Our common wild Strawberry was occasionally visible. These were nearly all the plants of interest which I saw in flower. Most of the Compositae were not yet in a state to be recognizable. The only ones in flower were Senecio vulgaris and viscosus. Inula viscosa, and Phagnalon (or Conyza) saxatile were distinguishable. The plants not in flower included several of the most characteristic shrubs of southern Europe: the gorgeous Pomegranate, the evergreen Phillyraea media, the common Arbutus (A. Unedo), and one of the most powerfully and sweetly odoriferous of European climbers, which retains its fragrance for many years in the herbarium, Smilax aspera. To these let me add the perfoliate Lonicera implexa, and another Honeysuckle, which was probably etrusca, the other common one of the South; for our Woodbine is in southern Europe a mountain plant, and our garden L. caprifolium I have seen wild only in Italy. The curious Asparagus acutifolius; Bupleurum rigidum, one of the oddest species of a genus already anomalous among Umbellifers; and Daphne Gnidium, an ornament of late summer and autumn, complete the list of my observations in the Barcelona mountains, with the exception of Monserrat, the copious botany of which I keep for a separate notice.

Many of the plants above enumerated, I afterwards met with in the same line of country further north, where another evergreen oak, the Cork tree (Quercus Suber), abounds, and its produce is an important article of commerce. Here, too, the English Broom, Sarothamnus scoparius, makes its appearance, even in the plain, at least near the foot of the mountains. Other common English plants, Stellaria Holostea, Chrysanthemum segetum, Centaurea Cyanus, are abundantly visible to the passing eye, together with Lavandula Stoechas, Cistus albidus and salviaefolius, Ulex parviflorus, Euphorbia terracina and amygdaloides, Muscari comosum, and an Ononis, probably Natrix. In the woody hills near Gerona, in the middle of May, I had a botanical walk of considerable interest. A deep shady wood of deciduous trees afforded the beautiful Geum sylvaticum (otherwise atlanticum). This, with Onobrychis supina, and the dwarfish and quaint Lithospermumapulum, I observed nowhere else in Spain. I found also (besides many of the Barcelona plants) the beautiful Allium roseum, the rush-like Aphyllanthes monspeliensis, with its large and curiously lined azure flowers, the narrow-leaved Phillyraea (P. angustifolia) of our shrubberies; a Sideritis, (I believe S. hirsuta); and a characteristically southern tree of the family Urticeae, Celtis australis, the Micocoulier of the south of France: not to mention Helleborus foetidus, Aquilegia vulgaris, Alyssum calycimum, Potentilla reptans, and sundry common Ranunculi and Helianthema.

No. II.

Tarragona, Valencia, Zaragoza [1]

the place in spain which added most to my Barcelona stock of plants, was Tarragona; a fortified town, picturesquely situated on a hill overlooking a broad space of sea from north to south, and commanding westward a wide stretch of uneven rocky ground, in which cultivation and waste are blended in varying proportions. I will not lengthen the record by speaking again of any plant mentioned in my former paper, except Dorycnium suffruticosum, Lonicera implexa, and Phagnalon saxatile, all of which I here found in flower; and except the Prickly Pear and Palmetto, which I have already mentioned that I first saw at this place. Here too was another Cistus, with large white flowers, Cistus umbellatus, a Helianthemum of some writers; and growing copiously on a wild rocky hill, the original Gladiolus of our flower-gardens, G. byzantinus, far more beautiful, to my thinking, than the spotted ones of modern introduction. This plant I had only before seen wild at Floridia, near Syracuse. It is not a plant of the French Flora, though France can boast of several species of this fine genus. The one I best know, G. communis of Bertoloni, segetum of Grenier and Godron,¹⁵ which grows profusely in the corn at Avignon and elsewhere, is of a paler colour than G. byzantinus, with petals of more unequal length, and hung more loosely together. The G. communis of the French botanists I do not know.¹⁶

But Tarragona supplied too great a harvest of botanical treasures to be catalogued wtihout some sort of arrangement. To begin, then, at the beginning, I will first mention Clematis Flammula, the decumbent though climbing species of the south of Europe; where however the more luxuriant Clematis of our own hedges and thickets is also not unfrequent. This last I do not remember seeing in Spain, except at Monserrat. Of Fumitories there were two, the parviflora, and a less common plant, with a dense oval head of dark flowers, F. spicata. The remaining Thalamiflorae which I noticed were those common garrigue Helianthemums, the white H. pilosum (allied to polifolium) and that very variable plant, the bright-yellow H. italicum; three species of Silene, S. quinquevulnera, S. hispida (I believe) of Desfontaines, recognized by the Flore de France only as a Corsican plant,¹⁷ and a third (S. turbinata), not in the French Flora at all, which will be more particularly mentioned hereafter; Althaea hirsuta, a plant rather general in the South; Erodium romanum, still more common, resembling a large-flowered E. cicutarium, without a stem; and one of the common Rues of the south of France (with the characteristic odour), Ruta angustifolia. Of Leguminosae there was still greater variety. To many of the Barcelona species were added Lotus edulis, with its thick curved pods, a plant which I had found in Sicily; and a Melilotus, I believe sulcata; the densely downy Medicago marina, the only beach plant in flower here at this period of the season; a Scorpiurus, probably the common species, S. subvillosa, though its backward condition disables me from speaking positively; and a Hippocrepis, much more curious than the comosa, H. ciliata, whose slender, jointed, crescent-shaped pods are scooped out on the inner side in bay-like, nearly circular indentations, penetrating beyond the middle of the breadth, and justifying the title of Horse-shoe Vetch. This plant was long confounded with H. multisiliquosa, L., which it seems is a different species; but those who have seen our plant side by side with H. unisiliquosa, will feel tempted to persist in giving it the contrasted name. The next in order of the plants which I noticed, is the blue Asperula arvensis. The Compositae included the common Immortelle of the garrigues, Helichrysum Stoechas; a Santolina (I believe) which I also found further south, but which I will not venture to name; the brilliant Chrysanthemum coronarium, only coming into flower; a most delicate little plant, the annual Daisy (Bellis annua), more daintily coloured but more humble-looking than even its better-known sister; and lastly, one of the most curious of the Cynareae, Leuzea conifera, not six inches high, with a flower occupying half its length, like a yellowish-white cone, with a small opening at the top. The Corolliflorae were many and interesting: the exquisitely coloured Anagallis caerulea; the splendid Convolvulus althaeoides, in size resembling C. sepium, L., in colour, C. arvensis; the creeping Echium calycinum, one of the least beautiful of its handsome tribe; our common Snapdragon, Antirrhinum majus, which here and in Languedoc is as splendid as in English flower-gardens; Linaria triphyllos, a plant of cultivated ground, and its taller but less conspicuous sister, L. simplex; one of the handsomest of the genus Orobanche, O. speciosa, in the same field as the Linaria first mentioned; Plantago Lagopus, and the rarer and more curious P. albicans; and six of the family Labiatae, being Mentha rotundifolia; the common Lavender, Lavandula Spica; that common plant of the south of Europe, Sideritis romana; Salvia clandestina (otherwise horminoides), an ally of S. verbenaca;Micromeria graeca, one of a small-leaved, wiry genus, detached from Satureia, and characteristic of the extreme south of Europe; and, last of all, the magnificent Phlomis Lychnitis, covered with a grey down all over, except the large bright-yellow flowers. This genus counts, I believe, only three European species, which are at the head of European Labiatae in the size and brilliancy combined with the multitude of their flowers. One of the species, P. Herba-venti, is widely and rather copiously branched, forming, though herbaceous, a kind of small bush; it is found at Montpellier and other places in the south of France. Our species, P. Lychnitis, has a simple stem, with great whorls of flowers, like those of the taller and still more magnificent ornament of Sicily and Greece, P. fruticosa. The Apetalae I noticed were Euphorbia flavicoma, segetalis, and Paralias (the last not yet in flower); an Urtica of the pilulifera section, possibly pilulifera itself, which I did not stop to determine; and the picturesque Passerina hirsuta, not a beach plant, but seldom or never found far from the sea, and which in February hangs in profusion from the cliffs of Bagnoli, on the approach to Pozzuoli from Naples. Of Monocotyledonous plants the handsomest I saw, except the Gladiolus, was a plant looking like a Scilla or Hyacinthus, and with small pendent flowers, of a bluish colour (if I remember right) while growing, but turning red in drying. The petals, which are united at the base, consist of three shorter and broader, alternating with and included within the same number of longer. This I decided to be Uropetalum serotinum (Lachenalia serotina of some authors). I found but one specimen. A more singular plant was an Asparagus, of which more hereafter. These, with Juncus acutus, on wet ground near the sea, and two grasses, Gastridium lendigerum and the beautiful Lamarckia aurea (which, in spite of its name, is, at least until withered, rather silvery than golden), complete the record of the best and richest herborization (that of Monserrat excepted) which I have made on Spanish soil. Properly however it was not one, but two herborizations on the same ground, at an interval of about a fortnight.

From each of the other centres at which I halted in my journey, I made but one botanizing expedition. The results however were not without interest.

The plain, well named Huerta (garden) of Valencia, has been often described. It is a rich mass of cultivation, fertilized by the elaborate system of irrigation for which it is indebted to the Moors, consisting of canals traversing the country above its level, from which large or small ramifications are carried into or along the edge of every field. The rivers, which from the shortness of their course are nowhere considerable, are so drained by the canals that in summer they may be crossed dry-shod as they approach the sea. A region of this character is seldom favourable to the botanist; and the mountains, if that name may be given to the heights which support the great plateau of Castille, are too far off to be within reach of an ordinary excursion. The wild plants therefore were chiefly those of cultivated ground, or of the damp borders of streams; of the former class, two were especially abundant and conspicuous: Allium roseum, which had delighted me on the hills of Patras and elsewhere, with its umbels of brilliant flowers; and a tall large-flowered Silene, with something of the port and colour of the elegant Lychnis Viscaria. This plant, which is not in the French Flora, I make out to be S. turbinata of Gussone.¹⁸ Of more common plants I observed Anagallis arvensis, and a frequent corn plant in eastern and southern Europe, Saponaria Vaccaria. The waterside species which I remarked were Euphorbia pilosa, a large species, in a dense greyish coat, which frequents similar situations in the valley of the Rhone, and other parts of the South; the universal Iris Pseudacorus; and a gigantic Thalictrum, which I had not the means of determining. This is a poor tale of plants for so southern a region; but after about an hour’s walk, I came to a patch of rocky ground, which, being above the region of the irrigation, had remained in the state of garrigue, or had only vines and olives growing on it, and this furnished me with plants of a different order and greater variety. Here I first saw the lurid and night-odorous Stock of English greenhouses, Matthiola tristis, a plant which also grows in Provence. The garrigue abounded with the narrow-leaved and silvery Convolvulus Cneorum, bringing reminiscences of Megara and Corinth. A Hedysarum, I believe H. humile, made its appearance in small quantity, as did the uniformly grey and downy Mercurialis tomentosa, unlike the dark-green hue of the two English species, and with its fructification not spiked but clustered or solitary. Here I again saw Hippocrepis ciliata and Smilax aspera. The decumbent Alkanna tinctoria (formerly a Lithospermum) spread out as usual its stems close to the ground, with their terminal clusters of blue flowers, and their thick covering of leaves, incrusted underneath with the dense calcareous soil in which the plant delights. In the herbarium it sometimes stains the paper with a violet dye. I found here, though in small quantity, a species not French (angustifolia, I believe), of the very southern genus Sideritis, which, by its wiry look and the spinous induration of its sepals, speaks plainly of the arid climates in which it flourishes. But the strangest plant I saw was a bushy mass of Thorns, exactly resembling a small furze-bush in winter, when without traces of leaves; until, on looking for the yellow papilionaceous blossoms, I perceived instead a profusion of small greenish hexandrous flowers, pendent on short thin footstalks from near the axillae of the wiry and thorny sprays projecting from the stem. By the aid of Persoon I identified this as a plant of Spain, and especially of this part of it, Asparagus horridus.¹⁹ It is the same which I afterwards found, in my way back, at Tarragona.

The only other noticeable plant which I saw at Valencia was the stately Asphodelus ramosus, of which I had seen at Tarragona a few roots (as I believed) still far from flowering. It does not seem to be a common plant in these parts of Spain, though widely spread in the Mediterranean region. It abounds in many parts of Languedoc and Provence, near Rome and in some other parts of Italy; and in Sicily it, together with the Palmetto, covers nearly all the uncultivated ground. I am afraid, indeed, that the meadows, celebrated by poets, from which Proserpine was carried off while gathering flowers with her attendant maidens, were in truth no other than these Asphodel wastes, which, notwithstanding the beauty of the plant, are by no means so pleasing to the eye or the mind as a real English or mountain meadow. This Asphodel is now called by French botanists A. microcarpus. It is confined to the hotter districts of Europe. There is another species or race, called by them A. subalpinus, which covers in large masses the middle regions of some of the higher Pyrenees, and it is said also of the Alps. On a superficial view this is not distinguishable from the former. A. albus is also a French species, and there is another allied to it, which has only of late become known in France itself, for it is not mentioned by De Candolle. It was seen by the present writer in its native place before the publication of the third volume of Grenier and Godron, in which it is for the first time distinguished and described.²⁰ It has been named by them A. sphaerocarpus, and I will venture to make it the subject of a short digression.

Perhaps English botanists may some day turn their steps towards a region not yet much frequented by them, but which has many claims to their notice,—the peninsula of Brittany. The tour of this province is one of the most attractive short Continental excursions which an Englishman can make. In the first place, it is about the cheapest; a consideration no less important to botanists than to others, their pursuit not being one of those which bring in a golden harvest. The inn charges, when once fairly within the peninsula, are (or were half-a-dozen years ago) less than two-thirds of the ordinary scale of travelling in France. Besides being the cheapest, this excursion is one of the most beautiful of those which are easily and quickly accessible, and its style of beauty is that which English people usually prefer. The interior resembles, more nearly than anything else on the Continent, the wilder and rockier parts of England, while the coast scenery rivals that of Cornwall. The journey also naturally combines with a visit to that corner of the British dominions so interesting to an English botanist and to a political economist, the Channel Islands. The north coast of Brittany has not, as far as I could observe, much of botanical attraction, if we except the neighbourhood of Dinan, which produces Galeopsis villosa, Gratiola officinalis, Sinapis Cheiranthus, Sedum album, reflexum, and rubens, Tragopogon porrifolius, and others. But the southern coast, from the peninsula of Penmarch to the Loire, unites the attraction of rare plants with that of its unrivalled Druidical remains. Among these last, the traveller will scarcely fail to visit those of the peninsula of Locmariaker; and if he does so, it should not be from Auray, but from Vannes, in a boat down the river, and across the gulf or inland sea known as the Mer de Morbihan. Among the numerous islands (the popular imagination reckons three hundred and sixty-five) with which the sea is studded, he will doubtless land on a small one bearing the name of Gâvr Innis, and containing one of the rarest of Druidical monuments, a chamber entirely covered in, smaller certainly than the remarkable one near Saumur, but excelling it in being subterraneous, and (what is still more important) solitary. This island is full of the Asphodel in question. I was told that it grows on several of the other islands, and that its white flowers (replaced when I saw it in June by red fruits) are the glory in spring of this marine region. The authors of the Flore de France enumerate four other localities, all in the west or west centre of France, but three of these four have a mark of interrogation attached to them by the authors.²¹

No. III.

Tarragona, Valencia, Zaragoza [2]

from valencia to madrid we travelled all the way by railroad, and had no opportunity of botanizing, except an hour’s walk at the point where the Valencia branch meets the Alicante line. This point is Almansa, in the kingdom of Murcia, and the railway-station is in the very field of battle, where the English arms sustained one of the few defeats they underwent in the war of Marlborough and Queen Anne.²² To write the name Almanza is in every way a mistake; it is spelt with and s, and that letter in Spanish is never sounded like z. The shabby-looking little country town, which I only saw from outside, is still, probably, much what it was then. The adjacent country was mostly, at this season, in a freshly-ploughed state, and my botanizing was limited to a strip of ground between two lines of cultivation. There, however, I found Adonis autumnalis, Sisymbrium Irio and Sophia, Erysimum perfoliatum, a Camelina (I believe sylvestris), Hypecoum procumbens, a single plant of another Hypecoum, H. pendulum, the curiously podded Enarthrocarpus arcuatus, and the fine dark-coloured Poppy, Roemeria hybrida. It is remarkable (and could scarcely have happened at any season but early spring) that all the plants I saw were of the three neighbouring families, Ranunculaceae, Papaveraceae, and Cruciferae.

While at Madrid I did not botanize; the time we passed there was occupied with the town itself, and especially its almost unrivalled picture-gallery, which they who have not seen are unacquainted with one of the two great schools of painting of the world. The neighbouring country is a treeless and bushless expanse of corn—a uniform green in spring, a melancholy stubble in autumn—comprising the lofty plateau of Castille, of which the monotonous swell has neither the variety of hills nor the imposingness of a real plain. It is as unpromising to the botanist as it is unattractive to the lover of nature, to whose eye everything about the capital of todas las Españas is wearisome, save at the few points from which he can look over the north edge of the plateau, across a broad valley, to the snowclad mountains of Guadarrama, by the blasts from which sentries are said to have been frozen to death at the gates of Queen Isabella’s palace.²³

My next botanizing was in a walk in the dusk near Guadalaxara, the place where the railway from Madrid towards Zaragoza at that time terminated; it has since been extended further. This little town is made imposing by the vast château of the Mendozas, a building which tells of Spain in what are called her great ages, being in reality the ages by which she was ruined. The only new plant which met my eye was Reseda undata, now identified with R. alba, a plant of our gardens, sometimes found in England as an escape from culture, to me indissolubly associated with the place where I first saw it, the ruins of Nero’s Golden House.²⁴

I was more successful at Alcolea, the small village mentioned in my former paper,²⁵ halfway between Guadalaxara and Calatayud, the first considerable town in Aragon. The plants which were here in flower, were those of a much earlier time of year, owing to the great elevation of the plateau on which, though now drawing near to its eastern boundary, we still were. Though it was the 1st of May, Genista scorpius (which near Avignon begins to flower in February) had not yet expanded its buds. Erysimum perfoliatum also, was not yet in flower. Hutchinsia petraea, the plant of St. Vincent Rocks and Eltham churchyard, was there; Potentilla verna, another Clifton plant; two Crucifers which grow near Rome and flower in March, Arabis verna and the less beautiful Calapina Corvini; another Arabis, probably ciliata; two Veronicae of the earliest spring, hederaefolia and triphyllos; an Alyssum, new to me, which I believe to be A. perusianum, a plant noted in the Flore de France, with only one habitat (in the Eastern Pyrenees);²⁶Ceratocephalus falcatus, formerly classed as a Ranunculus, whose small flower gives birth to an oval head of scythe-shaped carpels, sometimes equalling in dimensions all the rest of the plant; and last of all, abounding among the young corn, a plant of the Order Primulaceae, with a small bright flower sunk in the hollow of a very large calyx, which I did not at first see to be a lowland species of the highland genus Androsace; it is A. maxima, which I found again at Zaragoza, and the seeds of which are said in the country to be edible. Of plants not in flower I noted only a Euphorbia and the formidable Thistle Picnomon Acarna.

From Zaragoza, the prosperous capital of a backward province, noted for its glorious siege and for its two splendid cathedrals, I made a successful herborization. The immediate vicinity contains abundance both of waste and cultivated land, dry rocky garrigue, and low arable, fertilized by water tumbling in cascades from sluices in a broad canal carried along a very high embankment. Of plants already mentioned I noted Roemeria hybrida, Fumaria spicata, Mathiola tristis, Lepidium Draba, Sisymbrium obtusangulum and Irio, two Helianthema, Genista Scorpius, and I believe Calycotome spinosa, Hippocrepis ciliata and comosa, Vicia triflora, Paronychia argentea, Helichrysum Stoechas, Thymus vulgaris (a variety with a lemon scent), Plantago Lagopus and albicans, Mercurialis tomentosa, Asphodelus fistulosus, and a small variety of A. ramosus. I have hardly anywhere seen Ranunculus repens so magnificent. The following were new to me, in Spain at least:—an Adonis, I believe A. microcarpa; Papaver hybridum in profusion; the richly-coloured Glaucium corniculatum (otherwise phoeniceum), a plant also of Avignon; a cruciferous siliculose plant of dried-up appearance, not unlike in aspect to an advanced state of Alyssum campestre or calycinum, but which proved on examination to be Berteroa incana; a tall Reseda allied to lutea, I believe R. fruticulosa; to Hippocrepis ciliata was added a larger species, with pods similarly jointed and scooped out, H. unisiliquosa; the spreading Hedypnois polymorpha, with its clumsy club-like peduncles; the red-flowered and downy-coated Cynoglossum cheirifolium, one of the handsomest of its tribe; a fine dark-flowered Teucrium, not in the French Flora,—I made it out to be T. thymifolium; lastly, a tiny grass, with a round, rather prickly head, Echinaria capitata.

At Lerida my botanizing was limited to a single field, but in that small space (besides Alyssum calycinum and the beautiful Anchusa italica of our gardens, a common cornfield plant in Spain and all over southern Europe as high up as Burgundy on the east and La Vendée on the west) I found four plants which I did not see elsewhere in Spain; two species of Silene, S. conica, and the rarer, more stately, and larger-flowered S. conoidea; a less handsome, not to say ugly, Boragineous plant, Nonnea ventricosa, one of the roughest of its rough tribe, without the usual lustrous beauty of their flowers; and the rather vulgar-looking sister of an otherwise most elegant race, Malcolmia africana.

Between Lerida and Tarragona I saw from the diligence the following plants, scattered in abundance over the country:—Roemeria hybrida, Lepidium Draba, Cistus (if I mistake not) umbellatus, Ulex parviflorus, Convolvulus althaeoides, Cynoglossum cheirifolium, Mercurialis tomentosa, a Gladiolus, and the blue Aphyllanthes monspeliensis. To these I will subjoin the following, which seemed universal in the parts of Spain which I have botanically visited:—Adonis autumnalis, Lychnis vespertina, Agrostemma Githago, Vicia sativa, Scandix Pecten-Veneris, Maruta Cotula, Podospermum laciniatum, Hieracium sylvaticum, or some of the many species (or supposed species) allied to it, Anchusa italica, Lycopsis arvensis, Lithospermum arvense and officinale, Plantago Coronopus and lanceolata. And here ends Spanish botanizing, with the exception of a visit to Monserrat, and two days at the end of May in the Spanish Pyrenees, of which I will endeavour to give some account in a future number of the Phytologist.²⁷

No. IV.

Monserrat

the celebrated mountain Monserrat (which there is no good reason for writing with the French orthography, Montserrat), consists of a long range of many summits, which from their peak-like and serrated appearance, when seen from far off, might be supposed to be of slate. The greater is the surprise of the traveller when he finds on approach, that the whole mountain is composed of pudding-stone, and that the turrets and pinnacles are not pointed, but rounded. The highest summit is stated to be 3800 feet above the sea, from which its distance is not great, and the mountain is a conspicuous object from the coast road, south of Barcelona. From the northern, or rather north-eastern coast, it could also be seen for a considerable space, were not the view intercepted by intervening high ground. From the range behind Barcelona, a fine view of it may be had; but at an angle which does not give it the advantage of its entire length. It is only from the Tarragona road, at a considerable distance from Barcelona, that it can be seen spread out lengthwise in its full dimensions. On a ledge in a receding hollow (or coomb) of the mountain, nearly in the middle of its length, and seemingly about the middle of its height (though really much lower), stands the famous monastery. Like the other monasteries of Spain, once so wealthy and powerful, it is now shorn of its glories; but it is still inhabited by a few monks, though in a number disproportioned to the size and aspect of the edifice, and their hospitality is extended to travellers to the extent of lodging, but not of food; which last is supplied at a tolerable restaurant within the precincts of the convent, the utility of which establishment atones for its violation of the religio loci. The lodging in the convent itself is gratuitous; but travellers who can afford it, make a donation (also gratuitous) to the funds of the convent. The sleeping chambers, or cells, are neat, sufficiently commodious, beautifully clean, and the views from their windows magnificent. The one which I occupied looked across the hollow of the mountain, upon the splendidly wooded other horn of the crescent, then vocal with numerous nightingales. A copious spring, which issues from the mountain just outside the gateway, had, no doubt, a share in originally deciding the locality of the convent.

The easiest way to Monserrat from Barcelona is by the Manresa railway, one of the four which diverge from that city. From the railway station to the mountain there is a broad and good carriage-road, by means of which tourists and pilgrims are landed in the very yard of the convent, from that universal symbol and instrument of modern civilization, an omnibus. If this commodious mode of access makes the expedition less romantic, it does not make the place less beautiful. The prosaic vehicle winds its way up the mountain-side through, for the South, a rather dense wood, which, more or less open, according as the woodcutters have been more or less recently in operation, covers a great part of the mountain, both in its higher and lower regions. There is another mode of approach at the southern end of the mountain from the Martorell station of the Valencia railway; but on this side there is neither carriage nor road, but a mule-path only, and travellers must make their way up the mountain and along its side to the convent, either on foot or mounted. Beyond the monastery there is no road higher up; but mountain paths are not deficient. The path to the top, after a stiff climb, leads for a considerable distance along a wooded ravine hemmed in by summits of a pillar-like or sugar-loaf character. The view from the highest of these includes the greater part of Catalonia, northward to the Pyrenees, westward and southward towards the Segre and the Ebro.

I can hardly speak in sufficiently strong terms of the profusion and variety of the flowers, southern and northern, Mediterranean, subalpine, and almost alpine, which covered the mountain-side when I saw it; not always in separate regions, but often mixed together on the same spot. It is fitting to begin with the trees and shrubs, which, still more than flowers, give the general character to a landscape. The Quercus Ilex and coccifera of the South (the latter not so plentiful as in many other places) are combined with the Holly (Ilex Aquifolium) of the North. A denizen of both equally, the Box-tree (Buxus sempervirens), here attains a lofty growth. The Juniper of our chalk downs (Juniperus communis) is joined with J. phoenicea, a Southern and a garrigue plant. With Celtis australis, the Micocoulier, a Mediterranean tree, is found the Mountain Ash (Pyrus Aucuparia) of the North. Another flowering rosaceous shrub, Amelanchier vulgaris, abounds, as it usually does where there are clefts in calcareous rocks, from the stony hills of Provence to the chalk cliffs above the Seine in Normandy. The Laurustinus (Viburnum Tinus), a plant of Italy and the south of France, is side by side with another of the same genus, V. Lantana, the Wayfaring-tree of our chalk hills. Phillyrea media and Rhamnus Alaternus, natives of the garrigue, which reach English shrubberies, are accompanied by the Mastic, Pistacia Lentiscus, the Terebinth, P. Terebinthus, and the universal Hedera Helix.

But the flowers of Monserrat are more various and remarkable than the wood products. I have seen few places in the South where the vernal wood-flowers are so abundant. The blue colour is that which predominates. The lovely Hepatica, of which the pink is rare compared with the far more beautiful blue variety, glistens from under every thicket. A flower of still deeper blue, our early Polygala calcarea, helps perhaps even more to colour the mountain-side. Viola canina is in like profusion; as is also, in the barer places, the peculiarly Southern Aphyllanthes monspeliensis, a leafless plant (as the name indicates), of the Order Junceae, but which, wherever it grows, studs the ground with ornamental blue flowers, each division of the corolla marked by a midrib of a deeper blue. In the lower regions of the mountain, Linum narbonense expands its still finer and larger blue flowers, the most magnificent of their tribe. In the shady woods, our Columbine, Aquilegia vulgaris, is not unfrequent. Another of the most abundant flowers is Globularia vulgaris, a plant unknown to England (though not requiring a very Southern climate), whose round heads are also blue, though of a less beautiful tint. Another plant of the same genus, G. Alypum, is also here met with, a more decidedly Southern species, though rarer even in the South than G. vulgaris. Of flowers other than blue, one of the most plentiful—it is so indeed wherever it grows in the Pyrenees, the Cevennes, or the burning rocky wastes of the Mediterranean—is the rosy Saponaria Ocymoides, with its masses of blossom carpeting the ground. Anthyllis Vulneraria is frequent; that is, its red-flowered variety, much the commonest in the South. Of Cisti I only saw the purple C. albidus, the most beautiful of the common species, and only matched by the very similar C. villosus, which supplies its place in Sicily and Greece. But there were numerous Helianthema, among which one white (probably H. apenninum) and several yellow, which, not feeling quite certain that I have determined them rightly, I forbear to name. The red Valerian, Centranthus ruber (which we possess, though probably naturalized, in Greenhithe chalk-pits and other places in Kent), here showed its dark-red masses; a fact rather exceptional, for I have found C. angustifolius much more common, both in the French Alps, the Pyrenees and the mountains of the south of France. On a turfy part of the mountain-side, at a considerable elevation, I found Ranunculus gramineus, a handsome and rather rare plant allied to R. Flammula and Lingua; and at a height above that, Arbutus Uva-ursi (now Arctostaphylos) spread out its luxuriant stems and pitcher-like flowers. The small yellow Narcissus, N. juncifolius, formerly confounded with N. Jonquilla, grew copiously in the same region; and near the summit of the mountain (on the grassy ledge on which are the ruins of the highest hermitage, that named after St. Jerome),²⁸N. biflorus, more beautiful than even N. poeticus, filled the air with rich fragrance.

But the plant most associated with Monserrat is Ramondia pyrenaica, known to those who have botanized at Gavarnie, Esquierry, and other places in the Higher Pyrenees, as one of the most exquisite vegetable productions of that mountain chain. This plant, the only European representative of the Order Cyrtandraceae, was earliest known and described (under the name Verbascum Myconi) as a Monserrat plant; these excepted, it has, I believe, no other known habitat. I was fortunate enough to find on a rock, a plant or two already in flower; not on the higher part of the mountain, but on its lower slope, very near the carriage-road. Though I possessed far more beautiful specimens collected on the rocky side of the torrent at Gavarnie, it gave me great pleasure to find it in what, if not its first abode, is at least the first place in which it was scientifically recognized.

The remaining plants which I observed on Monserrat I shall enumerate in the usual order. They are doubtless but a small part of the botanical riches of the mountain, so many plants being, at this early time of the year (the second week of May, in a very backward season), not only not in flower, but not yet recognizable. Of Ranunculaceae, there were Clematis Vitalba and two Thalictra; one of these had not even begun to flower; another, in the lower region of the mountain, and in very small quantity, had barely begun, and I could not with certainty determine it. Its appearance is not the usual one of a Thalictrum, and if a French species, it must be T. tuberosum. Ranunculus gramineus I have mentioned, to which add R. bulbosus and Helleborus foetidus. Of Crucifers, I saw Arabis sagittata, Gerardi, and Turrita; Cardamine hirsuta; Biscutella laevigata abundantly, the smooth, though hard form, which justifies the name (not B. ambigua, the common one of the South, now generally accounted a variety of the former); an Erysimum; Sisymbrium Irio, Columnae, and obtusangulum; Diplotaxis erucoides; and, of course, Alyssum calycinum, and Lepidium Draba. The Resedae were represented by R. Phyteuma and R. fruticulosa. The Caryophylleae, by Silene italica, with other large and small species of that genus, not in flower; and an Arenaria unknown to me. Of Oxalideae, I noticed O. corniculata; of Geraniaceae, only two Erodiums, E. ciconium and malachoides. Leguminosae were, as usual, abundant. Besides Calycotome spinosa and Genista Scorpius, there was a light-green dwarf Genista, one of several species which have leaves on the upper part and only thorns on the lower part; the real Spanish broom, G. hispanica. The Cytisi were C. argenteus, and that bush of golden flowers, C. sessilifolius. The Astragali were A. monspessulanus, and a species with pods like large hooks, A. hamosus. Besides these, and the Anthyllis already mentioned, there were Dorycnium suffruticosum, Lotus corniculatus, Psoralea bituminosa, Coronilla Emerus, Hippocrepis comosa (unless I mistook H. glauca for it), Arthrolobium scorpioides, and Lathyrus setifolius. Of Rosaceae, besides several Roses not yet in flower, there were Pyrus communis, Potentilla verna, the wild Strawberry (Fragaria vesca), and Poterium Sanguisorba. Umbellifers, at this season, I could scarcely expect to find; I only noticed, of course not in flower, the common Fennel (Foeniculum vulgare) and the tall Bupleurum fruticosum, with its large, entire, coriaceous leaves. I observed Momordica Elaterium, the European representative of the Cucumber tribe; several Honeysuckles, Lonicera implexa, Xylosteum, and perhaps others; various Sedums, one apparently altissimum, and a Rubia, probably peregrina; none of these however were in flower. Several Galiums were, but I did not stop to determine them. The Compositae which I was able to recognize at this season were, Pallenis (formerly Buphthalmum) spinosa, Calendula arvensis, Urospermum Dalechampii and picroides, (all common plants); Crepis albida, a fine mountain plant, which seemed as much at home here as in the Pyrenees; a Santolina, and, I believe, a Phagnalon; the last two not yet in flower. The Heaths were Erica arborea, and another (probably multiflora) out of flower. Of Primulaceae, I only noticed Anagallis arvensis. Of Boragineae, an early-flowering Order, there were several: Asperugo procumbens exhibited its ugly form in luxuriant tangled masses, under the walls of the convent. On the mountain-side the handsome Lithospermum fruticosum put forth its blue funnel-shaped flowers. Echium vulgare and Borrago officinalis make up the list. Of the Order Solaneae I only remarked Hyoscyamus niger, a plant very widely diffused, though seldom abundant in any of its localities (an English station, the chalk-hill near Boxley, is an exception). There was a Verbascum, resembling V. Thapsus, Antirrhinum majus, and an Orobanche of a blood-red colour. Labiatae, a numerous Order on the calcareous wastes of the South, were rather frequent, and later in the year there are, no doubt, many more. Lavandula Spica and Phlomis Lychnitis were there, but not yet in flower; Thymus vulgaris and Rosmarinus officinalis of course; Salvia clandestina; a Teucrium not in flower, I believe the dark-coloured one which I had found near Zaragoza; Sideritis hirsuta, one of the goodliest of its stiff genus. Of Plantains, I saw only the common Plantago Cynops. Of Apetalae, only Daphne Laureola, and four Euphorbiae, E. Characias, serrata, amygdaloides, and another. The Monocotyledoneae, besides those previously mentioned, were Orchis mascula; Gladiolus byzantinus (in the hot lower regions); the furze-like Asparagus (A. horridus), which I first found at Valencia; Tamus communis; Smilax aspera; Ruscus aculeatus, a plant which looks more congenial to the South than to the damp thickets which shelter it in our own country; Convallaria Polygonatum; Asphodelus ramosus and fistulosus, and lastly, though not yet in flower, Lilium Martagon, that ornament of mountain woods on the continent of Europe, which though existing in profuse abundance in several similar localities in our south-eastern counties, an idle scrupulosity so long kept out of our British Floras.

Here I am obliged to end what is no doubt a very scanty sample of the treasures by which, a botanist able to visit Monserrat repeatedly and at various seasons, might hope to have his labour rewarded. There only remains to be recorded a two days’ excursion in the Spanish Pyrenees, and my memoranda of Spanish botany will have been exhausted.

No. V.

Spanish Pyrenees; Andorra

a short excursion from the French to the Spanish side of the Pyrenees, about a fortnight after the termination of our tour in Spain, yielded some botanical acquisitions which deserve to be added to the brief records already given of Spanish botany. The interval had been passed in the richest botanical districts of the Eastern Pyrenees, but with results unexpectedly scanty, the backwardness of the season having deprived me of the majority of the plants which I might otherwise have reasonably expected. I hoped that on the southern side of the chain I might have better fortune; nor was I altogether disappointed.

We crossed the watershed of the Eastern Pyrenees at the head of the long oblique valley of the river Tet, which during the greatest part of its length forms, not a right, but an acute angle with the general direction of the mountain-chain. The range is crossed, not by a pass, but by a considerable breadth of gently sloping and waving corn country, which, though flanked by lofty summits and dark fir woods, is as easily traversable by an army as Salisbury Plain, and an invasion of either country from the other at this point would meet with no physical obstacles near the summit, whatever they might possibly find in the defiles lower down. Accordingly, the deficiency of natural is made up, on the French side at least, by artificial defences. A green knoll on the border of the waving country is crested by one of the most strongly fortified military posts in the country, the town of Mont Louis,—for a town in all respects it is, though with only a few hundred inhabitants,—overtopped by a citadel, the work of Vauban,²⁹ larger than the town itself. At this point the French territory projects for some miles on the Spanish side of the Pyrenees, as the Spanish territory does on the French side about the head-waters of the Garonne. French Cerdagne, as it is still popularly called, forms a richly cultivated valley, or rather, inclined plane, of such width as to make the high mountains which bound it appear what I might almost call distant. This fertile slope is terminated by a little stream, which separates Bourg-Madame, the frontier village in the French territory, from Puycerda, the capital of Spanish Cerdagne, a genuine Spanish town of some importance, on a height which projects far into the valley, and commands, from a small planted promenade on its southern side, a view over the Spanish part of the valley and the adjoining mountains, which it was worth the whole journey to see. From Puycerda to Urgel, the chief place in this part of the Spanish Pyrenees, is a long day’s journey on foot or on muleback. The valley differs from mountain valleys in general in being more picturesque in the descent than in the ascent, the upper extremity, as may be gathered from what has already been said, being the tamest instead of the boldest part of its Alpine panorama. The beauty seemed always to increase as we descended the valley, Urgel itself being the most beautiful place in the whole descent.

The Flora of this district, as usual on the southern declivities of mountain ranges, is a mixture of mountain plants with those of the plains below. In the upper part of the valley the meadows have the floral magnificence characteristic of the Pyrenees, where the open mountain pastures in June, before the grass has been cut or the cattle driven in among them, are often one mass of bloom, giving its colour to the mountain sides from a great distance. The meadows for many miles below Puycerda were of this character. They were as white with Narcissus poeticus as English meadows at the same season are yellow with Buttercups. In other places the dark variety of Columbine (Aquilegia vulgaris) divided the honours with the Narcissus, or engrossed the larger part; while several Umbellifers in full flower contributed a different kind of white colour to the mixture, particularly Chaerophyllum hirsutum, with a plant resembling Pimpinella magna, and, I believe, Ligusticum pyrenaeum; the fruits of neither being yet in a state to admit of their being determined. The other plants of which I made a note are the following:

Of Ranunculaceae, the finest, besides the Columbine, was Adonis flammea, with flowers of the same bright colour but greater size than those of A. autumnalis. A. pyrenaica, though common among the corn near Bourg-Madame, I did not see on the Spanish side of the frontier. The remaining Ranunculaceae were Clematis Vitalba and Flammula, Helleborus foetidus (a plant universal in the Pyrenees), and Caltha palustris. The Papaveraceae I saw were Papaver Rhoeas, Chelidonium majus, and Hypecoum procumbens. There were, as usual, many Crucifers. Of Alyssums, there were (besides A. calycinum) the plant which I had found at Alcolea, and called A. perusianum, and a yellow species akin to montanum, A. cuneifolium. Erysimum lanceolatum, a frequent plant of the Pyrenees, was there, with its large bright yellow flowers; and three Sisymbria, S. Sophia, obtusangulum, and a common Pyrenean species, with a mass of flowers succeeded by long spikes of slender highly curved pods, S. austriacum, the most common variety of which is otherwise known as Sinapis pyrenaica. The only Arabis I noticed was, I believe, Gerardi. The Biscutella was not the Monserrat species (or variety), but the common Mediterranean plant, B. ambigua. I had previously found in the valley of the Tet, near Fonpedrouze, a much rarer species, B. cichoriifolia, resembling the former in little except the twin shields, from which the genus derives its name. Of other Siliculosae, I noted Iberis amara, Thlaspi arvense, Lepidium heterophyllum, the plant of which our L. Smithii is classed by French botanists as a variety,³⁰ and the stately spreading Neslia paniculata, with its nearly globular pods. The genus Cistus seemed wanting in this district, though one of its noblest species, a Gum-Cistus, C. laurifolius, abounds where it was less to be looked for, on the sloping side of the corresponding French valley, a short distance below Mont Louis. The only Helianthemum I saw was either H. vulgare or one of the plants which are sometimes reckoned varieties of it. As might be expected, there were Reseda Phyteuma and fruticulosa and Polygala vulgaris. The Caryophylleae visible were Saponaria ocymoides and vaccaria, the common Lychnis vespertina and Agrostemma Githago, Silene inflata, and the elegant S. saxifraga, with its funnel-shaped flowers, so common in the mountain valleys of the south of Europe. There were two splendid Linums, L. narbonense and a smaller plant with paler flowers, which I suppose to be decumbens, intermediate between tenuifolium and suffruticosum. The Malvaceae were the common Malva rotundifolia and sylvestris. The Geraniaceae were Erodium cicutarium, Geranium Robertianum, sanguineum, and pyrenaicum. The name of the last, mysterious to those to whom it is only known as a plant of Surrey and Kent, is intelligible to those who have seen its abundance in the Pyrenees. The Wild Vine (Vitis vinifera) spread its climbing stems and grasping tendrils over the bushes.

Of Calyciflorae, I begin with the Terebinth-tree, Pistacia Terebinthus. Leguminosae were, as usual, one of the most abundant of all the Orders. Along with the Genista Scorpius of the plains there was G. sagittalis of the mountains, and G. pilosa of both; all plants which by their beauty do credit to this fine genus. Of Cytisi, there was the beautiful C. sessilifolius. The only Trefoils I observed were T. pratense and repens; but the prevailing Medicago was a special plant of the Eastern Pyrenees, M. suffruticosa. The Viciae were in number five: V. sativa, sepium, cracca, a glorious dark-purple species (V. onobrychioides), and the duller-coloured V. pannonica. Lotus corniculatus and Hippocrepis comosa abound here as everywhere. I saw but one Astragalus, I believe A. purpureus, a purple-flowered, erect, rather dwarfish plant, approaching to A. hypoglottis. I conclude the Order with the small decumbent Sainfoin of southern Europe, Onobrychis supina. Of the Order Rosaceae, there were Crataegus Oxyacantha, Amelanchier vulgaris, and Poterium Sanguisorba; but the genus Rosa, above all, was in profusion. The town of Urgel is in the midst of a sort of garden of wild Roses: every hedge and enclosure is loaded with them in a quantity and of a size to which I never saw even an approach elsewhere. The species must be numerous, but I regret my inability to record them. The fatigue of the journey, the multitude of other plants to determine and put into paper, and the difficulty of dealing with this genus without the fruit and without proper books, deterred me from the attempt. Rosa tomentosa, or some species near to it, appeared to be one, and another resembled, in the appearance of its stem, R. spinosissima, but with much larger flowers; in fact, as I have already mentioned, the size of the Roses was quite as remarkable as their profuse abundance.

Saxifraga Aizoon, now in full flower, one of the common mountain species of the Alps and Pyrenees, dotted the rocks of the valley with its white rosettes of spatulate coriaceous leaves. Sedums were numerous: among others, S. acre, Telephium, and (though not in flower) altissimum, like a large white-flowered S. reflexum. Another plant of the same Order, Umbilicus pendulinus, as common on moist rocks and walls in the south of Europe as in our western counties, was also present. Bryonia dioica was visible, and Paronychia serpyllifolia, a mountain species, takes the place of P. argentea. Of Umbellifers, besides those already mentioned, I saw Heracleum Sphondylium (unless it was the very similar H. pyrenaicum), Bupleurum rotundifolium, and, I believe, Orlaya platycarpa. The Cornel-tree (Cornus sanguinea) was as common here as elsewhere. Of the Order Caprifoliaceae, there were the common Elders (Sambucus nigra and Ebulus), and two Honeysuckles, Lonicera implexa of the plains, and Xylosteum of the mountains. There were the blue Asperula arvensis and several Galia; two Valerianeae, V. officinalis and Centranthus angustifolius; Dipsacus sylvestris, and a Knautia, apparently a variety of K. arvensis.

Compositae were of course less numerous than in the plains or at a later period of the year. There were, however, several. Achillea odorata, a plant of southern Europe, like a dwarf A. Millefolium, with a sweet smell of camomile, was one. With this was a Santolina, probably S. Chamaecyparissias, an Artemisia, probably campestris, and the universal Leucanthemum vulgare. Of Thistles on this occasion I have no note. The Centauries were C. Cyanus, C. Scabiosa, and another species, not uncommon on the less elevated mountains of the South, C. pectinata, deriving its name from the comb-like structure of its involucral appendages. Of Cichoraceous Compositae, I noticed Scorzonera humilis, Tragopogon pratensis, a Hieracium (H. murorum?), the fine blue Lactuca of Continental cornfields, which almost reaches our own latitudes, L. perennis, and two much rarer plants, both of which I only found within a short distance of Urgel, one in the bed of the torrent, a stiff, widely branched plant, coated all over with a fine white wool, which I guessed rather than ascertained to be Andryala macrocephala of Boissier;³¹ and, growing within the spray of a waterfall, a Sonchus, with undivided leaves, allied to S. maritimus, which was certainly S. crassifolius.

Passing now to the Corolliflorae, I did not find in this day’s journey either Gentianeae or Primulaceae, plants which, for the most part, require higher elevations, or at least cooler and moister valleys. Vincetoxicum officinale, so abundant on calcareous soils, even far north, and which ought to grow in England, was there; so also Privet (Ligustrum vulgare), a plant equally at home in north and south; and the only European Jasminum, J. fruticans, a yellow species, and rather frequent in the south of France, but not beyond the Mediterranean region. Our northern Ash, Fraxinus excelsior, grows here, which, in the south, is principally a mountain tree. I saw no Convolvulus, except C. arvensis, though I should have expected C. cantabrica, which comes up as high, or higher, in other southern mountains. The Boragineae were not remarkable: Echium vulgare, Lithospermum arvense and officinale, Anchusa italica, Lycopsis arvensis, and our common Cynoglossum, C. officinale. The Solaneae were Solanum Dulcamara, as common in the south as in the north, and Hyoscyamus niger. There were several Verbascums, V. floccosum apparently being one. Scrophularineae and Labiatae were, as might be expected, the most numerous Orders; of the former there were Scrophularia canina and nodosa, Rhinanthus glaber, Veronica Teucrium and serpyllifolia, the stately Digitalis lutea, Linaria supina, and two Antirrhinums proper—the pale-flowered A. Asarina, which, as in many other parts of the Pyrenees, hangs like tapestry on the perpendicular rocks, and A. latifolium, looking like a yellow variety of majus. The Labiatae were Lavandula Spica and Mentha sylvestris (the British plant so common in Switzerland), Salvia clandestina, and another (I believe phlomoides), our ugly Ballota foetida, Lamium maculatum, Stachys recta, which, like Digitalis lutea, reaches northward as far as Normandy; both the Thymes, T. vulgaris and Serpyllum; and in great abundance a common Sideritis, S. scordioides. Globularia nana, as elsewhere in the Pyrenees, coated the rocks with its small leaves, its numerous heads of flowers, and its clumsy woody stems, so creeping that they seem adherent to the soil. An Armeria, seemingly A. plantaginea, represented the Order Plumbagineae; and Plantago was represented by P. media, and the mountain species, P. carinata.

Of Apetalae, the most worthy of notice was Aristolochia Pistolochia, with its almost black flowers, one of the smallest species of this curious genus. The Polygoneae were Polygonum Bistorta, as abundant as it usually is in moist mountain meadows, Rumex acetosa, and R. scutatus, with its singular leaves, a plant as common in the vineyards near Coblentz as in the south of Europe. The Euphorbiae were E. serrata, Cyparissias, Characias, the polished E. nicaeensis, and another, to me unknown. To these may be added the shrubs or trees, Quercus coccifera, Buxus sempervirens, and Celtis australis.

The Monocotyledoneae were finer than I expected, and finer than I found in my next day of botanizing. There were Orchis mascula, O. galeata (by some reduced to militaris, but the form of the flower, admirably figured by Woods,³² is decidedly different), Aceras anthropophora, which recalled pleasing memories of the Surrey hills; Narcissus poeticus, as already mentioned; one of the plants common to alpine and maritime situations, Allium Schoenoprasum (but I am not sure this plant does not belong to the next day’s district); the Grasses, Bromus tectorum, Briza media, Aegilops ovata, Melica Magnolii; and the Ferns, Asplenium Trichomanes and Adiantum Capillus-Veneris.

Urgel, properly La Seu (or Seo) de Urgel, better known locally as La Seu simply (the See, its bishop having for many centuries been one of the chief princes of the country), is the most characteristic, old-looking, and picturesque of small Spanish towns. We entered it after nightfall. I shall never forget the moonlight look of its dark streets, its jalousies and overhanging balconies. The situation is one of the most glorious in the whole Pyrenees. It lies far down in the long valley which we had been a day and a half in descending; but the valley does not open to the plain; it is crossed, and, in appearance, closed a little below the town, by a low range, with a striking peaked outline, which regaled our eyes as we saw it before us during the latter half of our day’s journey, and appeared more beautiful still when seen from the promenade outside the walls of Urgel, or from the terrace or loggia of our very Spanish, but quite habitable inn. All experienced travellers know how much the beauty of a range of mountains, under a glaring sun, is improved by seeing it on its shady side. Of the little narrow plain into which the valley expands immediately round Urgel, I can say nothing botanically, except to repeat that it is a perfect paradise of Roses.

We had decided to find our way back to France by the valley of Andorra. Of this curious middle-age republic, independent equally of Spain and France, though under their joint protectorate, a description may be read in the Edinburgh Review for April last.³³ The writer has given a very interesting account of its history and of its institutions; but he seems somehow to imagine that he is the discoverer of Andorra, at least to Englishmen. It was however explored as long ago as about 1824, by two eminent English botanists—Mr. Bentham and Mr. Walker Arnott; the former of whom, in the narrative of his tour in the Pyrenees, prefixed to his valuable catalogue of their plants, gave a clear and succinct description of the country.³⁴ Since then it has been occasionally visited by English tourists, one of whom, Mr. Erskine Murray, devoted to it no small portion of his well-known book.³⁵ Respecting the institutions of the country, much was left for the reviewer to do; and he has done it, to all appearance, well. He makes one statement, however, which I hope is not correct, that “in this republic education is a thing almost unknown.”³⁶ I cannot affirm that this is not the fact; but the standard French Guide to the Pyrenees, the elaborate volume of Joanne, affirms that “l’instruction publique est plus répandue en Andorre que dans les territoires voisins de l’Ariége et d’Urgel; les écoles sont gratuites, et la plupart des jeunes gens aisés vont faire leurs études à Toulouse ou à Barcelone.”^* The reviewer’s description of the local features of the country is that of one who has only visited it from the French side. He says it is “isolated by mountains on every frontier.”³⁷ This is neither more nor less true of the Val d’Andorre than it is of every other Pyrenean valley. None of them have more than one outlet into the plain. Andorra is simply the upper end of a Spanish valley (one of several which meet at Urgel), with the addition of two other valleys branching out of it. From France of course they can only be reached across the main chain, but the access from Spain is not more difficult nor mountainous than that to any other place in the Pyrenees.

In the lower or Spanish part of the valley the plants were chiefly those which I had seen in the descent from Puycerda, with one or two additional, particularly Phalangium Liliago, an elegant white-flowered plant of the Order Asphodeleae, and a fine Thistle, which I had seen in a former year on the Spanish side of another of the Pyrenean passes, Cirsium rivulare. When however we entered Andorra, the Flora soon assumed a far more mountain character, though here also occasionally varied by southern plants, the most remarkable of which was a Maple, Acer monspessulanum, with three-lobed coriaceous leaves. To begin at the beginning, Trollius europaeus now raised its globular heads in the rich meadows; and I saw, for the first time in Spain, two mountain Ranunculi, R. Villarsii, L., towards the head of the valley, and the tall white R. aconitifolius, the stateliest of its tribe. Of Crucifers there were now a Barbarea (probably B. arcuata), Arabis thaliana and turrita, Sinapis Cheiranthus, Nasturtium pyrenaicum, which, in spite of its name, is not a peculiarly Pyrenean plant; and one which is more so, Cardamine latifolia, like a greatly magnified C. pratensis, with leaves shaped like those of the Watercress. Two of our common Violets now appeared, Viola canina and V. tricolor; while to Silene Saxifraga was added S. nutans, and a very beautiful common plant of the Alps and Pyrenees, S. rupestris, as well as Stellaria Holostea and Cerastium arvense. Along with Geranium Robertianum and pyrenaicum there was in abundance G. sylvaticum of the English mountains. I saw also Oxalis corniculata. A tall bush, belonging to the Flora of the high mountains, Rhamnus alpinus, was here in full flower. The Leguminosae were fewer than usual; they included the Broom of the middle region of the southern mountains, Sarothamnus purgans, Coronilla Emerus, the stiff, but not inelegant Trifolium montanum, Astragalus monspessulanus, and the red variety of Anthyllis Vulneraria. Of Rosaceae, there were added to those already recorded, Rosa rubiginosa, Potentilla verna, and Alchemilla vulgaris. Of Saxifragae, besides S. Aizoon, there was our beautiful S. granulata (a mountain plant in the south of Europe), and a far rarer species than either, S. media. The Umbellifers appeared to be the same as in the previous day. To the common Elders was added Sambucus racemosa, now in full flower; it bears red instead of black fruit, and in that state I had found it in some of the forests near the Rhine, especially that of Stolzenfels, near Coblenz. Of Rubiaceae, I only noted Galium cruciatum. The only additional plant of the Order Compositae (except the Cirsium previously mentioned) was Achillea chamaemelifolia, a plant of the Eastern Pyrenees. The Corolliflorae also were mostly those which I had seen in the other valley. I must however add Pinguicula grandiflora, a plant common in the Pyrenees, often mistaken for a Violet by the non-botanical traveller; the exquisite Primula farinosa, of the Alps and the north of England; the large Alpine Forget-me-not (Myosotis alpestris); a tall Pedicularis, P. verticillata, growing profusely in the meadows near the principal village of the Republic; and, lastly, Marrubium vulgare. Of Polygona, besides P. Bistorta, there was a peculiar and curious mountain species with panicled inflorescence, P. alpinum. Rumex scutatus re-appeared, with R. Acetosella. Among monocotyledonous plants, Paradisia Liliastrum reigned supreme; a stately plant, with flowers of the purest white, of the shape and almost the size of a Hemerocallis, which Pyrenean tourists will see abundant, at its season, in the Vallée de Lys, near Bagnère de Luchon. Narcissus poeticus was as plentiful as ever; Platanthera bifolia was another ornament; Muscari comosum made its appearance, and in the lower and warmer part of the valley our blue garden Iris (I. germanica) grew. A Veratrum, probably V. album, so common in the Alps and Jura, not yet in flower, raised its strong, thick, green stems. The following plants, all of which were common to this with the preceding valley, I will simply enumerate:

At the foot of the ascent to the lofty pass (the Col de Puymaurin) we encountered in profusion four of the most interesting plants we had yet seen; the tall Anemone alpina, with its great flowers, of the sulphur-coloured variety (which I have found the commonest both in the Alps and Pyrenees); the mountain Umbellifer (Meum athamanticum), a plant rare in the English mountains, common in the Pyrenees and Cevennes; Orchis sambucina, with its great spikes of flowers, both purple and yellow; and the delicately beautiful Tulipa Celsiana, also a plant of the Cevennes. As we wound our way up the face of the mountain towards the Col, we came among decidedly Alpine plants; the three Gentians which light up the lofty pastures with their dark blue flowers, G. acaulis and verna, known to all Alpine explorers; G. pyrenaica, peculiar to the Eastern Pyrenees; the small white-flowered Ranunculus pyrenaicus, the lovely Hepatica, Corcus vernus, and a pink Androsace, common on the Pyrenean summits, long confounded with A. carnea of the Alps, but to be described, as I am told, in the Supplement to the Flore de France, under the name of A. Lagerii.³⁸ One plant, though I did not see it till just on the French side of the pass, I cannot help mentioning, and with this I close my list: that exquisitely fringed and strangely coloured plant, one of the most delicate of Alpine vegetable products, the plant so much admired by Mr. Ruskin, Soldanella alpina.³⁹ From this place a long and gradual descent brought us into the beautiful valley of the Ariége; and being now in a country well explored, and possessed of excellent Floras, I at last end this long memorandum, and finally take my leave.

Verbascum Thapsiforme

OCTOBER 1862

our esteemed correspondent “J.S.M.” in his homeward journey saw much of Verbascum thapsiforme between Vienna and Switzerland, in “the Austrian Highlands, where, like many other plants, it grows much more luxuriantly than in the North.” Some good examples of this species have been seen in the Chelsea Botanic Garden.

[1 ]Henry Cole (1808-82) was a close friend of Mill’s, especially in the late 1820s and early 1830s, when they went on walking tours together, during which Mill initiated Cole into the pleasures of field botany.

[2 ]This statement by James Edward Smith (1759-1828) has not been located; he gives only northern locations for Impatiens noli-me-tangere in his English Flora, 4 vols. (London: Longman, et al., 1824-29).

[3 ]See “Isatis Tinctoria,” p. 258 above.

[1 ]William Jackson Hooker (1785-1865), one of Britain’s leading botanists, and Director of Kew Gardens.

[2 ]Augustin Pyrame de Candolle (1778-1841), Swiss botanist whose influential “natural” system of botanical classification is given in detail in the work Mill refers to: Prodromus systematis naturalis regni vegetabilis, sive enumeratio contracta ordinum generum specierumque plantarum huc usque cognitarum, juxta methodi naturalis normas digesta, 19 vols. (Paris: Treuttel and Würtz, et al., 1824-72), Vols. I-VII having appeared by the time Mill was writing. The reference is to Vol. VI, p. 650.

[1 ]See “Notes on Plants Growing in the Neighbourhood of Guildford, Surrey,” pp. 258-60 above.

[* ]This is one of those odd plants which we can never expect to find in the same spot two years in succession. At least such is the case so far as we are taught by our observation of its habits in the neighbourhood of Reigate. Previously to the year 1836, when we had the good fortune to detect it, Polygonum dumetorum was not known as a Reigate plant; in the following year it was found in one or two other stations; from one at least of these it has entirely disappeared, but to make amends has sprung up in the greatest abundance in a locality some miles from either of those previously occupied by it. We are always glad to record the stations of such plants, wherever they may choose temporarily to take up their residence. [Note by the editor of the Phytologist.]

[1 ]For Mill’s journal of the walking tour in 1832 during which he recorded some of these stations, see CW, Vol. XXVII, pp. 557-611.

[1 ]“A History of the British Lycopodia and Allied Genera,” Phytologist, I (June-Nov. 1841), 1-7, 17-20, 33-6, 49-51, 65-7, and 81-6, by Edward Newman (1801-79), proprietor of the Phytologist 1841-54, and author of A History of British Ferns (London: Van Voorst, 1840).

[2 ]“Botanical Notes,” Phytologist, I (Aug. 1841), 43-4, by George Luxford (1807-54), printer and botanist, who edited the Phytologist from its inception until his death.

[3 ]The statement appears on the cover of the issue for June 1843.

[1 ]Hewett Cottrell Watson (1804-81) known as the father of British topographical botany, “Some Account of the Oenanthe pimpinelloides, and peucedanifolia of English Authors,” Phytologist, II (Jan. 1845), 11-15.

[2 ]For Mill’s journal of the walking tour in 1827 during which he collected specimens, see CW, Vol. XXVII, pp. 455-75.

[1 ]Alexander Irvine (1793-1873), who accompanied Mill on botanical field trips, editor of the Phytologist 1855-63, issued eight-page consecutively numbered fascicles as supplements to the journal from 1855 to 1858; these are gathered under the title British Botany. The reference actually derives from information supplied in an article by Edward Newman in the Phytologist, I (Nov. 1841), 82.

[2 ]Irvine, “Fields in Berkshire (Pangbourne and Streatley), and Kent (Greenhithe),” British Botany, p. 57.

[3 ]Anon., “Notes of a Day’s Botanizing about Tring, Herts, June 29, 1855,” Phytologist, n.s. I (Sept. 1855), 105-8. Mill is responding partly to Irvine’s questioning (ibid., p. 108) of the correspondent’s finding.

[4 ]Not located.

[5 ]Not located.

[1 ]Not otherwise identified, though a William Hanson had earlier contributed to the Phytologist.

[1 ]See the previous item, “Plants Growing Wild in the District of Luxford’s Reigate Flora,” pp. 268-74 above.

[2 ]John Ray (1627-1705), pioneer field botanist.

[1 ]A New Flora of the Neighbourhood of Reigate, Surrey, Containing the Flowering Plants and Ferns of the District, with Their Localities, Times of Flowering, etc. And a List of the Mosses (London: Pamplin, 1856), by James Alexander Brewer (1818-86). The work was reviewed in the same number of the Phytologist, pp. 434-5, with a reference to Mill’s article of June, “Plants Growing Wild in the District of Luxford’s Reigate Flora,” pp. 268-74 above.

[2 ]Brewer, A New Flora, p. 19.

[3 ]Not located.

[4 ]Not located.

[5 ]Brewer, A New Flora, p. 123.

[1 ]William Curtis (1746-99), Flora Londinensis; or, Plates and Descriptions of Such Plants as Grow Wild in the Environs of London, 2 vols. (London: Curtis and White, 1775-98), fasc. 5, text to plate 23. The reference to Smith is less clear: in fact James Edward Smith, in his English Flora, Vol. II, p. 130, locates the plant “between Greenwich and Woolwich,” that is, below Greenwich. (In the same place Smith quotes Curtis’s citation of the Isle of Dogs’ station.)

[1 ]In his Illustrated Handbook of the British Plants (London: Nelson, 1858), Irvine gives Headley Copse as a station, but without a date. The reference may be to his Introduction to the Science of Botany, 5 pts. (London: Nelson, 1858), p. 297, where he vaguely says to see the Phytologist “as above”; much earlier, however, Luxford (then editor) had, in an appended note to a communication from Newman, reported the same station for Lilium Martagon in Surrey in 1826 (Phytologist, I [Sept. 1841], 62).

[2 ]Mill did not write to W.J. Hooker until 26 January, 1831, about his discovery in 1829 (EL, CW, Vol. XII, pp. 69-70). Hooker’s repudiation of Lilium Martagon as a British plant is in the 6th ed. of his British Flora; Comprising the Phaenogamous, or Flowering Plants, and the Ferns (1st ed., 1830) (London: Longman, et al., 1850), p. 444.

[3 ]Irvine, Illustrated Handbook, p. 183.

[1 ]Candolle, Prodromus, Vol. I, p. 302.

[1 ]This reference, identical to that in “Observations on Isatis Tinctoria and Other Plants,” p. 267 above, has not been located.

[1 ]Smith, English Flora, Vol. II, p. 100.

[2 ]Irvine, “Calamintha Nepeta, Clairv.,” Phytologist, n.s. II (June 1857), 131-2.

[1 ]Not located.

[2 ]Not located.

[1 ]Irvine had noted, in “Address to the Contributors, etc.,” Phytologist, n.s. IV (Jan. 1860), 6, this report by John Sim (ca. 1812-93), a soldier-naturalist.

[1 ]Jean Charles Marie Grenier (1808-75) and Dominique Alexandre Godron (1807-80), Flore de France, ou Description des plantes qui croissent naturellement en France et en Corse, 3 vols. (Paris: Baillière, 1848-56), Vol. III, pp. 623-42; and Charles Cardale Babington (1808-95), Manual of British Botany, Containing the Flowering Plants and Ferns Arranged According to the Natural Orders (London: Van Voorst, 1843).

[2 ]Grenier and Godron, Flore, Vol. I, p. 344.

[1 ]Antonio José Cavanilles (1745-1804), Icones et descriptiones plantarum, quae aut sponte in Hispania crescunt, 6 vols. (Madrid: Royal Printer, 1791-1801).

[2 ]Almost certainly José Quer y Martinez (1695-1764), Flora Española ó historia de las plantas que se crian en España, 4 vols. (Madrid: Ibarra, 1762-64).

[3 ]Pierre Edmond Boissier (1810-85), Voyage botanique dans le midi de l’Espagne pendant l’année 1837, 2 vols. (Paris: Gide, 1839-45).

[4 ]Carl Sigismund Kunth (1788-1850), Enumeratio plantarum omnium hucusque cognitarum, 5 vols. in 6 (Stuttgart and Tübingen: Cotta, 1833-50).

[5 ]Joseph Woods (1776-1864), The Tourist’s Flora: A Descriptive Catalogue of the Flowering Plants and Ferns of the British Islands, France, Germany, Switzerland, Italy, and the Italian Islands (London: Reeve, et al., 1850).

[6 ]Christiaan Henrik Persoon (1761-1836), Synopsis plantarum, seu enchiridium botanicum, 2 vols. (Paris: Cramer, et al., 1805-07).

[7 ]Louis Gabriel Léonce Guilhard de Lavergne (1809-80), economist and politician, Economie rurale de la France depuis 1789 (1860), 2nd ed. (Paris: Guillaumin, 1861), p. 281.

[8 ]In the Apocryphya, Susanna, 54.

[9 ]Flore de France, Vol. I, p. 67.

[10 ]Otto Wilhelm Sonder (1812-81), Flora Hamburgensis (Hamburg: Kittler, 1851), p. 385.

[11 ]Giovanni Gussone (1787-1866), author of Florae siculae synopsis exhibens plantas vasculares in Sicilia insulisque adjacentibus huc usque detectas, 2 vols. (Naples: Tramater, 1842-43), which is cited below, though this reference has not been located.

[12 ]Florae siculae, Vol. II, p. 278.

[13 ]Albrecht Wilhelm Roth (1757-1834), Tentamen florae germanicae, 3 vols. in 4 (Leipzig: Müller, 1788), Vol. I, p. 309.

[14 ]Michele Tenore (1780-1861), Catalogus plantarum horti regii Neapolitani ad annum 1813, 2 pts. (Naples: Trani, 1813, 1819), p. 112.

[15 ]Antonio Bertoloni (1775-1869), Flora italica, 10 vols. (Bologna: Masi, 1833-54), Vol. I, pp. 227-9; and Grenier and Godron, Flore de France, Vol. III, p. 248. (Grenier and Godron refer to Bertoloni’s identification at Vol. III, p. 227.)

[16 ]Grenier and Godron, Vol. III, p. 248.

[17 ]René Louiche Desfontaines (1750-1833), Catalogus plantarum horti regii Parisiensis, 3rd ed. (Paris: Chaudé, 1829), p. 263; and Grenier and Godron, Vol. I, p. 205.

[18 ]Gussone, Florae siculae, Vol. I, p. 491.

[19 ]Persoon, Synopsis plantarum, Vol. I, p. 371.

[20 ]Grenier and Godron, Vol. III, pp. 223-4.

[21 ]Ibid., p. 224.

[22 ]During the reign of Queen Anne (1665-1714), in the War of the Spanish Succession, the British troops, under John Churchill (1650-1722), Duke of Marlborough, were defeated on 25 April, 1707, at Almansa.

[23 ]Isabella of Castile (1451-1504), co-regent with King Ferdinand.

[24 ]Clodius Caesar Nero (37-68 ), Roman Emperor 54-68 , built this enormous palace, adorned with gems and Greek masterpieces, after the great fire of Rome in 64

[25 ]See p. 291 above.

[26 ]Grenier and Godron, Vol. I, pp. 118-19.

[27 ]Actually the separate accounts (the next two sections) appeared in two numbers, those for December 1861 and February 1862.

[28 ]St. Jerome (ca. 340-420 ), after whom the hermitage was named, had been a hermit in the wastes of Chalcis, near Antioch, 373-79

[29 ]After the peace of Nimegen (1678) the border fortifications of France were put in the hands of Sébastien le Prestre de Vauban (1633-1707); Mount Louis was built in 1679.

[30 ]Grenier and Godron, Vol. I, pp. 149-50.

[31 ]Boissier, Voyage botanique, Vol. II, p. 393.

[32 ]Woods, The Tourist’s Flora, p. 351 and Fig. 5.

[33 ]John William Wilkins (b. 1829), “The Republic of Andorre,” Edinburgh Review, CXIII (Apr. 1861), 345-59.

[34 ]George Arnott Walker Arnott (1799-1868), a Scottish botanist and colleague of Hooker’s, published extensively on foreign plants; on the trip mentioned he accompanied George Bentham (1800-84), nephew of Jeremy Bentham, who first stimulated Mill’s interest in botany during a trip to the Pyrenees in 1821 (see CW, Vol. XXVI, No. 1). Bentham’s Catalogue des plantes indigènes des Pyrénées et du Bas Languedoc (Paris: Huzard, 1826), contains a descriptive preface, pp. 15-55.

[35 ]James Erskine Murray (1810-44), Scottish lawyer, A Summer in the Pyrenees, 2nd ed., 2 vols. (London: Macrone, 1837), Vol. I, pp. 94-170, esp. 161-70.

[36 ]Wilkins, p. 355.

[* ]Public education in Andorre is superior to that of Ariego and Urgel. Instruction is gratuitous; pupils can easily complete their studies at Toulouse or Barcelona. [Adolphe Laurent Joanne (1823-81), Itinéraire descriptif et historique des Pyrénées de l’Océan à la Méditerranée (Paris: Hachette, [1858]), p. 561.]

[37 ]Wilkins, pp. 346-7.

[38 ]Not located.

[39 ]John Ruskin, Modern Painters, Vol. II, pp. 86, 104-5.