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

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.

[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.