136 BOTANICAL INFORMATION. 



wretched weather prevented us ; I made, however, a prome- 

 nade in the rain, and gathered Daltonia heteromalla, Ortho- 

 trichum tenellum, Pterogonium Smithii, Hypnum circinnatam, 

 Wils., and Collema nigrescens. In journeying from Bordeaux to 

 Pau, I had calculated on visiting Leon Dufour, at St. Sever, 

 but it was some leagues out of my way, and the long " trajet' 

 from Paris to Bordeaux had left me so much indisposed, 

 that I judged it wiser to proceed direct to Pau. I arrived at 

 the capital of Beam, in the midst of torrents of rain, and it 

 was not until I had been there two or three days that I caught 

 my first glimpse of the Pyrenees — with what emotions, may 

 be conceived. At length lay outspread before me the glo- 

 rious mountains I had so often longed to visit, and my 

 ardent gaze would fain have penetrated into the deepest 

 recesses of their valleys and gorges, all of which my imagina- 

 tion peopled with hosts of hitherto-unobserved Cryptogamia'- 

 From no place, out of the Pyrenees, is there so good a view 

 of them, nor one which gives you so accurate an idea of their 

 extent and magnitude, as from Pau. The two Pics du Midi 

 of Beam and Bigorre form the most conspicuous features oi 

 the picture ; but the former, usually called the Pic du Midi 

 d'Ossau, is, to my taste, much the finer, and indeed the 

 most picturesque mountain, though not the highest, in the 

 whole Pyrenees. Two circumstances, however, considerably 

 damped my ardour ; one was, that owing to the protracted 

 winter, the mountains were yet covered with snow, almost to 

 their bases, and the other, my indifferent health ; and my visit 

 to the Pyrenees having been undertaken in the hope of gather- 

 ing health as well as plants, I determined to remain at Pau 

 until I should be somewhat recruited, and then, if the 

 "temps" permitted, to penetrate into the mountains. 1 

 was, perhaps, wrong, for the climate of Pau is villanous in 

 spring; a day of burning heat, the thermometer some- 

 times at 98°, and not a breath of air stirring, will be followed 

 by one of rain or hail, accompanied by a cold westerly wind. 

 It was precisely these rapid alternations of heat and cold that 

 I had hoped to escape in leaving England, and it is not> 



