BOTANICAL, INFORMATION. 543 



proceeded as far as the Hospice de Luchon, where we were to 

 sleep. We found beds, certainly, such as they were, and no 

 lack of society in them ; but as to sleeping, that was quite 

 out of the question, and we were glad to quit them at the 

 first dawn of day. After a hasty breakfast, we started to 

 ascend to the Port de Benasque, which it took us three hours 

 to reach. We gathered some interesting plants by the way, 

 such as Trifolium badium, Potentilla Pyrenaica, Saxifraga 

 capitata, Lap., Gnaphalium supinum, Senecio Tournefortii, 

 &c, and in the Port itself, Cerastium alpinum, y. lanatum, 

 Koch, Stellaria cerastoides, and Saxifraga bryoides. From 

 the Port de Benasque, there is a descent of an hour to the 

 base of the Maladetta, but we made the time much longer by 

 searching the curious limestone rocks called Pena Blanca, on 

 our route, where we gathered Gay a Pyrenaica, Arenaria tetra- 

 guetra, and Saponaria caspitosa. It was nearly mid-day when 

 we commenced the ascent of the Maladetta, and we were 

 already fatigued ; yet our toil was only just commencing. I 

 have seen nothing more dreary and cheerless than the Mala- 

 detta, which really looks as if some curse had been pro- 

 nounced upon it. Even where the grass does not refuse to 

 grow, it is brown and withered, and seems to be never touched 

 by the sheep, and the lichens on the rocks are rarely more 

 than half-developed, exhibiting a rudimentary crust, but 

 hardly ever any apothecia. Yet it is a grand and an awful 

 mountain, with its bold peaks, immense masses of snow 

 ar »d ice, and foaming torrents, which lose themselves in 

 horrid gulfs at its base. And even in a botanical point of 

 view, there are oases in its deserts, which render it not unin- 

 teresting. In such we gathered Silene ciliata, Cherleria 

 sedoides, Alchemilla jissa, Saxifraga casia, Angelica Pyrenaica, 

 Gentiana alpina, Carex frigida, nigra and Pyrenaica, and 

 Phleum alpinum; besides Tortula aciphylla, Timmia Mega- 

 politana and Weissia crispula. We spent nearly an hour, 

 after reaching the base of the great glacier, in searching the 

 beds of the streams which are fed by it, for Ranunculus gla- 

 nalis, and at length succeeded in rinding a few specimens, but 



