BOTANICAL INFORMATION. 167 
protect them from the weather. We will let the traveller 
speak for himself on these difficulties, and on the better 
habitation where he is now settled, for his own words, in a 
letter of the 8th of April, are interesting, as affording the 
subscribers to the Unio Itineraria every assurance that the 
best care is taken to preserve the treasures which M. Schim- 
per has already accumulated. In his letter, he says, * The 
construction of the houses here is very bad, for the flat roof 
not allowing the rain to flow off, it accumulates, penetrates 
through, and frequently descends like a stream, into the 
apartments below: the walls become also saturated with damp 
which it takes a long time to dissipate, and which is pro- 
bably the main cause of the dysenteries that always prevail 
on the appearance of warmer weather. During the late 
storms of wind and rain, many houses have been blown down, 
and their inhabitants have perished in the ruins; and two 
vessels were wrecked on the coast; the sea running to a 
height twice as great as that of the houses on the Marine. 
What pains it cost me to obtain a more secure lodging, and 
the time that was wasted in consequence, I shall pass over in 
silence, as I am now comfortably settled in a convenient 
house, containing 2 rooms, a bed-closet, an apartment for 
zoological subjects, an enclosed piece of ground and a terrace 
well adapted for drying my plants, and which commands a 
beautiful prospect upon the sea, to the east and towards the 
Great and Little Mount Atlas. For this truly valuable acquisi- 
tion, which I have procured at a comparatively cheap rate, I 
may thank the few words of Arabic that I picked up, and 
which I now understand about as well as I did the French 
language when I first visited France, so that in any case of 
difficulty, I am able to use it, and have made some progress in 
reading and writing it. I have hung the walls of one of my 
rooms with a matting made of the stalks of Juncus, for the 
purpose of keeping off the damp, and the dried plants lie 
in covered boxes, piled one above another, and thus secure 
from injury.” 
With regard to what M. Schimper had collected at that time, 
