124 MB. JOSEPH woods' NOTES OE A BOTANICAL 



rising as all these Pyrenean passes do to a considerable elevation, 

 must offer some alpine plants to the botanist. Near Bagneres de 

 Bigorre rises the Pic de I'Hieris, a mountain covered with pine- 

 forests, and celebrated for its botany ; which however, though 

 mountainous, is not alpine A few miles from Bagneres de Luchon 

 is the Val d'Esquierri, also famous for its botany. After passing 

 the little village of Oo, you ascend a shivery bank on the right, 

 the upper part of which is craggy and woody ; but the rocks are 

 not firm, and on horseback the ascent is rather a nervous aifair. 

 Above this you enter a grassy valley with a rich variety of plants, 

 rather however subalpine than alpine ; but the slopes which bound 

 it on each side ascend to patches of snow. I met two botanists 

 as I descended, who were prepared to pass a night on the moun- 

 tain — the only way of examining thoroughly its productions. The 

 Port de Yenasque is also visited from Bagneres de Luchon ; but I 

 apprehend the best station for examining this neighbourhood 

 would be the Spanish town of Venasque, where there is, I am 

 told, a very tolerable inn, much better than the Hospice on the 

 French side, and where you are immediately at the foot of the 

 mighty Maladetta. 



We returned by Cette and Aries, taking advantage of the rail- 

 way from Toulouse. At both these places there is a good warm- 

 country botany, and of a very different character in each place ; 

 Cette presenting limestone rock and the sands of the sea-shore, 

 while about Aries all is gravel. The uncultivated lands about 

 Nismes will also gratify the botanist with several interesting 

 plants delighting in a limestone soil ; and various points above Aries 

 and about Orange, and some other places among the gravelly hills 

 which there bound the immediate valley of the Ehone, will afford 

 him abundant opportunity of examining the productions of that 

 soil. The railroads now make all these places easily accessible. 



If any botanist should be disposed to follow me in a visit to the 

 N. of Spain, the foregoing observations may perhaps help him to 

 direct his steps. The Pyrenees are so well explored, that there is 

 no hope of making new discoveries among them, unless indeed they 

 be founded on those nice and almost intangible distinctions which 

 seem now to be in favour with many of the French botanists. "With 

 the range of high land which forms a continuation of the Pyrenees 

 along the north coast of Spain, the case is far different. Their pro- 

 ductions are comparatively little known ; and though neither so 

 high nor so abrupt as that part of the chain which separates France 

 from Spain, yet, as in the Asturias the mountains rise to the 



