DUBLIN UNIVERSITY ZOOLOGICAL AND BOTANICAL ASSOCIATION. 13 



unduly taxed our courage or endurance. One point, however, requires 

 consideration, as regards lodgings in the chief watering-places of these 

 mountains. If the traveller visit them at the height of the season — 

 that is, during the month of July and the beginning of August — he may 

 often fail in procuring hotel accommodation, and may be obliged to pay 

 dearly for small and ill-furnished rooms in the private houses of the 

 inhabitants. This we found, to our cost, at Cauteretz, which on our 

 arrival was filled with a crowd of fashionable loungers from Bordeaux, 

 Lyons, and Paris, and could only afford us a comfortless apartment, at 

 the price of £2 per week. Happily, the arrangements for "boarding" 

 their numerous visitors are better cared for by their mountain hosts, 

 and traiteurs and table d'hotes supply excellent provisions, at a very 

 moderate cost. 



We landed at Havre on the 14th of June, and having easily cleared 

 our baggage, with which, as it included a microscope and other appa- 

 ratus, I had anticipated some difficulty, we took up our quarters at 

 the Hotel Erascati, beautifully situated on the beach without the forti- 

 fications, and free from the various and noisy accompaniments of a flou- 

 rishing seaport. A few days were devoted to rambles in the immediate 

 neighbourhood, to collecting Algae on the shore, and plants on the heights 

 of Cap de la Heve and the pleasant promontory of " Les Phares." No 

 novelties were, however, detected, the vegetation and insect life being 

 that with which I had been long familiar on the opposite coasts. The 

 strangely bizarre form of the Centaur ea Calcitrapa (star thistle) fre- 

 quently met our regards, and the brilliant purple of the Echium vulgar* 

 (viper's bugloss), and deep blue of the Salvia pratensis (wild sage), 

 claimed our notice and admiration. Amidst these flitted in the sun- 

 beams the AnthroceraFilipendulce (scarlet burnet moth), and the cerulean- 

 winged Polyommatus Argiolus (azure-blue butterfly), both frequent on 

 the Sussex Downs, and favourites during my residence at Lewes. 



A morning's excursion to Trouville, on the opposite shores of the 

 estuary of the Seine, here about seven miles wide, enabled me to collect 

 a few plants that proved interesting. The sandy hillocks were coloured 

 deep blue, with a profuse bloom of Veronica Teucrium, a species unknown 

 on the English coasts, and whose large and handsome corolla strongly 

 contrasts with its small, procumbent stems. The same locality supplied 

 me with numerous specimens of Bupleurum tenuissimum, a denizen of the 

 British isles, but very local in its distribution. Here it was growing on 

 the sand hills. Our English botanists describe it as an inhabitant of 

 muddy salt-marshes. I cannot account for this difference in its tastes 

 on the opposite sides of the Channel. Silene conica, another rarity in 

 Britain, was here abundant, together with a far more common plant, 

 Phleum arenarium; a brown and very active Cicindela and an Ichneumon 

 fly were also numerous ; but the species were not known to me*. We 

 returned from Trouville by Harfleur, descending into the latter town by 

 a long and handsome avenue of trees, forming a grand approach to a 

 dull and dilapidated town, of about 12,000 inhabitants, but beautifully 

 situated, and interesting from its historical associations. 



