424 Botanical Notices fi^om Spain. 



to Villaharta and Cordoba. After a residence of a fortnight in 

 this town, I again crossed the whole mountain-chain and went north- 

 wards to Almadea in the Mancha, then turned back again into the 

 province of Cordoba, and journeyed south-west through Hinojosa 

 to the little mountain-town of Fuente Ovejuna, and from hence 

 westwards to Estremadura, which however I very soon quitted to 

 enter the province of Seville. From the mountain-town of Guadal- 

 canal, I turned westwards, and journeyed through the most moun- 

 tainous portion of the Sierra Morena to the little town of Aracena, 

 only five leagues from the frontiers of Portugal, where the Sierra 

 Morena divides into two principal branches, one of which follows the 

 chief direction, and stretches away far into Portugal, and the other 

 goes off in an almost southerly direction as far as the Atlantic, covers 

 the greatest portion of the province of Huelva, and forms the left 

 wall of the valley watered by the Guadiana. Through this southern 

 and very broad branch, I journeyed from Aracena through Cerro and 

 Villanueva de los Castillejos to the mouth of the Guadiana. 



The chief portion of the whole of the Sierra Morena consists of 

 graywacke, which crops out in part as a compact rock, partly as 

 graywacke schist, which takes an endless variety of forms according 

 to its consistence and colour. In isolated spots this stone alternates 

 with clay-schist, as at Almadea, where it forms the matrix of the 

 celebrated quicksilver ores, and between Villaharta and Fuente Ove- 

 juna, where recently very rich coal-mines have been discovered. 

 This graywacke formation stretches from Murcia as far as Portugal 

 and up to the Guadiana, is from four to six German miles in extent, 

 and forms uniform, undulating, gently rounded mountains and 

 ridges, which in a great portion of the chain scarcely attain the 

 height of 3000 feet. Only in the most western portion, in the pro- 

 vince of Huelva, in the environs of Aracena, this formation consists 

 of rugged and loftier mountains, which may perhaps be from 3-4000 

 feet high. Here the graywacke is in many places interrupted by a 

 gneiss formation, which probably also constitutes the most northern 

 chains of the western portion of the Sierra Morena, lying in Lower 

 Estremadura, for this part is much more watered than the central and 

 eastern part of the mountain -chain. Along the southern foot of the 

 Sierra Morena various other formations overlie the graywacke, namely 

 in the east of Murcia, as far as the country of Carolina, a red, very soft 

 and clayey sandstone, which forms long, horizontal, but steep ridges. 

 To this is joined a large formation of red, very hard and fine Schleif- 

 stein, which covers the whole southern margin of the mountain- 

 chain of Baylen as far as beyond Montoro, forms somewhat steep, 

 cup-formed or pyramidal, but neither rocky nor lofty, mountains, 

 and passes into a white sandstone, which extends from Cordoba 

 westward to the foot of the Sierra Morena. In the central part of ■ 

 the Sierra Morena, that is to say in the province of Cordoba, an 

 immense granite formation breaks through the graywacke, which 

 however forms no isolated summits, but an immense undulating 

 table-land sloping gently towards the north, and lying between the 

 northern margin of the graywacke formation and the lofty mountain-. 



