Excursion in Lower Styria. 459 



month rendered it much less agreeable and remunerating than, 

 from the richness of the flora and the hospitality I met with 

 everywhere, it would otherwise have been. Many plants turned 

 mouldy from the impossibility of drying my paper in the sun. 

 There was only one fine day from the 3rd to the end of the 

 month. 



At Marburg I found Lamium Orvala and Anemone trifolia, 

 which comes with the Drave from Carinthia, and is abundant on 

 its banks and the hills near it, but appears nowhere else I believe 

 in Styria. At Wurmberg I collected several with blue flowers, 

 but the colour is nearly lost in drying. The forests on the 

 Bacher were just beginning to revive from the imusually long 

 winter. This mountain forms a marked boundary in the vege- 

 tation. It is about 5000 feet high, twenty English miles long, 

 and five or six broad, and covered with forests left from time 

 immemorial to a state of nature, and only inhabited by wolves 

 and other wild beasts. On the first view of the country to the 

 south of it, the greater number and beauty of many trees, which 

 to the north of it occur as isolated individuals, and the scarcity 

 of others, such as the Conifers and birches, which form the forests 

 of Upper Styria, make an impression on the traveller that he 

 has entered a difi'erent climate. The aspect of Lower Styria has 

 nothing of the savage dismal character of the northern part of 

 the province, but its magnificent streams the Save and Drave 

 amply compensate for the precipices and waterfalls ; and one who 

 can feel the beauty of a quiet and unobtrusive majestic scenery 

 without requiring the harsher features of a landscape to awaken 

 their attention, will feel as deep and lasting an interest in the 

 valley of the Save, and at Wisell, Wurmberg, Cilli and other 

 spots in that district, as in the Alps. 



From Marburg I went to Stattenberg, a castle at the foot of 

 the Wotsch, ten English miles west of Pettau, and remained there 

 a fortnight with Mr. Peterstein, a botanist well acquainted with 

 the localities. Among many other plants which being common 

 about Gratz I did not collect, were Scrophularia vernalis, Lapsana 

 /6B/2c?fl, abundant in every wood, Potentilla micrantha, Veronica act- 

 nifolia,Lunaria rediviva,Arabis turritayDentaria enneaphylloSjbul- 

 hifera, and the rare trifolia, Glecoma hirsuta, Scojwlina atropoides, 

 Loranthus europaus, Astrantia Epipactis, and Aremonia agrimo- 

 nioides, a plant that had been singularly overlooked, though very 

 abundant in shady moist woods in all parts of Lower Styria south 

 of the Bacher. These on the north side of the Wotsch, in warm 

 dry situations : Aronia rotundifolia, Helianthemum oelandicum 

 foliis incanis, Cytisus prostratus, Scop. ? Thlaspi montanum, 

 Orchis pallens and samhucina, usually in the woods. Genista 

 scariostty Viv. {triquetra, W. K.), Homogyne sylvestris, Carpinus 



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