BOTANICAL INFORMATION. lil 
yet obliged to handle the scythe, the sickle, or the plough, 
and to tend his own flocks on the mountains. Attracted 
towards the study of Botany by the sight of some specimens 
gathered by a herbalist of Laruns, he procured a copy of 
Lapeyrouse’s Histoire Abrégée des Plantes des Pyrénées, learned 
Latin enough to understand the botanical diagnoses, wrote 
out a portable synopsis of the work, rambled over the country 
whenever he could spare time, formed for himself a rich herba- 
rium of the neighbouring heights, which he has named, and with 
few exceptions, named well too, learned to draw sufficiently . 
for the purpose of making rude but recognisable coloured 
sketches of his plants, and with the further assistance of one 
or two books which he has contrived to obtain, aided by. a 
little intercourse with M. Grenier of Besancon, and some 
other Botanists who have visited this place, he has acquired 
a thorough knowledge of the stations, geographical and geo- 
logical of these mountains, and a far more critical and perfect 
acquaintance with the plants he has found than many a pro- 
fessor with a Botanical garden and library at his command. | 
* Aided by Gaston’s directions, I have made three rich her- 
borizing excursions from this place, independently of shorter 
excursions, first to the Col de Leyt and Mont Grume, 
secondly, to the Cols d’ Arbas and de Torte, (all of them 
between 5000 and 6000 feet high), and the third to the Pic 
de Ger, nearly 9000 feet high. These mountains have been 
visited by Leon Dufour, who published the result of his excur- 
sions in the Annals of the Linnean Society of Bordeaux, as 
also by Grenier, who gave a short account of his tour and of 
his intercourse with Gaston in the same work. Yet such is the 
richness of this Flora that several interesting plants have since 
been found. One is a fine Thalictrum, perfectly distinct from 
any species I know, lately published by Grenier from Gaston’s 
quinens under the name of 7. macrocarpum; another is a 
E um, growing in the chinks of the large calcareous — . 
a rocks above the woody region, which Leon Dufour appears to —— 
it when very young. This pliant i is now in fruit, and jes cer- 
have mistaken for L. purpuro-ceruleum, he having only seen = 
