1861.] BOTANY OF SPAIN. 231 



its smell, was here, as in most parts of the south of Europe, 

 abundant. This plant reaches so far north in France, that it 

 might well have been looked for in England. The family Gera- 

 7iiacecB is represented by Erodium malachoides. Qxalis cornicu- 

 lata, and the brittle bush Coriaria myrtifolia, with its currant- 

 like racemes clothing its dry-looking branches long before the 

 leaves come out, are here common. Of Leguminous plants, the 

 most worthy of notice is Lathyrus Ochrns, a procumbent species, 

 with large oval leaflets, (like a greater and paler L. Aphaca,) 

 which haunts, as in Sicily, low moist places in the alluvial 

 ground. The place of our Lotus corniculaius is taken by another 

 Sicilian plant, the equally yellow and not less elegant L. orni- 

 thopodioides . Another Leguminous plant, with oval leaflets and 

 round leaf-like stipules, is Ar'throlobium (formerly Ornithopus) 

 scorpioides. Of Rosacea, the principal is that happily ubiquitous 

 shrub, the Hawthorn; I did not examine whether in both its 

 forms or only in one. It is curious that the form monogyna is 

 sometimes the only one found in a large tract of country. Ac- 

 cording to Gussone, there is no other in Sicily. The only Po- 

 tentilla I saw was P. verna, which is rather frequent. The Com- 

 posites were those common in the south : Sonchus tenerrimus, 

 like our common Sowthistle, but much more fragile and delicate ; 

 Picridium vulgare, with its urceolate flowers and hard scarious 

 phyllaries ; that ornament of banks, Urospermum Dalechampii, 

 and the coarser V. picroides ; the small Marigold, Calendula 

 arvensis ; this last is found as far north as Normandy, and I 

 believe no botanist knows, any more than myself, why it does 

 not grow in Kent. Who can tell Avhy Specularia Speculum, the 

 Venus's Looking-glass of our gardens, comes up to the very 

 Straits of Dover as a cornfield plant, while, though so generally 

 cultivated in England, we never see it wild, even as an escape 

 from culture? — or why Orlaya grandiflora, which I have gathered 

 in cornfields between Boulogne and St. Omer, should not be 

 found in England at all ? — or why that commonest of Continental 

 weeds, even on the sands opposite the English coast, Eryngium 

 campestre, should be the rarest of rare plants in England, and 

 should not spread even when introduced as a ballast plant. These 

 secrets of vegetation will, perhaps, be some day unveiled. The 

 only Thistles in flower near Barcelona, at this early season, were 

 the same as in Sicily ; Carduus pycnocephalus (allied to C. tenui- 



