328 BOTANY OF SPAIN. [Novembev, 



While at Madrid I did not botanize ; the time we passed there 

 was occupied with the town itself, and especially its almost un- 

 rivalled picture-gallery, which they who have not seen are unac- 

 quainted with one of the two great schools of painting of the 

 world. The neighbouring country is a treeless and bushless ex- 

 panse of corn — a uniform green in spring, a melanchqjy stubble 

 in autumn — comprising the lofty plateau of Castille, of which 

 the mountainous swell has neither the variety of hills nor the im- 

 posingness of a real plain. It is as unpromising to the botanist 

 as it is unattractive to the lover of nature, to whose eye every- 

 thing about the capital of todas las Espahas is wearisome, save 

 at the few points from which he can look over the north edge of 

 the plateau, across a broad valley, to the snowclad mountains of 

 Guadarraraa, by the blasts from which sentries are said to have 

 been frozen to death at the gates of Queen Isabella's palace. 



My next botanizing was in a walk in the dusk near Guada- 

 laxara, the place where the railway from Madrid towards Zara- 

 goza at that time terminated; it has since been extended further. 

 This little town is made imposiiig by the vast chateau of the 

 Mendozas, a building which tells of Spain in what are called her 

 great ages, being in reality the ages by which she was ruined. 

 The only new plant which met my eye was Reseda undata, now 

 identified with R. alba, a plant of our gardens, sometimes found 

 in England as an escape from culture, to me iudissolubly asso- 

 ciated with the place where I first saw it, the ruins of Nero's 

 Golden House. 



I was more successful at Alcolea, the small village mentioned 

 in my former paper, halfway between Guadalaxara and Cala- 

 tayud, the first considerable town in Aragon. The plants which 

 were here in flower, were those of a much earlier time of year, 

 owing to the great elevation of the plateau on which, though 

 now drawing near to its eastern boundary, we still were. Though 

 it was the 1st of May, Genista scorpius (which near Avignon 

 begins to flower in February) had not yet expanded its buds. 

 Erysimum perfoliatum also, was not yet in flower. Hutchinsia 

 petr(Ba, the plant of St. Vincent Rocks and Eltham churchyard, 

 was there ; Potentilla verna, another Clifton plant ; two Crucifers 

 which grow near Rome and flower in March ; Arabis verna and 

 the less beautiful Calepi?ia Corvini ; another Arabis, probably 

 ciliata ; two Veronica of the earliest spring, hederafolia and tri- 



