1861.] BOTANY OF SPAIN. 359 



which predominates. The lovely Hepatica, of which the pink is 

 rare compared with the far more beautiful blue variety, glistens 

 from under ever}' thicket. A flower of still deeper blue, our 

 early Polygala calcarea, helps perhaps even more to colour the 

 mountain-side. Viola canina is in like profusion ; as is also, in 

 the barer places, the peculiarly Southern Aphyllanthes mons- 

 peliefisis, a leafless plant (as the name indicates), of the Order 

 Juncea, but which, wherever it grows, studs the ground with or- 

 namental blue flowers, each division of the corolla marked by a 

 midrib of a deeper blue. In the lower regions of the mountain, 

 Linum narhonense expands its still finer and larger blue flowers, 

 the most magnificent of their tribe. In the shady woods, our 

 Columbine, Aquilegia vulgaris, is not unfrequent. Another of 

 the most abundant flowers is Globularia vulgaris, a plant un- 

 known to England (though not requiring a very Southern cli- 

 mate), whose round heads are also blue, though of a less beauti- 

 ful tint. Another plant of the same genus, G. Alypum, is also 

 here met with, a more decidely Southern species, though rarer 

 even in the South than G. vulgaris. Of flowers other than blue, 

 one of the most plentiful — it is so indeed wherever it grows 

 in the Pyrenees, the Cevennes, or the burning rocky wastes of 

 the Mediterranean — is the rosy Saponaria Ocymoides, with its 

 masses of blossom carpeting the ground. Anthyllis Vulneraria 

 is frequent ; that is, its red-flowered variety, much the commonest 

 in the South. Of Cisti I only saw the purple C. albidus, the most 

 beautiful of the common species, and only matched by the very si- 

 milar C. villosus, which supplies its place in Sicily and Greece. But 

 there were numerous Helianthema, among which one white (pro- 

 bably H. apenninmn) and several yellow, which, not feeling quite 

 certain that I have determined them rightly, I forbear to name. 

 The red Valerian, Centranthus ruber (which we possess, though 

 probably naturalized, in Greenhithe chalk-pits and other places 

 in Kent), here showed its dark-red masses; a fact rather excep- 

 tional, for I have found C. angustifolius much more common, 

 both in the French Alps, the Pyrenees and the mountains of the 

 south of France. On a turfy part of the mountain-side, at a con- 

 siderable elevation, I found Ratiunculus gramineus, a handsome 

 and rather rare plant allied to R. Flammula and Lingua ; and at a 

 height above that. Arbutus Uva-ursi (now Arctostaphylos) spread 

 out its luxuriant stems and pitcher-like flowers. The small 



