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fully. Asplenium septentrionale is also common, growing, as usual, 

 on the hottest and driest rocks. I mention this, because it is consi- 

 dered by many botanists as a northern and a moisture-loving plant. 



From Clermont I made an excursion to the Mont Dore ; and here 

 we meet with a very different vegetation, exhibiting a good deal of 

 Alpine, or perhaps rather of Pyrenean, botany, with some pecularities. 

 The baths of Mont Dore form a village of hotels, or rather of boarding- 

 houses, in a narrow valley 3400 feet above the sea. This valley con- 

 tinues tolerably open for some distance above the village, when it 

 terminates abruptly in two ravines, containing the streams of the Dor 

 and the Dogne, whose united waters form the Dordogne. Turning to 

 the right, however, we find a deeper but shorter hollow, called Vallee 

 d'Enfer, the wildest and most savage mountain-recess I have ever 

 seen ; and the peaks above it furnish it with a supply of snow which, 

 I believe, never disappears. The day I was there a continued rain 

 impeded my examination of its botanical treasures; and the wet wea- 

 ther I afterwards experienced at the Mont Dore prevented me from 

 revisiting it. The woods about Mont Dore are chiefly beech and 

 Pinus pectinata. No other species of Pinus occurs here ; and, ac- 

 cording to the testimony of my guide, this never bears fruit. M. 

 LeCoq does not admit this imputation. I can only say that I saw no 

 cones, either on the trees or on the ground, or in the village among 

 the collections of fuel. In my return, by the shorter road to Clermont, 

 I often had to look down on extensive woods, and noticed, what I 

 had seen less conspicuously in my walks, that the horizontal branches 

 of the fir have occasionally upon them what looks like a little com- 

 plete fir-tree, as if the scales of a cone had been expanded into leaves 

 and branches. The woods in the immediate neighbourhood of the 

 Mont Dore are rich in Stellaria nemorum. Geranium phaeum and syl- 

 vaticum, Rosa rubrifolia, Sedum villosum, Ribes petrseum, Chiero- 

 phyllum aureum, Sambucus racemosus, Valeriana tripteris, Crepis 

 blattarioides and palustris, Mulgedium alpinum and Plumieri, Arnica 

 montana, Doronicum austriacum, Senecio Cacaliaster, Adenostyles 

 albifrons, Melampyrum sylvaticum, Maianthemum bifolium, Scilla 

 Lilio-hyacinthus, Luzula nivea, Festuca sylvatica, and Polypodium 

 Phegopteris. A Biscutella, considered here as B. coronopifolia, 

 grows both here and near Clermont ; but I doubt if it be the 

 plant of Mont Ventoux. Braya pinnatifida also occurs; but this is 

 better found on the Pic de Sauci. In the open spaces, and in the 

 pastures, we find Sisymbrium bursifoliura (only in one wet spot), Viola 

 sudetica, Tvifolium spadiceum and alpinum, Alchemilla alpina, Meum 



