The Zoologist— June, 1873. 3551 



A Visit to Corsica. By the Rev. F. A. Walker, M.A., F.L.S. 



October 24tli. Our uight voyage from Leghorn to Bastia, 

 where we arrived between three and four in the morning, proved 

 rather rough, and was performed amid drenching rain and a storm 

 of thunder and lightning, to which the unfortunate Lucchesi 

 labourers, some two hundred in number, with several women and 

 children, and a troupe of actresses en route for the Ajaccio theatre, 

 were fully exposed, as they remained on deck until ordered down 

 by our fellow-passenger, the British Consul for Bastia, who Idndly 

 paid the difference in their fare, and as many, accordingly, as the 

 second-class cabin would accommodate at once repaired thither. 

 The town of our destination consisted chiefly of white houses, erected 

 for the most part on a steep rise from the harbour, and its hills 

 loomed darkly in the back-ground, owing to the"macchie," or scrub 

 brushwood, that covered their sides, over which the blue lightning, 

 flashing at intervals, produced a singular effect. A small boat 

 conveyed us from the steamer to the quay, and thence we pro- 

 ceeded to the Custom-house, where tall and stalwart women, who 

 bore traces of having been extremely handsome, with coloured 

 handkerchiefs tied round their heads, were in readiness to convey 

 our luggage to the hotel. It was then fair, and the day appeared 

 likely to clear, but was soon again overcast. A deluge of rain 

 ensued, and kept on continuously, with repeated thunder rolling 

 among the hills, so that shortly two very respectable brooks on 

 either side of the steep Boulevard Paoli, where our hotel was 

 situate, appeared to be each using their greatest effort to get to the 

 bottom first. Between twelve and one it grew somewhat finer, and 

 I went out to survey the immediate neighbourhood of the town, and 

 on turning to the right, at the top of our street, found myself already 

 outside its precincts, and close to a quarry, where blocks of white 

 marble lay strewn about,— not the stone of that particular cliff 

 apparently, but no doubt from the neighbourhood. What chiefly 

 attracted my attention, however, was the Barbary fig, overhanging 

 the bank, that remarkable species of Cactus, so frequent in the 

 South of Europe, which I now saw for the first time ; it was common 

 enough in this neighbourhood, but abounded like a weed at our 

 second place of sojourn, Ajaccio, where its thick and prickly 

 foliage served as a drying-ground for clothes. With the exception 



