BO) | AMERICAN MIDLAND NATURALIST 
BUBANI’S FLORA PYRENAEA. 
By Epwarp L. GREENE. 
That great range of European mountains, the Pyrenees, 
lying partly in France, partly in Spain, and along whose elevated 
crest runs sinuously the boundary between those two countries, 
for several centuries has been thought of as almost first among 
many delectable Old World fields of botanical exploration and 
research. It would be an interesting list, that of the mere names 
of the men, ardent botanists, who in the sixteenth century, the 
seventeenth and the eighteenth, explored each some one small 
part of this extensive field; but neither time nor space can be 
given here to the presenting of such a list; nor even to the naming 
of such as between the years 1781 and 1867 published books or 
important monographs on Pyrenaean botany. Suffice it to say 
that between those two dates, Pyrenaean floras were issued from 
the press—books by different authors—at the rate of more than 
one for every ten years; and until finally, in the last years of the 
nineteenth century and the first years of the twentieth, there 
was published a Pyrenaean Flora in four thick quarto volumes 
which, as evincing a thorough field knowledge of plants, joined 
to the profoundest erudition in all that appertains to systematic 
botany and nomenclature, must rank as second to no other flora 
of any state or country that has been published within the last 
hundred years. 
Of the man who has produced a masterpiece in any art or 
science, the life, the training, the education, the means employed, 
and the method followed are of deep interest. More than that; 
a knowledge of these is helpful exceedingly to the best interpre- 
tation and the fullest appreciation of the work itself. 
Pietro Bubani was born not far from Rome in the year 1806. 
That he was of gentle lineage, and in comfortable circumstances 
seem vouched for by this, that his childhood and youth were 
passed in the pursuit of academic study, so that at the age of 
19 he was matriculated at the University of Bologna as a candidate 
for degrees in medicine. At 23 he received the doctorate. But 
the activities of his mind seem to have been directed not solely 
to the pursuit of academic and professional studies. Bubani 
