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CHAPTER V. 



THE LUSITANIAN PROVINCE. 



Spain and Portugal, of all European kingdoms, 

 have served most scantily the cause of science, and 

 have contributed but a very small quota to the 

 army of naturalists. Indeed, until within the last 

 few years our knowledge of their vegetation, a sub- 

 ject usually in advance of other branches of local 

 natural history, was fragmentary and imperfect, 

 nor are we indebted now for the most that we 

 know to Iberian botanists, few of whom have 

 laboured assiduously among the treasures of their 

 native land. By English, French, Swiss and Ger- 

 man explorers has the rich flora of the Peninsula 

 been sifted. Much yet remains to be done before 

 the terrestrial zoology of this region shall have 

 been satisfactorily examined. If this be the state 

 of science upon the land, we can hardly hope for 

 better things at sea ; and, indeed, there is no pro- 

 vince of the European seas about which we know 

 so little in detail as the oceanic margins of Spain 

 and Portugal. Were it not manifest that the 

 natural history region of which they form a part, 

 embraces, ere it reach its southern boundaries, the 



