150 CHARACTER OF THE COUNTRY. 



gathered. Nevertheless the number of species 

 collected was considerable, and as all were laid 

 by with careful records of the time and place 

 when and where they were gathered, and what 

 relations they seemed to present with the general 

 vegetation of the region, they enable us to 

 portray, in miniature, the features of Lycian 

 vegetation. 



The surface of the country consists of plains 

 and deep valleys bounding or leading from the 

 sea, and of high mountains, with steep forest-clad 

 sea-ward slopes, walling in alpine plains, mostly 

 bare and treeless, except around the villages. 

 These topographical features indicate as many 

 botanical regions. The first includes the great 

 maritime plains and valleys — the vegetation from 

 the edge of the sea to an elevation of about 

 fifteen hundred feet. The second includes the 

 mountain-slopes towards the sea, from an eleva- 

 tion of fifteen hundred to nearly three thousand 

 feet, and the yailahs or highland valleys which 

 open out seawards. The third is the great inland 

 region of subalpine plains — the true yailahs, the 

 inhabited parts of the table-land of Asia Minor, 

 elevated from three to five thousand five hundred 

 feet above the sea, and in some places presenting 



