MALTA AND SICILY. 
241 
Pietro, and we should have made many 
valuable additions to our collections. We 
have been particularly unfortunate in the 
weather, which has been much more in¬ 
clement than is usually the case at this time 
of the year. 
Beyond Nicolosi our road lay for some 
distance over a desolate plain of fine black 
cinders, in which a very few stunted broom- 
bushes were the oidy plants that could find 
nourishment, and soon after we entered the 
woody district or Bosco, a beautiful forest, 
consisting chiefly of low oak-trees, the stems 
of some of which were three feet or more in 
diameter. The ground was here thickly 
covered with snow, and the air was intensely 
cold. The woody district forms a belt round 
the mountain sixty or seventy miles in cir¬ 
cumference, and seven or eight in width, and 
is succeeded by the barren region, from the 
