THE 
EDINBURGH JOURNAL 
OF 
NATURAL AND GEOGRAPHICAL SCIENCE. 
OCTOBER, 1899. 
ORIGINAL COMMUNICATIONS. — 
ART. I. Description of the Landes of Acquitania. By WiLutaM 
AinswortH, Esq. Member of the Royal College of Surgeons, 
af the Royal Physical, and Plinian Societies of Edinburgh. * 
Tue Landes (Ericetz) are uncultivated tracts, in the south- 
western part of France, bordering the Bay of Biscay. They com- 
prised, in former times, almost the whole of Acquitania, till that 
duchy was aggrandized by the Roman arms ; and their limits were 
further extended under the sons of Henry II. At the era of the 
conquest of the Gauls by Julius Cesar, the province of Acquitania, 
whose corrupted name has since given rise to that of Guyenne, ex- 
tended from the course of the Garonne, in the north and east, to 
_ the chain of the Pyrenees in the south, and was bordered on the 
west by that vast gulf which bathes the occidental shores of Gaul 
and the Iberic peninsula. Extended by Augustus to the course of 
‘the Loire, and chain of the Cevennes, by the addition of fourteen 
cities, or tribes, it was afterwards divided into two provinces, hav- 
ing for capitals, the one Avaricum, (Bourges, ) the other Burdegala, 
(Bordeaux ;) till under Dioclesian, ancient Acquitania was erected 
into a particular province, under the name of Novempopulania: 
under the reign of the last Merovingian kings, the vast. territory 
comprised between the Pyrenees and the banks of the Neker and 
of the Weser, was occupied by three nations ; the most meridional 
part alone was inhabited by the Acquitanic nation: Roman in its 
laws, its customs, and its language, subjected for nearly a century 
to the yoke of the Visigoths, (Goths of the west,) it had rather de- 
Sired. the French domination from religious fanaticism, than from 
that impatient want of ameliorating our condition, which leads us 
* Read before the Royal Physical Society of Edinburgh. 
VOL. I. = ° A 
