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cross-leaved heath (Bruyère à quatre face), the fine-leaved or Scotch heath (Bruyère cendrée), and the rare Cornish heath (Bruyère vagabonde), with us confined to a few spots in Cornwall and Devonshire, but here growing far and wide throughout the whole Pyrenean district; while, if we leave the wood and cross to the other side of Biarritz, we shall there come upon another British rarity, the Erica ciliaris, or fringe-leaved heath of Connemara, growing luxuriantly along the shores of the little lake known as La Négresse, and throughout that bit of heathery woodland which by the BiarritzParisian folk has so absurdly been nicknamed the "Bois de Boulogne." If, on the one hand, however, we are reminded of our own scanty western flora, on the other hand we are yet more frequently and forcibly reminded of another flora-that brighter and more luxuriant one which we meet with in the greatest perfection upon both sides of the Mediterranean, and which, after skirting along the foot of the Pyrenees, finds its final north-westerly development here on the very verge of the Atlantic. It so happened that on my first visit to this part of the world I had come, not from the north, but from the south, travelling direct from Algiers; and it seemed, I remember, a strange experience, after having crossed seas, and changed continents, and travelled nearly due north for so many days, to find myself in the end still surrounded by so large a number of the self-same plants, and, for that matter, of the self-same birds and insects too, that had so lately been left behind amongst the white roads and sun-smitten hillsides of Tehel and the Kabylia. The beautiful sage-leaved cistus (Cistus salvifolia), whose white petals have a trick of dropping about, as if forgetfully, upon everything within their reach-it was little more than a week since we left it looking a little limp and exhausted amongst the waterless gorges of the Zaccar-Chergui, and here-700 miles to the north-we found it just coming into flower on the low slopes of the Cape St. Martin, exposed to all the beating rains and furious winds of the Atlantic. That curious orchid which French children call “L'homme pendu”—it was only the other day that we smiled at its quaintness in the palmy groves of the Jardin d'Essai, and amongst the gorgeous villa gardens of the Mustapha Supérieure, and here it was again growing upon the high Basque uplands and along the wind-worn edges of the pine woods. Indeed, we might go very much farther afield, and yet find ourselves pursued by these similarities; few facts in geographical distribution being more remarkable than the uniformity (underlying, of course, endless diversity) which is found throughout the whole, not only of Europe, but of that wide tract, "covering a distance not far short of half the

circumference of the globe," which to modern biologists is known as the Palearctic region. "So great is its zoological unity," writes Mr. Wallace, "that the majority of genera in countries so far apart as Great Britain and North Japan are identical." From east to west, from north to south, from Gascony to Japan, and from the Connemara hills to the foot of the Atlas, the same genera, and in many cases even the same species, may still be met with. Once, however, the last-named barrier is passed, we enter upon a new world—one in which few, if any, of our long-familiar friends-bird, beast, or creeping thing-find place. Here, in this south-west corner of France, it so happens that we are upon the border, not, indeed, of a region, but of what has been constituted a sub-region-that of central and north Europe, as contrasted with the richer and more southern subregion surrounding the Mediterranean; the whole of Spain being included in the latter, the whole of France, with the exception of Provence and part of Languedoc, in the former. Naturally, however, these sub-regions are not divided from one another by any very hard and fast line, but, on the contrary, run into and overlap one another considerably; and it is to this blending of northern and southern, Atlantic and Mediterranean elements, that the great interest and richness of the flora and fauna here is chiefly due-a richness more apparent, of course, to one coming from the north than from the south.

Meanwhile, we have not yet done with our pine wood, and may indulge ourselves by strolling a little longer into its dark intricacies, unmindful of the near neighbourhood of the town, or of the smartly dressed folk of Biarritz, whose carriages may be seen rolling by over the soft sandy road which runs through the greater part of its length. Or, if these disturb us, and we have leisure for a longer expedition, we may pass through Bayonne, and re-enter the forest some dozen miles or so to the north, from which point the long, narrow belt of trees stretches away unbroken for over a hundred miles across the wide sandy plain, which occupies the angle of the coast between the Adour and the mouth of the Garonne. To the traveller seeing the region for the first time, this superabundance of fir-trees is at first a surprise, and even something of a disappointment. All his life, probably, he has heard of these famous Landes, their weirdness and desolation; the wide sea of yellow sand covering the whole country, and stretching away on all sides to the horizon; the lonely shepherds perched on stilts, their sheepskins on their backs and their knitting in their hand; the grey lagoons of brackish water; the whole constituting in his mind a sort of European version of the Great

Sahara. And when, on the contrary, he finds himself running on hour after hour through a succession of flourishing but commonplace plantations; passing tidy houses, and neat orchards, and pretty gardens, with occasional cornfields, or meadows where the people are busy getting in their hay, but with no signs of the sandy desert at all, he begins to feel aggrieved, to think that he has been made the dupe of the geographers, and that these much-talked-of Landes-like the Grampian Chain, or the Mountains of the Moon, or any other geographical fiction-have never in reality had any bodily existence

at all!

Yet, for all that, these Landes are a very real and substantial fact, and the struggle to anchor the shifting sand-dunes, to make them of some use instead of the direst curse and misfortune to all within their reach, has been anything but an easy one. Let the traveller, instead of hurrying on to Bordeaux, leave his train at any of the little midway stations, and let him keep straight on, either to the east or to the west, and he will not have gone more than soine six or seven miles-often not more than three or four--before he finds the treetrunks growing fewer and fewer, until at last he leaves them all behind him, and is out upon the wide, seemingly interminable, plain of brownish-yellow sand, where, if the season is summer, and the day hot and dry, he will find the glare, both from sun above and ground below, fast becoming intolerable, and—his curiosity satisfied—will be only too thankful to make his way back to the shelter of the despised Pignadas.

Although the pines, or rather pinasters (Pinus maritimus), form the chief congregation of this forest, a good many other trees may now be induced to grow wherever the pure silica of the sand has become modified by a certain admixture of earthy materials. Small woods of Cork oaks (Quercus robur), mingled with chestnuts and poplars, are passed, with here and there a clump of fruit-trees, or a modest attempt at a vineyard-the latter not, it must be owned, a very happy or successful experiment. In some places the oaks even outnumber the pines, but the former are generally stunted; nor, from a picturesque point of view, are they improved by the fact that during great part of the year they are bare of all bark, which, stripped in the summer, grows again the following spring. As timber they are, however, of more value than the pines (which would not, indeed, be difficult), and on the whole they seem to suit fairly with, and to content themselves in, their sandy home.

To the wanderer from the north probably the great charm of these woods will always be the sunshine-subdued yet irrepressible

which breaks in everywhere upon its green opacity, flecking the ground and tree trunks with flecks and streaks of capricious gold. Everything, or nearly everything, else is familiar-the knobs of rock and tumbled hillocks of sand; the tangles of bramble and bracken; the thick green moss upon all the fallen logs; the hollows paved with fern, where branches of fir-tassels lodge, and small red funguses raise their gay impertinent heads; the red trunks, duncoloured carpet, and green canopy overhead-all these are familiar, and might belong to any fir wood in any one of our own islands; but this glow, this radiance, these golden gleams piercing every crack and cranny, and pouring like a very Pactolus along the ground-this alas! is not by any means so readily to be had at home. On the other hand, to the Britisher the total or almost total absence of birds seems strange. There are no sounds of twittering amongst the branches ; no wood-pigeon cooing from the tree tops; no chaffinches chirping as they eagerly hunt out the longest fir-needles to bind their nests together. A melancholy silence takes the place of all the happy fuss and chatter of the woods at home. And only in the neighbourhood of the coast is the silence broken by the sharp note of the sandlark, or the cries of the terns and sandpipers as they gather in noisy flocks upon the shore. But his wonder, if he had any, will be at an end when he has taken a stroll through the marché, and seen the little victims hanging up by scores in the poulterers' stalls. Where the "finches of the grove" all find their way to the market, it is scarcely surprising that there should be none to twitter or build

nests.

As for the origin of these famous Landes, that point has been so often and so thoroughly discussed, that it is hardly necessary to touch upon it, or only in the briefest fashion. Suffice it then, for our purpose, that the whole, and considerably more than the whole, of the sand and stones and gravel carried down by the Adour and the Garonne is flung violently up again here by the sea. "The waves," says M. de Quatrefages, "urged by the north-west wind, cross the Atlantic without meeting any obstacle as far as the entrance of the Bay of Biscay, but being compressed there between two coasts, which rapidly approximate to one another, they flow towards the bottom with constantly increasing velocity." The consequence is, that the sand and gravel is continually being rolled inshore on the shoulders of the ground swell, and there accumulating, they have gradually choked up the whole of the upper end of the bay; the light sand being further carried in by the wind and swept over the country to eastward. The destruction brought upon the neighbourhood by the

onward march of this sand deluge has in times past been appalling, fresh territories being continually added to the Landes, and subtracted from the fertile country beyond; but since the woods have begun to grow, and especially since the cordon of trees has been drawn along the entire line of shore, a limit has been set to these ravages, and as time goes on, and the agricultural population increases, more and more land will no doubt be reclaimed, until the whole region east of the belt of trees has at last been brought under cultivation.

Leaving the forest, not because we have exhausted its interest but simply because time presses, let us now return to Bayonne, and, having crossed the great bridge of St. Esprit (said to be over 600 feet long), hasten on across other and lesser bridges, now over the Nive, now over the Adour, past the low-arched arcades of the Rue Port-Neuf, where the chocolate-sellers carry on a thriving trade; past other and narrower streets, at the end of one of which we catch a glimpse of the grim old walls of the Cathedral; past the Place de la Liberté, where the band plays on Sundays, and the mixed population-French, and Basque, and Spanish-strut up and down, with much clinking of spurs and waving of feathers-in bonnets certainly guiltless of Paris; out under the shadow of those frowning ramparts, which Hope and Wellington so long besieged, and so nearly carried; and, once outside, let us, leaving the station for Biarritz on our left, hasten along under the pleasant shade of the Alées Marines between two tall rows of lime-trees, until we stand once more upon the bare shingly beach, through which the Adour makes its way, rolling smoothly until, just as it reaches the sea, it rises suddenly in angry fret and fury against the bar at its mouth. Here, even on the calmest day of summer, there is always a roar, and a tussle, and a turmoil. Again and again has the sand been cleared and the entrance enlarged, and again and again it has accumulated, rendering the harbour well-nigh practically useless. More than that, on several occasions the river has been driven by the violence of the sea into shifting its bed, and seeking out a new course for itself, with the natural result of inundating the whole neighbourhood in the process. The greatest of these inundations is said to have occurred in the year 1360, when the sand, driven in by a great tempest, entirely filled up the bed of the river, causing it to turn away to the north; where, having flooded the greater part of Bayonne, it poured itself bodily into the lowland beyond, spreading ruin and desolation in all directions. At last, but not until many lives were lost, and much fertile country had been converted into a swamp, the imprisoned waters found an outlet not far from Cape Breton. Here, in the new channel which it had sawn

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