plant which English florists have spoilt by high cultivation, but they were to my eye the best of any wild cyclamen that I know. Here I also saw a bulbous plant, with large plicate leaves, which I suppose to be an unknown species of Colchicum, but I was not successful in bringing it home alive.
Three hours after leaving Symi the boat reached Rhodes, but I had no time to go into the country. The next morning I landed at Macri, a small town in a gulf which affords one of the largest and best harbours in the Levant. Macri is very prettily situated at the foot of hills covered with scrub of Lentisk, Myrtle and Arbutus, with pine trees higher up and high mountains in the background: but, lying as it docs close to a large marshy plain, it is, like many places on the coast, so unhealthy in summer that most of the inhabitants migrate in May to their summer quarters, which are called “ yailah,” in the mountains.
The only family of European descent I found here was that of a Mr. Vassito, who with his two sons was very civil and gave me all the help he could in getting horses for my journey into the interior of Lycia. This province, which both to an archaeologist and to a naturalist is one of the richest and most interesting in the Levant, has been well described by Fellowes, and by Spratt and Forbes, who in 1S40 travelled here and described the innumerable ruins which arc found all over the mountains. But no English naturalist has ever explored its beauties; and though the country was then and still is in a very primitive and unsettled condition, I know of none so near Europe which would probably afford so many novelties both in botany and in entomology. After getting lodgings in a Greek house I went to explore the country, and found a yellow Fritillary described by Baker as F. Forbesi, which has not been found elsewhere, and a beautiful form of the winter flowering Iris, which flowered in November in my garden, and was figured in the Botanical Magazine, Plate 6343, as Iris Cretensis Janka, but is now considered to be a form of the Algerian Iris unguicularis. The rocky ground was in places covered with the most beautiful leaved Cyclamens I ever saw, and a tall yellow Spurge and a white flowered Cistus were also coming out.
On March 25th I went to the other side of the bay, where many of the great white herons were feeding on the marsh, and found some terrestrial Orchids already showing flower. Ophrys, Orchis, and Serapias are all very numerous both in species and in quantity in Lycia, and their tubers are collected and dried under the name of Salep, which is used as a food and considered, as it was formerly in England, as very nourishing for invalids.
The next day I went to meet a Turkish hunter on the other side of the bay, where many wild pigs were said to be found, and beat some marshy thickets of Oleander and thorny creeping shrubs with dogs. One of the Turks was an old soldier who had been at the siege of Silistria, and, like all the old soldiers I met in Asia Minor, was very friendly to English¬ men. But their system of hunting was not scientific, and though several pigs were found I had no shot till the afternoon, when, standing in the reeds in a thicket between two hills, I heard the dogs give tongue, and a large grey boar rushed towards me. I let him come within fifteen yards
