As, in accordance with our daily custom, we reviewed the produce of our day’s botanising, before committing our plants to paper, it seemed to fall rather short of our expectations. The season was not yet advanced enough for many seaside species, and, besides, as every naturalist knows, one’s power of observation on horseback is comparatively limited. When the eye is carried forward by an external agency, and its motion is not altogether regulated by the will, many minute objects are too imperfectly seen to convey a definite image; and however often one may dismount, many slight suggestions that would be tested by one on foot are allowed to pass without verification. Along with most of the shrubs that we had seen about Tangier, we passed many small trees of _Tamarix africana_ and stout bushes of _Juniperus phœnicea_. The most ornamental plant that we gathered was _Phaca bætica_, with fine purplish blue flowers, very unlike any of the forms of the same genus with which we were familiar in the Alps. The most interesting plant, in a scientific sense, that we found this day was so minute as to be altogether overlooked at the time; and it was only some time after our return to England that two minute specimens (less than an inch in height) were found engaged in a tuft of some stouter plant. They belong to a little crucifer, called _Malcolmia nana_. It has been found in a few spots scattered at wide intervals throughout the Mediterranean region, and as far eastward as the shores of the Caspian Sea. At Ceuta we had the spectacle—always a painful one—of gangs of convicts chained together, and working under the charge of soldiers, which meets the eye in so many parts of Southern Europe. Difficult as is the subject of penal discipline for criminals, it may safely be said that this is one of the worst—if not the very worst— system that has ever been devised. The punishment, however hard, loses through familiarity most of its deterrent effect; while, far from reforming, it seems to be the most efficient method known for finally corrupting the less hardened offender. The objections are somewhat lessened when the convict station is removed from the general gaze, and where the prisoners have little hope and even little temptation to escape.