broad wheat-field, and speak of Carnuntum as familiarly as if its glories were but of recent date. [Illustration: THE TOWN WALL, HAINBURG] Nearer Hainburg the hill-sides are scored with grassy mounds of ancient earthworks, and on the high, isolated peak behind the town the extensive ruin of a mediæval castle is a landmark visible for many miles both up and down the river. Immense Government tobacco factories and a school for military cadets have somewhat disturbed the mediæval aspect of the streets, and a railway has ruthlessly cut through the walls, and trains crunch and rumble high up on a row of ugly arches that disfigure the quay. The old side walls, with frequent towers of irregular shape and at various angles, converge from the water-front, and, narrowing the town limits as they go, join by a solid cross wall at the foot of the hill, and then clamber up the precipitous, rugged declivity to the angles of the great château which covers every yard of the summit. The hill itself is gay with numberless varieties of wild-flowers and shrubs--a botanist’s paradise. In Alfred Parsons’ botanical note-book is the following information concerning this region: “The Schlossberg behind the town of Hainburg is very rich in plants--one large rock garden. On it grow several kinds of sedum and campanula, dwarf iris, coronilla, genista, two species of dianthus (one of which has white fringed petals and a very strong scent), a yellow and a pink allium, wall-rue, thalictrum, and many other plants and shrubs. In the woods around the town are pyrola, hepatica, Turk’s-cap lily, and there I also noticed a very handsome leaf of an umbelliferous plant. The bladder-nut is a common shrub, and on the borders of the woods grows a melampyrum with yellow flowers which turn orange when older, and have a tuft of bright mauve leaves above them. Masses of this, with the slender white spikes of the small St. Bruno’s lily (_Anthericum liliastrum_) growing up through it, had a very beautiful effect. In the cornfields grow poppies and daisy-like flowers, also a beautiful annual larkspur with purple and blue flowers, and a pale, bluish-white nigella. On the stony slopes at Theben I first saw an everlasting flower with pinkish-mauve blossoms, which grows abundantly east of this point. The commonest flowers on the sandy patches near the river are the yellow snap-dragon (butter and eggs), pink ononis, and a pale-green eryngium, very prickly. In the meadow at the mouth of the Raab I saw _Eryngium amethystum_, and a herbaceous clematis, drooping flowers with blue petals and a yellow centre.”