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The town of Aurignac, situated in the arrondissement of St. Gaudens (Haute Garonne), is placed nearly on the summit of one of five eminences, constituting a hilly range, whose geognostic formation and upheaved strata manifest its relations with the dislocated spurs of the Pyrenean system. The contour of this oreographic projection, in which the strata of the chalk and of the nummulitic or supracretaceous rock are not always inclined in the same direction, differs but little from that of the tertiary hills which rise below it to the west. The confused and uninformed traveller, consequently, approaching Aurignac firom that side, would not perceiye the transition which is manifested under his feet, were not his attention awakened by a sudden change in the nature of the rocks and by the evidences of dislocation presented in the road-cuttings.
The road leading from Aurignac to the little town of Boulogne in the same arrondissement, runs pretty nearly from east to west, on the southern flank of the mountain of Portel. On the opposite side, to the south, rises the mountain of Fajoles,[1] forming an elongated, saddle-shaped ridge, which runs in pretty nearly the same direction, and which, though of lower eleyation, and nowhere precipitous, is nevertheless completey isolated from all the hydrographic influences of the district. Between these two eminences, or mountains, is a contracted yalley along whose bottom runs the brook of Rodes or Arrodes, which, on reaching, a littte more to the west, the foot of the mountain of Portel, turns sharply round to the north, aud after running a few kilometres to the north-west joins the Louge, a small riyer which takes its rise on the plateau of Lanemézan.
- ↑ In the patois of the country: Mountagno de las Najoles, mountain of Beeches. But at the present time not a single beech tree is to be found either on this moantain or in the surrounding country, nor does there exist any remembrance or tradition even of their formerly having flourished there. The arboreal vegetation of any region is subject to great variations in the progress of time, even independently of any change in the climatal conditions. The valuable researches of Professor J. Steenstrup on the Skövmosses, or Forest Turf-bogs of Denmark, have shown, that in that country there have been three distinct periods of arboreal vegetation since the existence of man: 1, that of the Pine; 2, that of the Oak; and 3, that of the Beech, which continues to the present day. The soil, in process of time, becomes exhausted of the elements more especially adapted to the nutrition of forests of one kind or another. The disappearance of this yegetation involves that of the species of animals which feed upon the foliage. The Cock of the Woods, which was common in Denmark in the Pine-period, no loneer exists there. The discoveries of M. Tournal in the caverns of the Aude shows that at a certain epoch in the pre-historic period, man consumed for food the Stag, Reindeer, Wild Goat, Helix nemoralis, &c. At the present day the Stag is no longer found in the south of France, the Reindeer has retired to the Arctic regions of Europe, the Wild Goat is scarcely represented by rare descendants on the lofty peaks of the Alps and Pyrenees, whilst Helix nemorolis has entirely disappeared with the forests from that part of the country.
