24 SWISS FLOWERS. 



is well to make the most of these features, as the family 

 is more noted for show than for use,. its acrid and pungent 

 juices having few valuable qualities connected with them. 



In mentioning some of the one or two dozen given as 

 natives of Switzerland, we pass over such as are found wild 

 in our own country, and specially refer to those met with on 

 the higher mountains. The well-known shape of the butter- 

 cup, R. acris or bnlbosus, renders description almost 

 unnecessary. It has a calyx of five sepals, and usually five, 

 though sometimes more, petals, which in many of the spe- 

 cies have a little scale at the base covering the nectary. In 

 some this gets to be little more than a hollow coloured spot. 

 In the yellow species the petals often shine as though they 

 had been gummed. The many stamens are set close round 

 the receptacle. Our first figure is that of R. Alpestris 

 (Fig. 6), which forms pretty tufts on the rocky heights of 

 the Jura and Alps, seated near some streamlet trickling 

 down from the melted snow. The stem, with a kind of 

 bractea-leaf here and there, bears only one flower, but these 

 stems arise so thickly that they form a mass of white 

 blossoms, which have rather the appearance of our Water- 

 Buttercup ; only each petal, of which there are five or six, 

 is so deeply notched as to give the appearance of double 

 the number. There is no scale to the nectary. The 

 leaves are fleshy, smooth, shining, somewhat heart-shaped, 

 with three five-fold divisions. It is not uncommon on the 



