86 SWISS FLOWERS. 



67, 68, and 69. Gentiana.— Gentian. 



(PLATES XXXVIII. and XXXIX.) 



This name brings us to some of the most beautiful and 

 characteristic plants of Switzerland. At the same time, the 

 Gentians are, at first sight, one of the families of which it 

 is most difficult to decide the species, so many of them are 

 there ; so different in appearance are some from each other ; 

 while, on the other hand, others appear so hopelessly alike, 

 that it seems a formidable task to attempt to name them. 

 Their beauty consists not so much in their form, which 

 has often too much of the angular about it for perfect 

 beauty, but in the matchless colour of the blue species, 

 unsurpassed by that of any other flower. The blue Salvia 

 approaches it, but that looks as if its colour were so precious 

 that it could afford only a little at a time, and its quickly- 

 falling blossom gives a sense of incompleteness to it. Not 

 so with a patch of blue Gentian, rising only two or three 

 inches above the ground, their flowers opened day after day 

 to the sun of their short summer, with a beauty and 

 intensity of blue quite in keeping with the purity of the air 

 and the dazzling whiteness of the snow, which is very likely 

 close by them. 



It is not difficult to decide on the general, broad, divi- 

 sion of the Gentians. The prominent characters of the 

 family are — corolla funnel-shaped, as in the yellow Gen- 



