THE ABUSE AND TROTECTION OF ALPINES 125 



Children love them ; quiet, tender, contented, 

 ordinary people love them as they grow ; luxurious 

 and disorderly people rejoice in them gathered. 

 They are the cottager's treasure ; and in the 

 crowded town mark, as with a little broken 

 fragment of rainbow, the windows of the workers 

 in whose heart rests the covenant of peace.' Yes ; 

 Ruskin was right : in one way or another the 

 flowers are loved by all ; and the eiFect of this love, 

 even though it be the love of * luxurious and dis- 

 orderly people,' filters down to most unexpected 

 depths of our being, purifying our outlook upon 

 life to an extent to which, for the most part, we 

 are ignorant. And it is, above all, to this influential 

 love — this healthy, important, ay, this even vital 

 sentiment — for the flowers that the Swiss Society 

 for the Protection of Plants commenced in 1883 to 

 address itself in favour of the Alpine flora, seeking 

 to augment and strengthen this sentiment in the 

 popular breast by giving it a firmer basis in the 

 popular intelligence. 



Not without many preliminary failures have these 

 gardens been established in the Alps, From one 

 cause or another — from the unsuitability of the site 

 selected, from the death of the founder, or from 

 apathy on the part of the pubUc in the matter of 



