PO VERTY AND BANKR UPTC V. 217 



snows and poverty of mineral food — whilst the 

 other luxuriates in the warmer temperature of shel- 

 tered river -valleys, where its roots ramble through 

 the richest of alluvial soils to never-failing supplies 

 of water ! 



The variation in the personal fortunes of members 

 of the same clan is even better illustrated by the 

 British members of our order Rosacece. If some of 

 them do not grow here to the size of trees, they 

 get as near as they can, like our Wild Apple, Pear, 

 Cherry, Plum, and Mountain Ash, closely followed 

 by the still varying species of the true Roses 

 on a smaller scale, and the unstable host of our 

 creeping Brambles. Most of these are splendidly 

 adapted, in their flowers, to insect-fertilisation, whilst 

 the high degree in which they have evolved fruits — 

 that is, have grown layers of sweet and pulpy matter, 

 often highly coloured and attractive, around their 

 seeds — has enlisted the services of birds to dis- 

 seminate them. Compare all these evidences of 

 high vegetable specialisation, and then turn to those 

 diminutive members of the same order, the Ladies' 

 Mantles {AlchemillcE), one species of which is a puny 

 annual, picking up a few months' scanty summer life 

 as a weed in our waste ground, whilst another has 

 assumed 2in Alpine habitat — has withdrawn, as many 

 human fugitives have done in times of danger and 

 peril, to the mountain slopes and fastnesses. Even 

 their prettily -cut leaves cannot conceal their floral 



