34 ALPINES AND BOG-PLANTS 
beautiful shy Rhododendron dilatatum. Meanwhile, too, I 
am haunted by a doubt whether the name or my memory 
is false. As to my memory, I can absolutely swear—to 
the glory of that rosy Azalea; but have I, have I, after all 
my trouble, succeeded in getting the right name? ‘To 
doubt is weakness; I must steel myself against it. But 
the fact is that last year one of my few surviving plants 
emitted one poor sad flower. It was magenta. It was 
ugly. Yet there is the silver bark, there are all the other 
details. Beyond question the bloom was only poor 
because the plant was young and sad and homesick and 
hectic. With restored health—if ever that arrives—will 
come also the size, the purity, the radiance of the blossom 
I adored at Chuzen-ji. 
After Rhododendron come Kalmia and Camellia (for I 
have nothing to say of Stwartia, and Gordonia, and little 
of rare, beautiful, white St. John’s-Wort-flowered Hucry- 
phia pinnatifida). And the Kalmias are all failures here, 
though once I had hopes, reading that the glorious 
mountain Laurel occurs in heavy yellow loam as well as 
in peat on its native mountains. But no; big latefola 
and charming little angustifolia dislike me equally ; and 
hardly less, too, the rare, delightful miniature form, 
angustifolia alpina, which I collected in the Rockies. 
This is an absolutely prostrate trailer, woody and wiry, 
narrow-leaved, with brilliantly glowing little cups of 
crimson. I had great difficulty in getting even incom- 
plete roots, and my plants have never done anything 
more than survive, and even that is more than I can claim 
for the majority of them. It loves damp alpine hollows, 
in peaty places, and, to all possessors of peat, might well 
prove a treasure. 
Of Camellias, I have made but little out of alba plena 
and Donckelaari, which are generally recommended for 
outdoor culture. And reticulata, though T had it un- 
