38 ALPINES AND BOG-PLANTS 
Remains only Daphne Mezereon, our sweet rare native. 
In almost every cottage-garden in March you will see the 
bare, leafless twigs of the Mezcreon clothed along their 
length with its big magenta flowers, armed with a 
fragrance keen, sugared, bitter, curiously ominous of the 
malevolent poison lurking in the whole plant, and con- 
centrated in the glossy scarlet berries that succeed the 
bloom. ‘Though rather capricious, the Mezereon, in its 
typical and its white form, is to be found all over Eng- 
land, naturalised, even, in wood and coppice, while on 
the upper Alpine meadows it abounds. There is only 
one spot, in our islands, however, which claims to possess 
it as undisputed native. Ling Ghyll is a narrow, deep 
gully, cloven abruptly between the fells at the back of 
Ingleborough. Its steep sides are clothed from top to 
dim, wooded, water-haunted bottom, with bushes of the 
Mezereon, which no external agency can well have 
introduced to a spot so remote from man, so utterly 
lonely in the wild heart of the hill country. Another 
speciality of this strange, magical glen was Sawifraga 
umbrosa, also claiming this for its only genuine station as 
a wild plant in Great Britain. Alas, the London Pride 
has disappeared for many years now; they say that 
incursions from Giggleswick were fatal to it. But the 
stubborn wood and fibre of the Daphnes will resist any- 
thing short of pick-axe and dynamite. As for me, I 
confess that I love this Daphne better in Ling Ghyll 
than in my gardens, where its colour vexes me, and its 
heady, evil fragrance troubles me with obscure terrors. 
And now comes the lesser fry of flowering evergreens. 
Let me not, though, rashly apply such an epithet to 
Cistus, noble race, which, however, is not for the most 
part enthusiastic about my garden. Let others, in hotter, 
sunnier, sandy climes, run riot with crispifolius, salvifolius, 
formosus, algarvensis, corbariensis, undulatus, ladaniferus, 
