88 ALPINES AND BOG-PLANTS 
obviously requires is to be kept awake by sheer starvation, 
in the thinnest, rubbliest scruff of stone and grit, instead 
of being allowed to sink into sybaritic sleep in rich 
garden soil. 
Crossing the moraine at last, one sets oneself to climb 
towards the sun-steeped granite cliff on which one hopes 
to find the Androsace. As a matter of fact, there is no 
such delirium of excitement about this present quest as 
there was about that of Evitrichiwm nanum. For there 
all was uncertainty—the place, the moment, everything. 
Now, on the contrary, I know for absolute fact, that in 
those baking cliffs overhead I shall soon be seeing Andro- 
sace imbricata. And sure enough as I clamber up the last 
steepest slope to the foot of the precipice, I see the treasure 
before me immediately—three or four powder-white balls 
of down, wadded immovably into a crevice. Immovably 
indeed. Nothing can I do to stir them. Gently as you 
urge them, they resist indomitably. Pull them, and they 
break at the neck. It is true that in a covered frame of 
moist sand, shaded, with plenty of air, you can strike cut- 
tings of many difficult things, such as Kritrichium and 
Androsace, as easily as Violas; but the pious collector’s 
instant ambition is always to get perfect roots. So I 
quest along the face of that amphitheatre, beneath a 
daunting heat beyond words to express, and nowhere do I 
discover a single amenable plant of the silver Androsace. 
From every chink its little cushions leer out at me in 
derision; but in the face of abundance, it seems I must 
ironically starve. Finally, having perlustrated the whole 
semicircle, I retreat baffled, and drop down to the moraine 
again, to eat my four Marie biscuits to the accompani- 
ment of glacier water. Fortified by this repast, however, 
I decide after lunch to make another effort to secure 
my lovely prey. I mark a certain little jagged tooth 
of granite far overhead, standing aloof from the main 
