92 ALPINES AND BOG-PLANTS 
leaves, and sends up the most admirably floriferous stems 
of bloom, carrying large, pure white flowers, in graceful 
great loose umbels. It is a sound-hearted, thrifty, 
good-natured plant, thriving almost anywhere, even in 
more or less shade—a condition, I find, generally fatal 
for Androsaces. (‘They say A. Laggeri will also do in 
shade; well, it may; but I have always found that every 
single one of the genus prefers sun.) It is truly perennial, 
too, and goes on blooming all the summer in a very 
delightful, pleasant way. I am doing all I can for the 
poor dear, after so frankly owning that I cannot pay it the 
debt which I admit I owe. I respect it deeply ; love no 
one can command, and Androsace lactea is too like the 
dreadful little annuals and biennials for me ever to feel 
quite fond of it. As for them, they too have neatness 
and floriferousness. But, with one or two dazzling excep- 
tions, such as Linaria alpina, and Gentiana nivalis—if any 
one could ever get it to grow—I regard all annual plants 
in the rock-garden as out of place. They are frauds there, 
come in on false pretences. Your true alpine is a sturdy 
soul, who battles with the vast elemental forces of life for 
half a score of years ;—not a little, frivolous ephemera that 
grows up in a month, and flowers and seeds and dies all 
in asummer. So away, briefly, with Androsace filiformis, 
coronopifolia, Chaixii, raddeana, septentrionalis, and their 
synonyms. ‘They are all pretty, mind you—some of them 
very pretty indeed ; but I personally happen to have that 
prejudice against annuals or confessed biennials—my 
dazzling exceptions being only species that are too 
cogently beautiful to be left out—Linaria alpina, Ionop- 
sidium acaule, Saxifraga Cymbalaria—(I don’t say this is 
cogently beautiful, or that I want it; but it came, and 
where Saxifraga Cymbalaria comes, it comes to stay). 
‘Therefore Ill commend these annual Androsaces gener- 
ously, but I won’t grow them. 
