THE MOUNTAIN BOG 223 
emerge in broad hay meadows, bending blue with huge 
old clumps and dense colonies of Gentiana asclepiadea. 
Here and there glows a belated golden globe of T’rolhus, 
abundant in its season as in the meadows of the High 
Force, or round the source of the Ribble under the 
northern end of Ingleborough. Ranunculus aconitifolius 
is here, too, and glorious Thalictrum aquilegifolium, and 
a broad stretch of Epipactis palustris, vaguely recalling a 
small and oddly leafy version of Ocontoglosswm pulchel- 
lum, with pretty flowers of rose and white. Of other 
Marsh Orchises there are our handsome natives, mascula 
and maculata, both loving rich soil, damp rather than 
dry, and both quite easy to establish, if only you take the 
bulbs in autumn, being careful not to break the clod in 
which you dig them up. Both these luxuriate in the 
water-meadows of Swiss streams, and in size of spike 
almost recall their big brother, Orchis foliosa, from 
Madeira, a gigantic maculata, with dense, six-inch spears 
of purplish blossom, which is perfectly hardy and easy in 
rich damp soil, in a fairly sheltered, well-drained situa- 
tion. Orchis militaris, with its near relations, Simia and 
Sambucina, are very handsome plants of similar persua- 
sion, but dislike excessive damp, rare species from 
meadows in Southern England. Another pretty native, 
Morio, is hardly distinct enough for admittance to the 
garden ; ustulata is quaint and inconspicuous; as for the 
gigantic, monstrous Lizard Orchis, with its vast-tailed, 
stinking flowers of greenish tone, this plant, so rare that 
there are perhaps only two specimens or so still lurking 
in Kent and the South, is a kind that craves for hot, 
dry, chalky soil and baking summer heat. But Orchis 
laxiflora is a brilliant, loose-spiked cousin of Mascula, 
hardly less rare than Orchis hircina, an alien immigrant 
upon ballast-hills at Hartlepool (and perhaps native, like 
so many rarities, to the Channel Islands), which is pleased 
