MORE OF THE SMALLER BOG-PLANTS 243 
wonderful sad deep shade of plum-colour, which, by 
itself, is haunting and subtle enough in all conscience, 
without any sickliness or indefiniteness of tone. But 
the colour of the Primula, rich and dainty pink, is of 
precisely the shade to fulfil and double the attraction of 
the other. And the two plants together in mass form a 
picture more perfectly satisfying, I verily believe, than 
any other floral harmony that I have ever seen—except 
perhaps that of delicate, butter-coloured T'ulipa Batalini 
among the lavender stars of Anemone robinsoniana. 
Bartsia alpina is a rare native of our northern mountain- 
bogs; you will meet it here and there in Westmoreland, 
round Malham Cove, and in all the streamlets of Upper 
Teesdale ; I have never found it easy to establish, and 
have, at times, suspected it of some morbid tendency in 
the matter of its root-system, so delusively simple is it to 
collect and plant. Anyhow, for the bog-garden, it isa 
case like Mrs. Allen’s vain longing for acquaintance— 
‘Despair of nothing that we would attain’; and, may I 
add, ‘ Unwearied diligence our point will gain.” But I 
think I had better say ‘ may, with all due respect to the 
Divine Jane, and the edifying unknown authority—was 
it a copy-book ?—from which she quotes. 
Besides Anagallis and Bartsia, our own marshes give 
us some valuable things. For the common bog-Asphodel, 
Narthecium ossifragum—the ‘ Bone-breaker,’ because its 
glow deludes you into sloughs where you break your legs 
—with its sturdy stout spikes of golden yellow, and its 
little swordlike growths of leafage, like a wee Iris, is good 
and very easy for any rougher corner in damp, heathy 
soil. Very much smaller, choicer, and less brilliant is 
Tofieldia palustris, a rarity which, like so many other 
rarities in England, makes one in the aristocratic band 
that turns Upper Teesdale into the Almack’s of British 
plant-life. Tofieldia is like Nartheciwm in growth, but 
