156 ROCK GARDENS 



with a thick mantle of snow, which keeps 

 them dry and protects them from the severe 

 frosts. Then, during their flowering and 

 growing season, their roots are kept constantly 

 moist by the melting snows, which gives them 

 a vigour of constitution which is unaffected 

 by the scorching sun of late summer. 



How very different are the conditions at 

 home, where, during the winter, there is no 

 friendly covering of snow to keep them dry 

 and warm. Instead, there is constant damp, 

 varied by occasional frosts, which, though not 

 nearly so severe as they would experience in 

 their mountain homes, have a much more 

 harmful effect, owing to their never having 

 become properly dormant. Then the flower- 

 ing and growing season in March, April, and 

 May is, in this country, so often accompanied 

 by parching east winds. And this lack of 

 moisture at the period when it is so essential 

 for them to have abundance of it, to swell the 

 flower-buds and to promote growth, has the 

 not unnatural result that when the summer 

 comes, though they are not subject to any- 

 thing like the heat of their native place, they 



