RANUNCULUS. 



But it also, on the gully-sides of the Mont Cenis, develops two double 

 forms of singular loveliness, for which it is as well to ascend the 

 merciless slopes on a day of rain when the many millions of 6-inch stems 

 are nodding their royal white flowers to escape the wet, for then your 

 eyes immediately confront the blank stare of Rosa bianca, where all 

 the carpels have turned petaloid as well, so that all you see among the 

 tossed pure foam of the flower are a few tinges of green such as those 

 on the snowdrop ; it is like a perfect little double white Banksian 

 Rose, and has a chill purity hard to express. The more normal 

 double form, Rosa Bella, is more after the Baby Rambler style, 

 preserving the cheerful golden eye of stamens, surrounded by double 

 or treble rows of round white petals in a rich reduplicated saucer, 

 more tidily overlapping than in the loose and Moutan-like elegance 

 of Rosa Bianca. Both these prove more or less constant in the 

 garden (especially in their first, and terminal flowers), and, like all 

 other forms of R. pyrenaeus, are remarkably easy to grow in any cool 

 and enriched soil, such as that of the kitchen garden, where, in 

 alternate rows with the alpine Primulas, they grow quite beyond 

 themselves from year to year in amplitude. Indeed, it is a most 

 significant thing that on its own wild hills where it so abounds, 

 R. pyrenaeus is one of the very few alpines that not only does not wither 

 away under the corruptions of manure, but grows fat immediately, 

 and clamours for more. The most splendid specimens I ever saw 

 sprang on an ancient heap of garbage by the outlet of the Mont Cenis 

 Lake, while in the manured high-alpine plain of the Granges Sa vines, 

 the Buttercup in its time is like a solid tablecloth of moonlight. 

 Indeed, from all I have now so often seen of lovely R. pyrenaeus, I 

 should urge that it never be bought or collected out of flower ; for, 

 manure or no manure, it varies copiously in nature, and, while one 

 bank is covered with nothing but solid orbs of purity, its rival, on the 

 other side of the gully, will show you nothing but starveling squinny 

 stars ; and, a month later, you could have no chance of knowing 

 which was which. P. pyrenaeus, besides being the most abundant by 

 far of the white alpine Buttercups, has also proved the most fertile 

 parent, though as yet none of its progeny have come into the garden. 

 On Marguareis it meets R. aconitifolius, and there is bom R. x lacerus ; 

 in the Western Maritimes it runs across R. Scguieri and begets R. x 

 Yvesii, and by R. parnassifolius it becomes the origin of R. x Luizetii 

 and R. x Flahaultii. 



R. rupestris lives in the grassy damp rocks and warm limestone 

 crevices in the mid-region of the Sierra Nevada, &c. Its leaves are 

 fluffy, roundish kidney-shaped, stalked, and cut in threes; and its 



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