SAXIFRAGA. 



alpine stream and bog and slope all golden with the type, yet never 

 yield you any variety but the lurid wonder of flame and blood. 



S. aeizoon gives the gardener that feeling of launching out upon a 

 vast uncharted sea such as must have lowered the heart of Columbus 

 when first he loosed from Cadiz for the Atlantic. Let us hope that 

 the Conference will provide us with a chart by which wo may learn 

 at last to reach the firm land. At present, as S. aeizoon is by far the 

 most abundant of the Euaeizoon group, hybridises with every species 

 of its own kind that it touches, and varies incessantly on its own 

 account in every range where it occurs, each collector and each 

 ner goes on affixing names to every variety ho finds, until the 

 pages of catalogues are crowded with s3aionyms and superfluous or 

 unauthorisable names. Not only that, but as S. aeizoon crosses so 

 readily with the other species of its section, so the children are again 

 fertile interminably, so that the turmoil is not lessoned. It is, as a 

 species, the commonest of all alpine plants, the first to be seen on tho 

 hills, and one of the first to be introduced to our gardens. It does not 

 ascend to very great heights, and, on the other hand, may often bo 

 seen quite low down, as for instance on the lip of the Lombard Plain 

 at the foot of the passes from Genoa. It is perfectly indifferent to its 

 soil and treatment in cultivation, in almost all its forms, and practi- 

 cally unkillable if granted open air and sun. Yet in nature it is 

 predominantly and undoubtedly a species of the non-calcareous ranges — 

 a fact which has long been obscured and denied by the inveterate 

 habit of observers not to observe but to take a confident statement 

 eternally for true. And nothing, a priori, could seem more certain 

 than the calcareous proclivities of lime-beaded and indestructible 

 S. aeizoon. And yet, though often found and sometimes abundant 

 on the limestone Alps, it is incomparably larger, freer, finer on the 

 granites and sandstones, and obviously at home instead of in exile ; as 

 some seasons of alpine travel will convince anyone who looks for 

 himself ; and has seen its huge healthy towzlcs of white breaking forth 

 the moment you leave, for instance, the calcareous slopes of Vonanson 

 (where it is so measling and cramped and worthless) and cross over 

 on to the granites of the Madonna della Finestra, or the Bernina group, 

 or Puflatsch, or the road of the Rolle Pass, or any other of the myriad 

 places of tho Alps where primary rock either reigns or suddenly 

 crops out of limestone or Dolomite — and where, accordingly, S. aeizoon 

 either reigns, too, or else immediately crops out in regal abundance 

 the momi nt that tho limestone is left behind. But the plant wanders 

 very far, and makes no vital point of any stone ; it is the only Euaeizoon 

 to en BS into America, and in the mountains of the Old World you 



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