SAXIFRAGA. 



earlier, the advance-guard of the race — so that its lavish pearly moons 

 are apt to be saddened by the muds and slugs and rains of February. 

 Both magna and Gloria have come out of tridentina ; Gloria de- 

 veloped here many years ago from a lot of imported plants of whose 

 habitat and history I then knew nothing (the name tridentina had 

 not then been invented), but I have since bloomed it from among 

 batches collected by myself in the Schlern Klamm ; 8. B. magna was 

 from the same lot, but no other foreigner has yet paralleled its tidy 

 and copious magnificence, though imported clumps of S. B. tridentina 

 yield endless surprises in the way of splendour and brilliancy and 

 size — no two specimens blooming precisely the same, but each one of 

 startling loveliness in its own line, with never a lame duck in the lot. 

 With regard to the halo of difficulty that is made to hover round 

 S. Burseriana, is not this in reality a legacy from the bad old days of 

 " pockets " — when we had, too, only the less vigorous North Tyrolese 

 type to deal with, and usually dealt with that in dense shade ? I have 

 so often seen cosseted Burserianas miserably dying in dank dark 

 corners of special selectness, or their owner hopping in ecstasy round 

 one sad moribund blossom that the tuft had mustered force to emit 

 after five years, that I believe the plant, especially now that we have 

 healthy hearty tridentina for our subject (to buy the old type- 

 Burseriana now is like buying Lilium auratum instead of L. a. 

 platyphyllum), is far more often killed by uninstructed kindness and 

 fuss than by anything else. Let it be remembered that S. Burseriana 

 insists on open air, clean and unfogged by dampness, darkness, or the 

 'discouragement of dismal bushes, but that it equally prefers not to be 

 baked and burned and frizzled by the sun (sun is usually less its enemy 

 than stagnant shade). Then let a place be chosen where there shall 

 be the shelter of a rock against the fiercest heats of the day, but 

 perfect openness to light and air. Let the soil consist of one-half 

 good loam, with half its weight of mortar rubble, and another half of 

 blended peat, leaf -mould, and rough sand. Let its bed be made of 

 this, among an equal bulk, or less, or more, of limestone chips ; so, if 

 water underground be adequately applied in spring, there will be no 

 further trouble with S. Burseriana in any of its forms. At the same 

 time these precautions are only offered to those who are sickened and 

 sad with incessant failures. Many are the gardens where the plant 

 riots in despite of rule, in the most improbable places ; I myself have 

 seen big cushions, apparently contented, sitting on knobbles of blazing 

 hot rock, with no more soil or depth than 3 or 4 inches, dabbed down 

 on the stone, of stone-hard caked loam and manure, as if the thing 

 had been a Sempervivum, to be treated after the disastrous principles 

 (1,996) 257 n. — r 



