SAXIFRAGA. 



S. diapensioeides is one of the loveliest and least certain of the 

 Kabschias. I have seen whole gardensful miff off upon no discover- 

 able cause, just as I have seen derisively healthy mats of it in positions 

 most improbable. In nature it is a rare plant, not to be seen with any 

 frequency until you come into the limestone ranges of the Southern 

 Alps. Here (occasionally) in situations not open to excessive sun or 

 rain, it nestles into the sheer walls, and there makes cushions 

 very hard and tight and dense, of columns closely packed with 

 microscopic fat hard grey leaves, rammed into minute rosettes at 

 the ends, and triangular at their tips, making a wide mass often half 

 a yard across, perfectly flat and stony, lying over the face of the cliff 

 like a scab of silver lichon. To the touch those unyielding elastic 

 masses give a living, pulsing, yet cold-blooded feeling, as if one were 

 caressing the wrinkled and warted skin of some aged and venerable 

 toad. You have the muffled consciousness of a thousand dull blunted 

 wee prominences that give exactly the sensation of a firm and 

 corrugated hide. Abundantly over the mat come up the littlo stems of 

 2 inches or less, carrying two or three flowers of purest white, very 

 large and very lovely — but not particularly like a Diapensia's, any 

 more than are the leaves. Usually it is a species purely saxatile ; but 

 there are places on the Mont Cenis where it grows in open sandy and 

 dusty limestone soil under the step-like ridges of the coarse grass in 

 specially steep places, after the fashion of S. Burseriana minor on the 

 neck of the Hoch Obir, the coping of rough tough grass serving (no less 

 than the rock which it usually affects) to keep the plant free of the 

 excessive moisture that it dreads. Here, then, it grows into enormous 

 masses, constellated with blossoms of especial freedom and splendour, 

 which, when those overhanging sheets are awave with whiteness, 

 make one realise yet again that one ought always to see one's Saxifrages 

 in bloom. For even here, in a species so beautiful, there are forms of 

 special beauty still — with larger, ampler, whiter, and more brilliant 

 flowers than even the brilliant typo. But of the history of that lovely 

 form which is pure 8. diapensioeides, but that the flowers are of citron- 

 yellow, nobody can tell. It has long been in cultivation under the 

 names of S. aretioeides primulina, but clearly belongs in all respects 

 to S. diapensioeides, and lacks that characteristic widening of the veins 

 towards the notched edges of the petals that never fails to mark all 

 the varieties of S. aretioeides. With regard to the cultivation of S. 

 diapensioeides, it seems that in most places the prime essential is the 

 most perfect drainage and dryness in a situation distinctly more 

 shaded than sunny ; and the soil had better bo a mixture of, perhaps, 

 half mortar-rubble and half well-compounded light sandy loam, 



