SEMPERVIVUM. 



blend be prepared, then, containing a quarter of old and well-rotted 

 manure, thoroughly broken tip, and mixed with three times its bulk 

 of mingled mould and rich light loam, so that the compost will be firm 

 without being armour-plated in its adamantine impenetrability when 

 it settles, and the roots of the Houseleeks will be able to rove through 

 it happily and unimpeded. Once started they will never need any 

 further care again, except in the dividing of old masses that may have 

 gone lank with a tendency to die from the centre. They are all lovers 

 of the fullest sunshine, high on the hottest banks and turf of the Alps, 

 or in old walls — not, as a rule, a rock-haunting race, and much pre- 

 ferring, for the most part, the springy slopes and steep well-drained 

 acclivities of tough elastic peat in which you will find Trifolium 

 alpinum. The list of available Houseleeks is enormous, but there is 

 much confusion in gardens and catalogues, nor are by any means all 

 the species, so nicely segregated and created by the botanical eye, of 

 any special distinctness in the horticultural, among the others from 

 which they have thus minutely and delicately been divided by the 

 botanist. And even such catalogues as give long lists of Sempervivum 

 usually omit to provide much information as to the size and special 

 qualifications of each plant : a consideration of great importance when 

 it comes to being saddled with the huge rosette of a Tectorum 

 when one has wanted for a given ledge the neat small globule of an 

 Arachnoideum, yet been unable to tell what make or shape of plant 

 you were buying, from the jejune snippets of description which is all 

 that the space in catalogues can afford. Therefore, since alphabetical 

 lists may elsewhere be found, notably (and to the Sabaean and 

 dispiriting bewilderment of tho amateur) in M. Correvon's Plantes 

 des Montagues (where Houseleeks are found aligned, like Banquo's 

 descendants, in page after page of unilluminated polysyllables), it 

 may prove more convenient here to adopt, instead, the botanical 

 Bystem, which means that kindred species are gathered together, so 

 that one can compendiously state the qualities of a group, instead 

 of its members being scattered far and wide down the column, 

 according to the exigencies of the alphabet, so that each has to be 

 separately treated, and pursued by raging eyes to its lair among 

 cousins with whom it has nothing in common but the link that 

 binds Monmouth and Macedon (and a glance at the Index will save 

 all inconveniences of reference). 



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