INTRODUCTION. 
place. (The best months are March and April, when it awakes, or 
August and early September (if well watered), when the roots for “ 
next year can push forth at once and take hold of the warm, sun- 
ripened soil before the winter.) It must not be packed or poked 
into a case-hardened hole in the ground, but be delicately placed 
in well-broken earth, planted well down to its neck, with its roots 
not wadded or condensed, but spread abroad distinctly, so that 
each may start on a journey of its own. Then more broken soil 
must be poured on them, the hole filled up, the soil pressed down 
firmly and tightly round the plant, but not violently. Then the 
level must be made flat with more soil, and the work is done. 
After this it only remains to top-dress the plant thoroughly in 
spring, with a mixture of 4 leaf-mould to 2 of very coarse grit and 
sand, to make good the denudations of the winter rains; first 
being sure to press it back firmly into the soil, from which the 
frosts have probably lifted it. This top-dressing is, indeed, a 
most valuable help to triumph, representing in the garden the 
silt of detritus left by molten snows and snow-torrents in the 
alpine spring, which often bury the plants almost wholly from 
sight, and always cause them to rejoice with doubled vigour. 
But in coping with alpine vegetation (all that follows applies 
much more feebly to lowland plants, and hardly at all to those 
of the bog) the essential point, when site and drainage and soil 
are safe, is that of moisture. The conditions of plant-life, indeed, 
between 5 to 10,000 feet are so peculiar in this matter that, setting 
aside all differences of altitude, it remains a miracle that the 
children of the high hills should be, generically, so strangely easy 
and vigorous in cultivation. For some six months of the year, more 
or less, they lie beneath a bed of snow, perfectly dry and warm 
and comfortable in an unchanging temperature, not wholly dor- 
mant indeed, but in a state of almost suspended animation; to 
this period of complete rest succeeds a brief and crowded hour of 
glorious life. Soldanella makes her flower-buds beneath the 
snow-field, and generates warmth (they say) to melt a passage 
at last up into the daylight. Thus life on the hills begins to 
pulse about the end of May; by mid-June the alps are open and 
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