INTRODUCTION. 
be of some help, where unassisted inexperience might otherwise 
plant it high and hot on sun-flogged granite. Here, then, though 
these generalities are subject, of course, to the greatest caution, 
and to many an exception—usually noted in its place—in the 
case of special plants, I may also suggest the following hints as 
being offered by the names of the various countries from which 
the several species are sent. The European Alps, first of all, from 
the Pyrenees to Transylvania, offer climatic conditions curiously 
sympathetic to our own, so that the plants of these, our com- 
paratively neighbouring ranges, will always be the beloved and 
abundant staple of our rock gardens. From South and Central 
Spain, North Africa, and South Italy come many species of sur- 
prising adaptability and hardiness here, but requiring especially 
perfect drainage, and a specially warm situation, in hot soil. 
Very much less exacting, but still lovers of sunshine and warmth, 
are the great bulk of species from the coasts of Dalmatia, Greece, 
and the northern ranges of Asia Minor. Caucasus, Epirus, Thessaly, 
and the Balkans provide races usually as simple as those of our 
own alps, but often yet more tolerant of a good baking in summer. 
Going further south and advancing into Palestine and Syria, 
conditions are reached with which most of our gardens cannot cope, 
being unable to provide the blazing and bone-dry summer required. 
The Alps of Persia and India have been as yet too sparingly 
tapped : on the Roof of the World an awful cold prevails in winter, 
but the profound valleys send up such steaming emanations that 
there ten thousand feet counts less in a prognosis of hardiness 
than would two hundred on the shores of the Mediterranean. 
Notoriously miffy, therefore, and uncertain, are some of the 
Himalayan alpines ; and the same reproach, in very ample measure, 
is falling on the new glories that float down upon us from time 
to time out of the high but too southerly ranges of China, north 
of the Himalaya, in Yunnan and Szechuan. Tibet, however, 
with its Polar cold, is still almost a blank in our experience, and 
so are the great northerly ranges along its topmost Chinese frontier, 
to say nothing of the Altai. Northern Europe, Russia,and Northern 
Asia have a hot summer and a long bitter winter ; little trouble is 
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