ANDROSACE. 
hang out from the sheer 6000-foot precipice with which the Southern 
face of the Marmolata drops to earth ; and I have even seen it lingering 
sadly in exile on the black volcanic range across the valley of the 
Fedaja Pass, where it reluctantly intrudes on cliffs that belong to 
A. alpina and Eritrichium nanum. 
A. Henryi is the only Pseudo-Primula as yet verging upon culti- 
vation. Its general look might be described as that of a stouter, 
shorter, neater, fatter, fleshier Primula obconica, with rounded scal- 
loped downy leaves on long stalks, and stiff upstanding stems that 
can attain a foot, and carry a neat domed head of pale lilac flowers 
rather small for the foliage, but very concise-looking and tidy and 
respectable. A. Henryi comes from South Shensi, and has, indeed, 
altogether a prim and luscious look, suggesting that it may be either 
biennial or tender or both. 
A. hirtella is a most interesting Aretia, which has developed in 
times long past out of A. pubescens, and even now is quite close to it— 
forming a perfectly dense dome of rosettes, with narrow tiny leaves, 
splayed-out and upstanding and bright grey with a thick felt of down. 
The flowers are white and rather small; and the plant, to the casual eye, 
has still a first cousin’s resemblance to A. pubescens, though the leaves 
are shorter, blunter, fatter, much whiter-grey, less upstanding, and 
so forming into a flatter cushion. A. hirtella occurs extremely rarely 
in the West Central Pyrenees, only on the Pic de Gabizos and the Sum 
d’Aucubat above Eaux-Bonnes; and, if it be considered as a recent 
and special local development from A. pubescens, this means that the 
separation has occurred in ages remote indeed, but comparatively 
modern as compared with the dim and dizzy antiquity that shrouds 
species which are true palacogenic specialities, such as, for instance, 
Borderea pyrenaica in these same Pyrenees, an inconspicuous tiny 
Bryony, not climbing, which is yet, in temperate Europe, the one 
and remotely exiled member of the great tropical family of the Yams, 
and a reminder, across the unfathomable abyss of acons, of hotter ages 
when the configuration of the continents was different. By com- 
parison with this, A. hirtella is the merest parvenu, though its por- 
trait might perhaps have been painted in the caves of Altamira. 
A. x hybrida is a reputed intermediate between A. helvetica and 
A. pubescens, reported from Mount Javernaz above Bex. 
A. imbricata stands for the extreme type of the Aretias. This 
tight rock-tuft goes beyond all its kindred in exaction; for, while 
these are content to arrange for their supplies of atmospheric moisture 
in summer by donning a transpirating Jaeger felt of down, A. imbricata 
is such a malade imaginaire that it spends its life in a dense white 
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