GENTIANA. 
comfortable ; but there is no jesting with a Gentian, except, indeed, 
when the Gentian does the jesting—grows ample and splendid and 
hearty, only to gratify you at the end with dingy little flowers amid 
a mass of foliage so ill-pleasing that you feel indeed more mocked 
by such a success than if the plant has followed the example of its 
beautiful cousins and wholly refused to grow. All the more noble 
Gentians, indeed, may be said to be a kittle cattle, and hard to 
please ; but when pleased, with what pleasure do they not repay the 
pleaser! Those all are children of pure mountain air and moisture, 
Oreads beyond all others impatient of the plain-lands; they have no 
down like Androsace to threaten danger and show dislike of wet ; 
they are not living limpets of the rock, like the saxatile Campanulas 
and Primulas. But their hunger is always for the air of the hills, 
and, even more, for that persistent aura of moisture in the clear 
atmosphere which the sunlight draws from the steaming flanks of the 
mountains when the high snows are gone or going, throughout the 
growing period of the Gentians on their slopes. Therefore, while all 
the taller species in the lovely leafy sections of Asclepiadea are easy 
to deal with in any cool moist soil, and many of the Lutea group will 
grow colossal in field or border (to say nothing of the family weeds 
that will grow too well anywhere), the alpine section, where all the 
Queens of the family are gathered together, require undoubtedly the 
most especial conditions. But these granted, the difficulties fade as 
the silver clouds of morning fade from the Tombea in sunrise, leaving 
the blue and violet masses of Gentiana verna jewelled with fine dew- 
drops in the early freshness of day. Let a bed be made of ample 
depth ; let it be deep enough to bury despair so soundly that he can 
never rise up again ; at the bottom, some 3 feet down, cast a foot or 
9 inches of coarsest rough drainage of clinker-burrs and sharp-edged 
broken stone (and the bed should be at a slight slope into the bargain, 
open to all the air and sunshine that there is). On this then set a 
layer of reversed turves, and begin filling with a mixture variable to 
taste and place, but approximately consisting of two-thirds canary- 
cage grocer’s-sand to the other third of leaf-mould, with a very little 
peat shredded in perhaps, but the merest pinch, as the object is to get a 
compound that shall be always loose and never cake, as peat so soon 
imparts to all its mixtures a tendency todo, To this compound add 
chips to pleasure, the more the merrier, almost to the point, if you 
like, of half and half, but varying the proportions as you please, and, 
in different ends of the bed, if only for the sake of experiment, using 
chips of lime or sandstone. Half fill your grave with this, till its 
surface is not more than a foot below the level of the ground, or a little 
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