INTRODUCTION xxi 



he also takes a pleasure in growing them; and there is 

 more pleasure to be got from growing Alpine plants 

 than any others. This is not merely because they are 

 difficult, although in every kind of art and craft there 

 is always a pleasure in overcoming difficulties; it is 

 also because Alpine plants have a peculiar kind of 

 beauty which appeals to the lover of flowers more 

 than the beauty of any other kind of plants. 



Alpine plants, as every one knows, have adapted 

 themselves to certain abnormal circumstances. They 

 grow in high wind-swept places, often in deep fissures 

 of rock with but little soil, where they enjoy but a 

 short spring and summer, and where they endure for 

 a great part of the year the most extreme cold. In 

 one way they are the hardiest of all plants; but in 

 another they are the most delicate. For in adapting 

 themselves to their life among the snows they have 

 lost much of the power which other plants possess of 

 adaptation to other conditions. And this applies not 

 only to their health, but also to their beauty. If it 

 were possible to grow the higher and more difficult 

 Alpine plants in an ordinary border, they would look 

 quite insignificant among the coarser plants of the 

 lowlands. Even those easier rock plants which will 

 grow readily enough in the border lose a great part 

 of their beauty there, for their home is the rocks, and 

 they seem to have been designed by nature as orna- 

 ments for the rocks alone. Still, we are used to seeing 

 many of them in the border and find them beautiful 

 enough there. No one, however, could think of the 



