156 WILD FLOWERS OF SCOTLAND 



teristic sub-alpine form, and strikes one who 

 approaches the hills as something new. 



The buttercups, with their much-cut foliage, are 

 down on the plain. And only the marsh species, 

 with their usual indifference to the presence of 

 anything but w^ater, care to climb. Such are 

 found in moist places so far away as the arctic 

 lowlands, water seeming to remain the same 

 wherever it is found. 



The distinctive cups of the glen are mainly 

 white ; and among them is the most attractive of 

 white cups, alike in its perfect shape and in its 

 proud and graceful pose. The grass of Parnassus 

 for so runs its stately and fitting name comes 

 as a revelation of unexpected beauty to those who 

 see it for the first time, where it grows side by 

 side with the bright yellow of the bog asphodel. 



In Scotland I find that the foxglove, though not 

 unknown on the plains, affects the glens and hill 

 slopes up to a certain low altitude, marked per- 

 haps by the upper limit of the bracken region. A 

 favourite site is the heap of stones, representing 

 some ancient moraine, or piled up by the simple 

 disintegration of rocks. There it pushes its way 

 through, together with the oak fern and the 

 colourless spike of the wood germander. Or it 



