114 ALPINE FLOWERS [PART I. 



a little decomposed mould has gathered, supports some 

 plant. 



After a walk of three hours we reach the top, having often 

 stopped to admire the varied views. From the bottom the 

 visitor might have expected a barren mountain -top, with 

 stunted vegetation ; but it is an immense plateau, miles in 

 length, and covered with the freshest verdure. The best 

 meadows of Britain could not vie with it in these points, 

 while the grass is gay with flowers to which they are 

 strangers, and here and there young plants of the great 

 yellow Gentian, with their large leaves, form the fine-leaved 

 plants of the region. Trees there are none ; but occasionally 

 the Hazel, Cotoneaster, and other shrubs form a little group 

 of mountain shrubs, enclosing some spot, so that the cattle 

 that are driven up here in the summer months cannot eat 

 down the flowers so easily. The mountain is of limestone, 

 but now and then we meet with a great block of solid granite, 

 a remembrancer of the days when glaciers from the far-off 

 Mont Blanc range stretched to this. In several places there 

 is a large expanse of well-worn rock, a level well-denuded 

 mass, with cracks in it, in which Ferns grow luxuriantly. The 

 surface is indented with roundish hollows, as if great lizards 

 had left their impress on it ; these have in the course of ages 

 become filled with a few inches of mould from decomposed 

 moss, etc., and in them grow Vacciniums, Rockfoils and Stone- 

 crops and Ferns, quite as well as if the " most perfect drainage " 

 were secured. 



I was very glad to meet with my first silvery Eockfoils in a 

 wild state, having long held that these so often kept in pots, even 

 in Botanic Gardens, require no such attention, and may be 

 grown everywhere in the open air. The plants grew in many 

 positions : at the bottom of small narrow chasms ; under the shade 

 of the bushes ; in little thimble-holes on the surface of the rocks 

 in a tiny and sometimes flaccid condition from the drought ; and 

 here and there among short grass and fern, where the gathered 

 soil was a little deeper. 



The vernal Gentian is known as the type of much that is 



