INTRODUCTION. 9 



of my own dwarf branched lily, which I shall call St. 

 Bruno's, as well as this Liliastrum no offence to the saint, 

 1 hope. For it grows very gloriously on the limestones of 

 Savoy, presumably, therefore, at the Grande Chartreuse ; 

 though I did not notice it there, and made a very un- 

 monkish use of it when I gathered it last : There was a 

 pretty young English lady at the table-d'hote, in the 

 Hotel du Mont Blanc at St. Martin's,* and I wanted to 

 get speech of her, and didn't know how. So all I could 

 think of was to go half-way up the Aiguille de Yarens, to 

 gather St. Bruno's lilies ; and I made a great cluster of 

 them, and put wild roses all around them as I came down. 

 I never saw anything so lovely ; and I thought to present 

 this to her before dinner, but when I got down, she had 

 gone away to Chamouni. My Fors always treated me like 

 that, in affairs of the heart. 



I had begun my studies of Alpine botany just eighteen 

 years before, in 1842, by making a careful drawing of 

 wood-sorrel at Chamouni ; and bitterly sorry I am, now, 

 that the work was interrupted. For I drew, then, very 

 delicately ; and should have made a pretty book if I could 

 hare got peace. Even yet, 1 can manage my point a little, 

 and would far rather be making outlines of flowers, than 

 writing ; and I meant to have drawn every English arid 

 Scottish wild flower, like this cluster of bog heather oppo- 

 site^ back, and profile, and front. But ' Blackwood's 



* Ifc was in the year 1860, in June. 



f Admirably engraved by Mr. Burgess, from my pen drawing, now at 



