208 COLIN CLOUT'S CALENDAR. 



arctic plains. For example, there is a beautiful little 

 pink campion, the Alpine lychnis, which grows abun- 

 dantly only in high latitudes on the Scandinavian coasts, 

 or at great elevations among the Bernese Oberland ; but 

 which nevertheless manages still to hold its own in two 

 isolated patches in Britain one on the summit of Little 

 Kilrannock, a Forfarshire mountain, and the other on 

 Hobcartin Fell in the English lake district. Our own 

 country has long been so thoroughly explored by collect- 

 ors that almost every separate station for each rare 

 flower has been familiarly known for two or three gen- 

 erations ; and thus it is quite possible to make a com- 

 plete list of such isolated glacial survivals, perched like 

 the European settlers from the " Bounty" in Pitcairn's 

 Island, each on its own domain of a few acres and sepa- 

 rated by hundreds or thousands of miles from its nearest 

 congeners in the arctic regions. A complete catalogue 

 would occupy many pages of a big book ; but two or 

 three of the more striking examples may be roughly 

 thrown together in a few words. 



A little boggy sand wort, now dying out even in the 

 marshes of arctic Europe, drags on a lonely existence in 

 Britain only among the upland peat of Widdybank 

 Fell in Durham. Another arctic sandwort of mountain 

 pastures in the colder north survives on the limestone 

 cliffs of Ben Bulben in Sligo, and on a serpentine hill at 

 Unst in the Shetland Isles. One of the northern chick- 

 weeds still keeps up its race more bravely under adverse 

 circumstances ; for it spreads over all the tallest Scotch 

 mountains beyond the Breadalbane range, and also 

 maintains its footing in the Irish hills near Bantry ; but 

 if we may trust the ordinary analogies, it will gradually 

 be driven from most of these stations till at last it is 

 confined to one solitary chilly summit, where it will 



