THE SAXIFRAGE. 359 



exquisitely beautiful purple mountain-saxifrage (S. 

 oppositifolia), which decks with beauty the higher 

 districts of the Welsh and Highland mountains, as 

 it does the higher Alps, from whence it was imported 

 as a precious garden plant long before it was known 

 to be a native of our own land. This is not an un- 

 common case. Its beauty caused it to be eagerly 

 sought after ; and it is now regularly sold in pots in 

 Covent Garden Market as an early spring flower. 

 The yellow mountain-saxifrage (S. aizo'ides) with its 

 bright yellow blossoms, gaily sprinkled with orange 

 dots, also grows in our higher mountain districts at 

 the side of rills, or in other moist situations ; but the 

 yellow marsh-saxifrage (8. hlrculus) is an exceed- 

 ingly rare marsh plant ; which, though found in the 

 Arctic regions (at least of America), goes no further 

 north in Britain than Berwickshire, yet it abounds 

 in Iceland. 



The remaining division of British saxifrages has 

 the calyx spreading, the leaves divided, and the 

 flowering stems erect, and more or less leafy ; it 

 contains no fewer than eight species, and some 

 authors have magnified the varieties of the mossy- 

 saxifrage (S. hypno'ides) into six additional kinds, 

 each with a specific name of its own. Probably the 

 best known species of this division is the rue-leaved 

 saxifrage already mentioned and figured, which is so 

 familiar to us as mingling with mosses on the top of 

 old walls, or on old dry banks, where its minute white 

 blossoms in spring, and even winter, and its brilliantly 

 scarlet leaves in autumn, make it an attractive 

 and interesting object. Of this division the other 



