GENERAL INTRODUCTION 229 



Acclimatisation and Gaff are of &fpines 



Such are the conditions necessary to the life and growth 

 of our mountain flora intense and unbroken sunshine, 

 complete exposure, burning heat, the effects of which 

 are lessened by cold nights and unfailing moisture per- 

 meating earth and air alike all lavished with instanta- 

 neous generosity after the long winter rest described is 

 over. One can understand, therefore, that plants accus- 

 tomed to such a climate find it hard to endure the far 

 different conditions which our lowland gardens at the 

 best can offer. A drier air, winters that are no winters 

 for them, a feebler light with which we are content, our 

 deadly summer, and a long spring of transition to and 

 preparation for the sunlit days are all causes which mod- 

 ify, in this new environment, nature and organs alike. 



So true is this, that for many years mountain vegeta- 

 tion was reputed to be impossible of acclimatisation. Of 

 course the idea was wrong ; to-day almost every alpine 

 species has been brought into cultivation, both in Swit- 

 zerland and in England, where horticulture has reached 

 an excellence unimagined elsewhere. In France, Austria, 

 Germany over the whole temperate zone, the culture 

 of al pines has won a popularity that grows from day to 

 day, and there is scarcely a country outside the tropics 

 into which the flora of the snow-line has not been intro- 

 duced. The alpine garden of acclimatisation, founded in 

 1 884 at Geneva, has spread the fashion through the five 

 continents and the horticultural house of Floraire is now 

 sending established plants and seeds over all the world. 



From the sixteenth century onwards English botanists 

 and gardeners introduced across the Channel Gentiana 



