DISTRIBUTION OF BRITISH PLANTS. 347 



on the under side look as if they were tinted with a painting 

 brush of a delicate greenish-yellow. 



The following is a list of plants which are all found on the 

 Scotch mountains, but are not to be met with on those of 

 England ; namely, a species of Whitlow Grass (Draba rupes- 

 tris), Lychnis alpina, or red Alpine Campion, which, from 

 the dense head in which the rose-coloured flowers are clus- 

 tered together, rather differs in character from the rest of 

 the Lychnises. A kind of Milk Vetch (Astragalus alpinus) ; 

 one of a singular-looking tribe, from the comfortable-looking 

 covering of silky down with which most of them are covered, 

 as if for protection from the cold ; those which grow on the 

 mountains are armed at all points with a fierce array of long 

 and very sharp thorns, sometimes four inches long, as if 

 defying any one to pluck the blossoms; we have made ac- 

 quaintance with it before in the Arctic Zone. The little Eed 

 Sandwort (Arenaria rubella), Sibbaldia procumbens, the 

 rare drooping bulbous Saxifrage (Saxifraga cernua), and the 

 little Alpine Brook Saxifrage (S. rivularis] \ we remember 

 them both in the Polar Regions. A small shrub of the 

 Heath family, called Black Bearberry (Arbutus alpina, or 

 Arctostaphylos alpina} ; the fruit looks very much like a 

 cranberry : this too we met with in the Arctic Zone, and it 



