76 FLOWER-FIELDS OF ALPINE SWITZERLAND 



to any place they want; others, seemingly, are 

 content to be where they are wanted. All, of 

 course, battle more or less faithfully, but some 

 are forceful, self-assertive, while others resign 

 themselves to unobtrusiveness. No plant can 

 accept with entire equanimity what does not 

 altogether agree with it; but many can rough it, 

 putting up with conditions that will kill others 

 or compel them to retire. Hence we have weeds ; 

 rough-souled invaders who make themselves too 

 common. 



Although "the invariable mark of wisdom 

 is to see the miraculous in the common," and 

 although, therefore, we may admire, and quite 

 reasonably admire, all that so capably wrestles 

 with extremes of circumstance as do the Alpines, 

 yet we can and must admit that some are 

 more " classy " than others. For instance, the 

 Alpine I^lantain is, according to our instinct and 

 possibly according to fact, on a lower rung of the 

 ladder of vegetable society than is the Alpine 

 Auricula. Both struggle with much the same 

 rigours and disabilities, but we feel obliged to find 

 that the latter has evolved greater refinement than 

 the former from its struggles. In short, Maeter- 

 linck's ''gout du mieux de la Nature'' is as pro- 



