176 Flowers and their Pedigrees. 



and printed in minute detail in half a dozen British 

 floras. But I feared that here our little mountain 

 tulip might be quite extinct already, exterminated by 

 the too pressing attention of its numerous dilettante 

 admirers ; for as soon as your average collector finds 

 a last lingering relic of some moribund British race 

 on down or moorland, his first notion is to complete 

 its destruction by rooting up the one remaining in- 

 dividual as a unique specimen, to become a permanent 

 record of his luck and skill in the brown paper 

 treasuries of his own herbarium. We, however, are 

 naturalists of another kidney, I trust : we will observe 

 and examine our little treasure carefully on the spot, 

 but we will not pull it up ruthlessly, bulb and all, 

 or press its pretty blossoms under a dead weight 

 of books and drying paper, in order to preserve its 

 miserable mummy in the wretched cemetery of a 

 hortns siccus. Long may it flourish on its native hill- 

 side, and may no scientific hand ever grub it up as 

 the cruel trophy of a specimen-slaughtering raid! 

 Indeed, to be perfectly frank, like the canny Scot who 

 was ' no thot sure of Jocky,' I have not trusted even 

 my readers themselves with the exact secret of my 

 tulip's whereabouts. I will confess that I have in- 

 vented the name of Mynydd Mawr on purpose to 

 deceive, and I have led up to the summit by a round- 



