GATHERING EDELWEISS 219 



tiful. A sprig of it in the hat or pressed between 

 the leaves of the guide-book may be a visible sign 

 of the owner's daring and intrepidity ; but this is 

 not necessarily so. Our first introduction to the 

 plant was distinctly unromantic. We scaled no 

 dizzy height, hung over no awful abyss, to gather 

 it, but simply looked out of the window of a lodg- 

 ing-house at Buxton, where we had gone for a 

 bit of a holiday, and down in the area we saw a 

 fine potful of edelweiss on the window-sill of some 

 washhouse or something an experience which 

 brings one round to the point that, while a certain 

 sentiment has grown around the plant from its 

 occurrence in the most awful break-neck places, it 

 is no less true that one may gather it freely on 

 Alpine slopes that involve no more danger than 

 gathering roses in one's suburban garden. 1 Each 



1 u The edelweiss does not belong to the highest zone of 

 the Alpine flora, like the little pink androsace or the glacier 

 ranunculus. Its range is from about 5,000 to 7,000 feet 

 above sea-level that is, over the zone of Alpine pastures 

 sporadically distributed, but almost universal. For instance, 

 I have gathered it in every important valley in Canton Valais. 

 It formerly grew I should fear it has been extirpated on 

 a rough stony slope near the Triftbach, within half an hour 

 of Zermatt ; its occurrence in the Saas Thai I have mentioned. 

 Wherever I have seen it in the valleys to the West, this has 

 been on slopes of coarse, stony turf, as Safe as Primrose Hill. 

 The greatest quantity that I ever saw, when it was almost 

 abundant as cowslips in an English meadow, was on a 

 mountain within less than an hour's walk, so far as I 



