52 ALPINE FLOWERS [PART L 



THE MARSH-GARDEN. 



The marsh-garden is a home for the numerous children of 

 the wild that will not thrive on our harsh and dry garden 

 borders, hut must be cushioned on moss or grown in* moist 

 peat. Many beautiful plants, like the Wind Gentian and 

 Creeping Harebell, grow on our own marshes, much as these are 

 now encroached upon. But even those acquainted with the 

 beauty of our bog-plants have but a feeble notion of the 

 multitude of charming plants, natives of northern and 

 temperate countries, whose home is the open marsh or boggy 

 tract. In our own country, we have been so long encroaching 

 upon the wastes that we come to regard them as exceptional 

 tracts all over the world. But when one travels in northern 

 climes, one soon learns what a vast extent of the world's surface 

 was at one time covered with bog. In North America, day 

 after day, even by the side of the railroads, we may see the 

 vivid blooms of the Cardinal-flower springing from the wet 

 peaty hollows. Far under the shady woods stretch the black 

 bog-pools, the ground between being 'so shaky that we move a 

 few steps with difficulty. One wonders how the trees exist 

 with their roots in such a bath, and where the forest vegetation 

 disappears the American Pitcher-plant (Sarracenia), Golden 

 Club (Orontium), Water Arum (Calla Palustris), and a host of 

 other handsome and interesting plants cover the ground for 

 hundreds of acres, with perhaps an occasional slender bush of 

 Laurel Magnolia (Magnolia glaucci) among them. In some 

 parts of Canada, where the painfully long and straight roads 

 are often made through woody swamps, and where the few 

 scattered and poor habitations offer little to cheer the traveller, 

 he will, if a lover of plants, find much beauty in the ditches 

 and pools of black water beside the road, fringed with Eoyal 

 and other stately Ferns, and with masses of water-side 

 plants. 



Southwards and seawards, the marsh-flowers become tropical 

 in size and brilliancy, as in the splendid kinds of Hibiscus, 



