150 Chapters in Modern Botany CHAP. 



with patches of turf-moss, their chilly gray lightened only 

 by the silver pillar of a struggling birch? If so, this bit of 

 moorland is a surviving fragment of the great heath of 

 northern Europe, through which every one who enters 

 Germany from Rotterdam or Hamburg must still run for so 

 many weary miles, and of which the vast area of cultivation 

 up to the Ural may be almost described as an imperfect 

 clearing. East of the Ural the bogs and peat-mosses widen, 

 the heaths leave us, the willows and birches remain it is 

 the gray tundra of North Siberia. So our afternoon's stroll, 

 with its couple of sketches, gives the essential general 

 impression of five thousand miles. 



Nor are these surviving fragments of natural landscapes 

 the only ones ; there are good artificial landscapes as well. 

 Would we roam through the deciduous forest scenery of the 

 lower Alps ? The neglected corners of that old park are 

 not to be despised. Or the sombre pine-woods of Sweden? 

 That little loch among the hills, its shores close planted 

 to the very margin, will fairly serve. Or would we see 

 rhododendrons of America or Asia, the quaint conifers of 

 California, the evergreens of Japan or of the Mediterranean ? 

 They are in every shrubbery. Do we seek the richer 

 vegetation of the warm temperate zone, the ferny wealth of 

 the antipodes, the stately leafage of a tropical forest? That 

 greenhouse, that botanic garden palmhouse, shows us these 

 in some ways at their very best. So too we shall come 

 better to understand the gardener in his highest capacity as 

 offering us the resources of an art vaster and grander than 

 that of cities. 



For this geographical botany we need now only more 

 precise scientific guidance. The article DISTRIBUTION of 

 Chambers's Encyclop&dia may serve as a starting point ; then 

 the appropriate chapter of any good manual of physical geog- 

 raphy, conveniently Mill's Realm of Nature in this series ; 



