ALPINES AT HOME IN SWITZERLAND. 39 



Hereabouts A nemone narcissiflora is the chief repre- 

 sentative of the beautiful family of wind flowers ; 

 a few miles away the pastures are as full of the large 

 sulphur Anemone, with blossoms the size of a crown- 

 piece, as English meadows are with Cowslips, or favoured 

 banks in the western counties with Primroses ; whilst 

 a bare week since as we ran down the steep slopes of 

 Jaman we saw other pastures full of snowy- white 

 Anemones and Paradise Lilies. 



Other glories await us in the pine forests. The 

 Scotch Fir and the Larch have much that is beautiful 

 about them. The dark crowns, and the rich red trunks 

 of the former, the fresh greens of the latter in early 

 spring, and their carpet of soft needles in autumn, call 

 forth our admiration, yet even they do not attain to 

 the perfect standard of the pine of the mountain sides. 

 It is impossible to look at them without recalling the 

 magnificent passage in which Ruskin pours forth his 

 praise of the Pine. 



" Other trees," he says, " show their trunks and 

 twisting boughs ; but the Pine, growing either in 

 luxuriant mass or in happy isolation, allows no branch 

 to be seen. Summit behind summit rise its pyramidal 

 ranges, or down to the very grass sweep the circlet of 

 its boughs ; so that there is nothing but green cone 

 and green carpet. Nor is it only softer, but in one 

 sense more cheerful than other foHage, for it casts 

 only a pyramidal shadow. Lowland forest arches 

 overhead, and chequers the ground with darkness ; 

 but the Pine, growing in scattered groups, leaves the 

 glades between emerald bright. Its gloom is all its 



