68 ALPINE FLOWERS AND ROCK GARDENS. 



was in part derived from the high mountain areas 

 of more southern latitudes/' 



Be this as it may, it seems probable that our British 

 Alpines were the advance guard of the plant army 

 that took up the open ground as the cold moderated, 

 and the glaciers began to shrink and finally to 

 disappear. As the warmth increased, plants which 

 had hitherto been unable to withstand the rigorous 

 climate, would get a footing, and follow in the wake of 

 the Alpines, and that keen struggle which is ever going 

 on between plants, shrubs and trees for the possession 

 of the soil — that greatest of all earth hungers — would 

 assume a new form. Thus the increase of warmth 

 would play a double part with the British Alpines ; 

 it would enable them to reach the hills, and to make 

 their way up higher and higher towards their summits ; 

 but it would tell fatally on their rear, which would be 

 overpowered by a more vigorous type. And thus 

 as the centuries passed, the Alpines would secure a 

 firm hold on the mountainous districts whilst the 

 intervening lowlands became occupied by the more 

 aggressive species of the central European plain ; their 

 lines of communication cut they would live in colonies 

 more and more separated from one another. It was 

 something like the invasion of the English long centuries 

 after, when the land occupied by the older people 

 from the Severn northwards, was broken into three 

 parts by the wedges of conquest between the Dee and 

 the Lune, and between the Solway and the Tay. 

 As the Grampians resisted so much longer this wave 

 of invasion, affording protection to the Highlander 



