A Mountain Tulip, 175 



around me, a wealth of luxuriant mountain vegeta- 

 tion covers the peaty soil of the hollows, or the 

 shallow granitic clay washed down into the crannies 

 from the weathering crags above. There are insect- 

 eating sundews, with their clammy red-haired leaves 

 inclosing the half-digested bodies of a dozen tiny 

 flies, whose attention they have falsely attracted with 

 their delusive show of pretended honey. There are 

 equally deceptive buttcrworts, with tall scapes of 

 bright blue blossoms, and with pale yellowish-green 

 foliage curled tightly round their mouldering victims 

 in a deadly embrace. There are Alpine saxifrages, 

 unfolding their pretty pinky-white flowers to the 

 eager advances of the fertilising bees. And here 

 amongst them all, in a sheltered nook of the inclosing 

 granite debris, is the great prize of the day, the wee 

 slender mountain tulip, in search of which I have come 

 out this breezy morning, and whose actual home on 

 the side of Mynydd I hardly expected to light upon 

 so easily or so quickly in the upward march. 



Of course I was told beforehand exactly where to 

 look for it by the torrent's brink ; for our botanists 

 have long ago so thoroughly overhauled every inch 

 of England, Scotland, Wales, and Ireland, in search 

 of specimens, that every individual station for every 

 rare British plant is perfectly well known to them, 



