A Mountain Tulip, 193 



on the summit of Little Kilrannoch, a Forfarshire 

 mountain, and among the crags of Hobcartin Fell in 

 Cumberland. The bog sandwort, everywhere a rare 

 and dying species, has wholly disappeared from these 

 islands except on the sides of the VViddybank Fell in 

 Durham. Its ally the fringed sandwort loiters late on 

 the limestone cliffs of Ben Bulben in Sligo, as well as 

 on one solitary serpentine hill in the island of Unst 

 among the chilly Shetlands. A tiny pea-flower, the 

 Alpine astragalus, has been driven almost everywhere 

 to the snow-line, but still survives in Scotland among 

 the Clova and Braemar mountains. It is on a single 

 spot in the same exposed Clova range, too, that the 

 closely related yellow oxytrope still grows in diminish- 

 ing numbers ; while its ally the Ural oxytrope holds 

 its own manfully over all the dry hills of the High- 

 lands. I could add to these instances many more ; 

 but lunch is waiting to be eaten in the knapsack, and 

 I am loth to tire the patience of my hearers with too 

 long a list of barren names and bare wind-swept 

 mountain summits. 



Still, I love to think that the little colony of timid 

 shrinking Lloydias stranded here on the granite slopes 

 of Mynydd Mawr can push back its pedigree in such 

 an unbroken line to so dim and distant a prehistoric 

 past. Ever since the glaciers last cleared away from 



