1 48 Flowers and their Unbidden Guests. 



milder climate, where the period of vegetation is of 

 greater length, and to be at the same time exposed to 

 the competition of other immigrating species. As the 

 Soldanella resembles most alpine plants in requiring 

 the ground on which it grows to be thoroughly and 

 equably soaked with water, it would now maintain 

 itself best and longest in cool shady spots where the 

 ground was wet ; but even there it would be hard 

 pressed by the encroachment on its habitat of mosses 

 and other plants of luxuriant growth, and little by 

 little most individuals of the species would certainly 

 perish. Here and there a plant might still maintain a 

 prolonged existence, but only when it had so varied 

 from the original stock as to have a much taller stem, 

 by which its flowers would be raised above the dense 

 mass of luxuriant moss that covered the ground in the 

 wood. Now the development of this bulkier stem 

 would require a longer time ; and the plant therefore 

 would be unable to flower immediately after the winter 

 snow had melted away, and had left the ground un- 

 covered. It would, however, be unnecessary that it 

 should continue any longer to do so, as the period of 

 vegetation in the less elevated forest-region would be a 

 longer one than higher up ; so that the Soldanella, in 

 spite of its later flowering, would yet have enough time 

 to ripen its seeds fully before the end of autumn. Such 

 a long-stalked variety would therefore be able to main- 

 tain itself, to multiply, and even to spread. But at the 



