24 SUB-ALPINE PLANTS 



of the International Committee, and with Monsieur Correvon as 

 Director. Lord Avebury, the President of the Selbome Society, 

 the late Professor Romanes, Miss Willmott, and other well-known 

 English scientists have always taken a keen interest in the garden, 

 and it was with their help that the ground was bought in '1888. 



The garden now comprises about three thousand kinds of plants, 

 of which the majority seem well established. It is on granite, and 

 over two hundred of the granite-loving plants growing naturally 

 in the district have been left to their own devices on the rocky 

 prominence which overlooks the picturesque but dirty village of 

 St. Pierre at a height of about 5500 feet. 



Bourg St. Pierre is about fifteen miles on the great St. Bernard 

 route from Martigny in the Rhone Valley to the beautiful city of 

 Aosta in Piedmont, a total distance of forty-five miles. Visitors 

 to the famous Hospice (8100 ft.) who are interested in flowers 

 should spend an hour at the Linnsea garden en route; and if they 

 have the time they will do well to stay the night at the little Hotel 

 du Combin just beyond the garden, which modest hostelry will be 

 found clean though primitive. The village of St. Pierre contains 

 relics of more important days, like Lanslebourg, at the foot of the 

 Mont Cenis, >vith which the history of the famous Pass is bound up. 

 The church is very ancient, and in the churchyard waU is a Roman 

 milestone of the younger Constantine. As early as the ninth century 

 the original Hospice was here. In May, 1800, Napoleon's visit 

 to the village with 30,000 men on his way across the Great St. Ber- 

 nard is commemorated by the name of the older inn, " Au Dejeuner 

 de Napoleon," the room which he occupied being worthy of a 

 visit. 



The flora is interesting all the way from Martigny to the top 

 of the grand St. Bernard Pass, and in the lower part of Val d'Entre- 

 mont, above Sembrancher, where the picturesque Val de Bagnes 

 joins the main valley on the east, the botanist wiU find various 

 plants usually characteristic of a warmer climate together with 

 Alpine species which have descended from the neighbouring moun- 

 tains. Thus the yellow Ononis Natrix and bright pink 0. rotundi- 

 foUa, the very handsome purple Vicia onobrychioides (common in 

 the Pyrenees), Caucalis grandi flora, the deep yellow Euphrasia luiea 

 and Campanula bononiensis (of chestnut groves in the Maritime 

 Alps) may be found side by side with Sculellaria alpina, Sempervivum 

 montanum and S. arachnoideum, Poa alpina, Juniperus Sabina, etc. 

 At Sembrancher the celebrated botanist, L. J. Murith,i was bom 

 in 1742. He was a Canon of the St. Bernard Hospice, and a corre- 

 spondent of de Saussure. He was the first to ascend Mont Velan, 

 that ice-clad peak which forms such a beautiful object from the 

 Jardin de la Linnaea or from the lovely Valsorey just beyond. 

 Murith's name is commemorated in Saxifraga Murithiana, a form 

 1 In 1810 Murith published a Guide du Botaniste qui voyage dans le Valais. 



