The Small Rock-Garden. 141 
Most peat-loving plants are also limestone-hating 
ones ; but not averse to sandstone, granite, or the 
like rock. With few exceptions, therefore, the culti- 
vation of peat plants upon limestone involves the 
fostering of an alien population amid hostile surround- 
ings, ever apt to work mischief, against which even 
the most scrupulous guard may prove of no avail. 
Such a venture seems hardly worth while, when 
the great range of more available and equally 
desirable subjects, that present no such difficulties, 
is borne in mind. The influence of the kind of soil 
upon foliage is the most intimately marked of all. 
Many silvery- and white-leaved plants and shrubs 
colour best on limestone. Plants the leaves of which 
are golden and variegated, on the other hand, develop 
their beauty best on grit, sandstone, or micaceous 
rock. The majority of plants the leaves of which 
redden in autumn are no less characteristic of peat 
or other vegetable soil. 
Restraint should be exercised in the selection of 
plants peculiarly characteristic to the formation of 
which any particular small rockery is made, as their 
very freedom of growth, under the circumstances, 
often renders them less suitable to such positions 
than others more indifferent to the soil. Although 
the three Orders, the Caryophyllaceze, the Composite, 
and the Cruciferae, are prominent in the Swiss 
Alpine flora, and very useful in rock-gardening on a 
large scale, they should be used with extreme reserve 
on the small rockery, and one Order, the Leguminosae, 
is best confined to one representative, viz., Anthyllis 
montana rubra. 
