ALPINE FLOWERS. 



Part I. 



the interstices of the crag Hve upon little more than the moun- 

 tain air and the melting snow ! Where will you find such a 

 depth of well-ground stony soil, and withal such perfect drain- 

 age, as on the ridges of debris flanking some great glacier, 

 stained all over with tufts of crimson saxifrage ? Can you gauge 

 the depth of that narrow chink, from which peep tufts of the 

 diminutive and beautiful An^rosace helvetica f No : it has 

 gathered the crumbling grit and scanty soil for ages and ages. 





Fig. I.— Ravine in rock-garden (artificial), with alpine flowers in every crevice. 

 (From a ^hoiograjihj 



and the roots enter so far that nothing the tourist carries widi^ 

 him can bring out enough of them to enable the plant to exist 

 elsewhere. And suppose we find plants growing apparently 

 from mere cracks without soil. If so, the roots simply search 

 farther into the heart of the flaky rock, so that they are safer 

 from any want of moisture than if in the best and deepest soil. 

 In 1868 I met on the Alps with plants not more than an inch 

 high, and so firmly rooted in crevices of half-rotten slaty 

 rock that any attempt to take them directly out would have 

 proved futile. But, by carefully knocking and peeling away 

 the sides from some isolated bits of projecting rock I suc- 

 ceeded in laying the roots quite bare, radiating in all direc- 



