lo 



ALPINE FLOWERS. 



Part I. 



Lagasca, Lychnis pyrenaica, and others, bearing and preferring 

 hot sunny exposures, do well. But many plants that would bear 

 the heat and drought, if they could get their roots far enough 

 back, would quickly die if placed in such fissures from the 

 paucity of soil and moisture near the front ; therefore it is 

 usually better, in building rockwork with these fissures, to keep 

 the main rocks slightly apart by means of pieces of very hard 

 stone (basalt, close-grained ' flag,' &c.), so as to leave room for 



Fig. S. — Horizontal fissure, witli firm descending bed of earth, grit, &c. 



a good intermediate layer of rich loam, stones, or grit, mingled 

 with a little peat. The front view of such a structure would be 

 thus — the dark spaces in Fig. 8 being firmly filled with the 

 appropriate mixture of soil before the upper course of large rocks 

 is placed. 



Wrong, 



Fig. 9. 



, Riglit. 



" As a rule, obUque and vertical fissures are both preferable to 

 horizontal ones ; but care should be taken with oblique fissures 

 that the upper rock does not overhang. A plant placed at G, 

 Fig, 9, will often die, when the same placed at H will live, 



