78 ALPINES AND BOG-PLANTS 



under the lee of every stone its little china blue-bells 

 dance lightly on their almost invisible stems. 



It was here, just before the trees began to thicken, that 

 I found the dainty silver-pale variety that I call pusilla 

 pallida. Pallid is a word with evil connotation, and I am 

 sorry I chose so dishonouring an epithet for so exquisite 

 a colour as the silvery French-grey that you get in this 

 form of Campanula pusilla. Then the path passes wholly 

 into dense shade, and skirts a mossy boulder as large as a 

 young church. After that it emerges and moves through 

 endless vicissitudes — up and down, in and out of meadow 

 and woodland, peaceful and pleasant to pursue. Some- 

 where in these parts is to be found, so M. Correvon tells 

 me, the very rare, tall yellow Valerian Hugueninia tana- 

 cetifolia, but alas! I never saw it, though it frequents 

 damp, mossy corners where such rank splendours a,sLactuca 

 alpina are to be met with. 



The great excitement at this part of the ascent is one's 

 first sight of the AroUa Pine. About all waning, dying 

 species, such as Saxifraga Jlorulenta, Liliurn Krameri, 

 Campanula Allioni, there hangs a flavour of almost 

 Stuart romance ; but Pinus Cembra is the protagonist of 

 nature's tragedy in the Alps. Only in its young stages 

 could the tree possibly be mistaken for anything else. 

 As it grows older it develops a dense, club-like shape, 

 which enables you easily to distinguish its dark, stout 

 columns from several miles away, amid several thousands 

 of its rival species. Pinics Cembra is probably a very 

 ancient species. It is certainly very slow-growing, and, 

 I believe, not in the front rank for fertility. In any case, 

 it is being crowded out of the world by younger species. 

 In the Valais it lingers, in Tyrol, and in Siberia. You 

 first sight it when half-way up the path from Evolena to 

 AroUa, in the AroUa valley, and after that it goes with 

 you all the way to the glaciers at the foot of the Mont 



