A COLLECTING DAY ABOVE AROLLA 79 



CoUon, becoming the reigning tree as you get higher. 

 Though in the past it has suffered fearfully from the 

 prodigal destructiveness of the peasants, movements are 

 now on foot to establish plantations of Pinus Cemhra in 

 favoured places (at Bel- Alp, I fancy, among others), so 

 that its approaching extinction may perhaps be retarded 

 indefinitely. For the forester and landscape gardener 

 Pinus Cemhra has no value ; for the rock-garden, on the 

 other hand, its slow growth and its dense habit give it 

 very high merit. As a wind-break it acts admirably, 

 and, for general use, ranks only second to the genuinely, 

 permanently dwarf Pinus montana. 



Even at Arolla itself you do not escape entirely from 

 the forests, which still linger above you to the right. 

 But the way becomes more open as you advance, skirting 

 shaggy slopes of long grass and summer flowers. Not 

 here, though, can Campanula iarhata be seen in such 

 unexampled splendour as in the meadows above Meiden. 

 There its Campaniles seem taller, its great, fringy bells 

 larger, more numerous, more shaggy, more blue than 

 anywhere else in the Alps. I have already praised this 

 plant ; now, deliberately, I must say that my praise was 

 altogether insufficient for its merits. Campanula iarhata 

 is one of the most perfectly lovable plants that lives. 

 No other epithet is so apt. Other things are more flam- 

 boyant, other things are more startling in their colours, 

 but very few plants in the garden have the gay pleasant- 

 ness of Campanula harhata, the serene, large-hearted 

 charm. Last sight I had of it, I remember, was abloom 

 with all its usual generosity in the depths of London, on 

 a rock in the Physic-Garden at Chelsea. 



But if the way to Arolla is not famous for Campanula 

 harhata, in revenge, the sunniest, driest slopes are ablaze 

 with the coralline loveliness of evil-tempered Dianthus 

 sylvestris, most ungrateful of plants. But, indeed, the 



