THE MOUNTAIN BOG 221 



join me in my wanderings up the side of an Alpine 

 rivulet, splashing through its bogs and luxuriating in its 

 treasures. 



At first starting, one meets the stream, a brawling 

 torrent, foaming down through the pine woods. Amid 

 the dense gloom of their branches the sunlight, here and 

 there, pours shafts of brilliant gold upon the leaping 

 snow of the stream, and, in rare patches of light the oak- 

 fern's green fronds shine with their almost unnatural 

 brilliance of emerald. Round the roots of the pine-trees, in 

 the unruffled stillness of their shade, spreads a thick soft 

 carpet of moss, starred with the white waxen cups of 

 Pyrola uniflora. So the course of the water continues 

 downwards through the wood, and, as we mount, we pass 

 through thickets of tall yellow Monkshood. Then, per- 

 haps, along beneath a little cliff, stretches a bed of 

 Lactuca alpina, luxuriating in the dankness. It is 

 strange to see this stalwart, splendid plant, six feet high 

 or so, crowned with a head of crowded purple dandelions, 

 thus forming into broad spreading colonies, when one 

 remembers that it still clings, in rare lonely specimens, to 

 inaccessible damp rocks high up in the ranges of Clova 

 and Lochnagar. And yet, in cultivation, it is no less 

 easy than handsome, for any rich corner. Now, in the 

 forest, we are in the track of many splendid, riotous 

 water-plants. Perhaps we may come upon the very rare 

 Hugucninia tanacetifolia, like a big yellow Valerian, 

 which haunts wet wooded places in the Valaisan Alps. 

 In any case we see the Valerians themselves, and, in more 

 open places, the loose white stars of Saxifraga rotundi- 

 folia, stout and sturdy, or the palmate leaves and white 

 showers of Ranunculus aconitif alius. And then, not at 

 the water's edge, but up on the knoll of some decayed 

 tree-stump, sprouts from the rotten soil one arching 

 plume of Streptopus amplexicaulis, like a tall branched 



