THE MOUNTAIN BOG 225 



very like those of Calceolus, which, indeed, they replace in 

 the New World — while parvlfloruvi has the most fascinat- 

 ing, pure white pouches, that look like birds' eggs. I have 

 found all these perfectly thrifty in any cool, rather rich, 

 light soil, such as the Cypripediums love — though I am 

 not sure that they are particularly long-lived. Cypri- 

 pedium arietinum is a rare North American whom I only 

 flowered once, a very curious, attractive creature with a 

 blunt-nosed pouch which, with the waved petals, gives 

 the plant its titular resemblance to a ram's head. This 

 throve for a while in similar ground to that which suited 

 the other compatriots ; though now, I fear, it has returned 

 to its long home. 



I have little love for Adenostyles alpina, with its large 

 triangular colt's-foot leaves, white on the reverse, and its 

 big flat heads of pinkish flufil But this now abounds 

 by our Alpine stream, as we climb towards its upper 

 glades. And so it goes, through beds of buttercup and 

 many another casual golden beauty, till we leave the last 

 pine woods, and begin to mount over open ground, stony 

 and loose, in which the stream is diffused, and nourishes 

 in the damp debris Sascvfraga aeizoeides. Campanula 

 pusilla. Campanula Scheuchzeri. On the ruins of a little 

 shelter you will see thick plumy tufts of Cystopteris alpina, 

 kindly and adaptable to a cool corner of the rock-work, 

 and the occupant, by some unguessable chance, of one 

 churchyard wall in Southern England. 



Now we are over the ridge and nearing the last plain 

 before we accompany our stream up and up to its source 

 in the moraine and the unsleeping snows. In a narrow 

 channel it flows, no longer a stream but a streamlet. 

 Above its banks on one side hang loose curtains of 

 Primula viscosa from shady rocks ; on the other, a sunny 

 bank of grass is blue with the trumpets of Gentiana 

 acaulis. Down by the very water-side are hurrying 



