A Mountain Tulip. 179 



donian summits. But before we go into that final 

 question we must just begin, by way of preparatory 

 exercise, with a very brief account of its earlier origin. 

 Lloydia serotina, then, to give it the full benefit of its 

 Latinised name, is a mountain plant of northern and 

 Arctic Europe, as well as of the chillier portions of 

 Siberia and British North America. Further south, 

 it is found only in the colder upland shoulders of the 

 Alps, the Caucasus, and the Altai range, as well as in 

 a few other great snowy mountain systems ; but in 

 Britain it occurs nowhere except on one or two of the 

 higher mountains here in North Wales. By origin, it 

 is a very early and simple offshoot of the great lily 

 tribe ; one of the most primitive lilies, indeed, now 

 existing on the face of the earth. Like all others of 

 that vast family, it has six petals and six stamens or 

 pollen-bearing sacs ; but it still retains a very early 

 form of lily flower in its open star-shaped blossom 

 as well as in one or two other smaller peculiarities. 

 The cultivated tulips of our gardens, varieties of a 

 wild Levantine species, are all descended from a 

 somewhat similar form ; but with them the course of 

 development has gone much further ; the petals have 

 grown far larger and more conspicuous, in order to 

 allure the eyes of bigger southern insects, and the 

 general form of the flower has become bell- shaped 



