A Mountain Tulip. i8i 



little isolated colonies has lived on for ages all by 

 itself on each of their three scattered peaks in the 

 North Welsh district. 



It is a curious fact, certainly, that one should find 

 a single species of Arctic flower reappearing at such 

 long distances in such isolated spots under closely 

 similar circumstances. If we go to the great snow- 

 clad stretches of land which extend around the 

 Arctic Circle in Europe, Asia, and America, we shall 

 everywhere find our little lily growing in abundance 

 close up to the line of perpetual snow, though its 

 diverse habitats are there divided by wide expanses 

 of open sea. If, again, we cross the whole of the 

 German plains, we shall see no Lloydias in the inter- 

 vening tract ; but when we reach the Alps and the 

 Pyrenees, we shall a second time come upon other 

 isolated colonies of the self-same flower. Once more, 

 we may turn eastward, and we shall meet with it, after 

 a long march, among the Carpathians and the Cau- 

 casus ; or we may turn westward, and then we shall 

 light upon it again on the craggy sides of a few soli- 

 tary Welsh mountains. How does it come that in 

 every cold tract we find the self-same species recur- 

 ring again and again wherever the circumstances are 

 fitted for its growth 1 and how have its seeds or bulbs 

 been conveyed across such wide stretches of inter- 



