MARINE FISHES OF MASSACHUSETTS. 521 
L/ 
The Bill-fish (Scomberesox Storeri?), Fig. 113, which but 
fifteen years since I saw stranded on the shore by the thou- 
sands, driven in by its devouring pursuers, has gradually 
decreased, till at the present time it has nearly, if not quite, 
been driven away, and I think that during the past year 
there was not one specimen seen at Provincetown. , 
CULTIVATION OF ALPINE FLOWERS. 
BY ALFRED W. BENNETT. 
Mr. RonBiNsoN is no mere enthusiast in his subject when he 
says:— "This book (‘Alpine Flowers for English Gardens ?) 
is written to dispel a very general error that the exquisite 
flowers of alpine countries cannot be grown in gardens, and 
as one of a series of manuals having for their object the im- 
provement of our out-door gardening, which it appears to 
me, is of infinitely greater importance than anything that 
can ever be accomplished in enclosed structures, even if 
glass sheds or glass palaces were within the reach of all.” 
His first concern is with the structure of rockeries, in the 
mode of building which not only is the taste still displayed, 
or at all events till quite recently, barbarous and inartistic 
in the extreme; but it would seem as if the very conditions 
necessary for the health of the plants were studiously neg- 
lected. The ordinary idea of the treatment of rock-plants, 
judging from the hideous monstrosities which may be seen 
in many a gentleman’s garden, is that you have nothing to 
do but to poke them in between the chinks of perfectly bare 
stones or clinkers piled together in a promiscuous heap, in 
order to present them in their native habitats. A gardener’ 
who commits such an absurdity as this, can never have as- 
cended a mountain with his eyes open. To quote again from 
Mr. Robinson :—“ Mountains are often bare, and: cliffs are 
AMER. NATURALIST, VOL. IV. 66 
