394 JOURNAL OF THE ROYAL HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 



scoriae, &c, and " not so liable to ridicule as imitations of hills, or 

 mountains, or peaks of scoriae in the Chinese manner which are to be 

 seen in some places." In countries abounding in stone, extensive 

 pieces of rockwork with a winding walk or stair and small reservoirs 

 of water for mountain bog plants are considered worth constructing. 

 A list of about 150 plants suitable for planting on these " aggregations 

 of stones " completes the section. These include such weedy plants as 

 Echium vulgare, Digitalis purpurea, Campanula rotundifolia, Oxalis 

 Acetosella, and Physalis Alkekengi, as well as some that, in spite of 

 all our experience and efforts, still refuse to grow freely — Barlsia 

 alpina, Aquilegia alpina, Anemone baldensis, and Arnica montana, for 

 instance. 



Again, under " Characteristic Decorations," we find, headed Rocks : 

 " Plant rockworks are protuberant surfaces or declivities irregularly 

 covered with rocky fragments, land-stones, conglomerated gravel, 

 vitrified bricks and scoriae, flints, shells, spar, or other earthy and hard 

 mineral bodies. Such works are, in general, to be looked on more as 

 scenes of culture than of design or picturesque beauty." 



An illustration in Sect. IV. Book IV. shows examples of well and 

 badly laid stones "distributed on the surface to heighten wildness or 

 picturesque beauty." The effect, in all the three combinations, of 

 some squared builders' refuse is very much that of a child's bricks 

 after the tower of Babel has been kicked over and left for Nurse to 

 clear up. In a short paragraph headed Collecting Wild Plants we are 

 advised to seek among the tops of snow-clad mountains in winter for 

 mosses, and that is all said about collecting in mountains by the great 

 Loudon. 



In Miss Amherst's " History of Gardening in England," * a very 

 short paragraph and one illustration of the rock-garden at Batsford 

 are considered sufficient to deal with the subject of Alpine plants and 

 rock gardens. There is also an allusion to Repton's views as expressed 

 in his "Observations on Landscape Gardening," 1803, stating that 

 the numerous class of rock plants should have beds of rugged stone 

 provided, without the affectation of such stones being the natural 

 production of the soil. 



It will, perhaps, prove most useful to examine first some of the 

 more important and interesting of the books dealing with Alpine plants 

 themselves, and belonging to a period prior to this dawn of creation 

 of rock-garden books in the middle of the nineteenth century. 



I believe the first list of Alpine plants is to be found in a book of 

 Conrad Gesner's published in 1555, part of which contains a description 

 of Mont Pilatus. Then, in a book by Aretius, " Stockhornii et Nessi, 

 Helvetiae Montium et Nascentium in eis Stirpium Descriptio " (1561), 

 about forty alpines are described for the first time. 



Francesco Calzolaris f published in 1566 a short account of plants 

 collected on Monte Baldo, but Giovanni Pona's account of his ascent 



t Calzolaris, Fr., II Viaggio di Monte Baldo, &c. Venezia : Vincenzo Valgrisi, 

 1566, 4. 



