402 JOURNAL OF THE ROYAL HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 



costing 6d. each : " Alpine Plants at Home," Series I. and II.* Each 

 contains sixty photographs by Somerville Hastings of Alpines taken 

 in their natural surroundings. 



Then we have books that record Alpine wanderings in search of 

 plants, with personal reminiscences of travel and adventure, scenery 

 and history, more or less mingled with plant lore. Only those in 

 which the plants are paramount need be noticed here. 



" Among the Hills," * by Reginald Farrer (1911, 10s. 6d.), is one of 

 these, a breezy book, and, as the author describes it on the title-page, 

 " A Book of Joy in High Places." Its joy is so infectious that to read 

 it makes one long for, and has, I know, helped many to achieve, visits 

 to the scenes it describes ; and after those visits to re-read tne book 

 brings more joy of memories and of further plans. I expect it is too 

 well known to need quoting, but I cannot pass by the illustrations, 

 especially the landscapes by Mr. Soper, without a word of especial 

 praise. They all depict the neighbourhood of Mont Cenis, and I feel 

 an extra interest in them because I was entrusted by Mr. Farrer to meet 

 Mr. Soper there and point out to him certain views that had charmed 

 us. Thus many of them were painted while I was happily hunting 

 and digging plants alongside the artist. I think that opposite p. 206, 

 of the meadows just above pleasant little Lanslebourg, gives as true 

 an idea of an Alpine meadow at its best as one could wish for, and I 

 never tire of looking at the beautiful reproduction, or the clever copy 

 of the original sketch Mr. Soper kindly gave me, of his marvellous 

 view of the Dent d'Ambin. Often as I have visited that spot, and 

 crossed the plain, whitened with sheets of Ranunculus pyrenaeus, in 

 a hurry to reach the rocks beyond and the rare plants growing on them, 

 I have always lingered at the point from which the sketch was made 

 to enjoy the view of the Dent, so curiously like a Gothic cathedral in 

 its outline ; nave, apse, tower, and Lady Chapel all being represented, 

 and generally, when I have been there, all pure snow. It is a pity that, 

 when Mr. Soper drew it, a winter of little snow combined with an 

 early melting, had robbed this cathedral for aviators or angels and the 

 pyramid mountain beyond of their speckless purity. The flowery 

 foreground, sparkling with flowers as brightly as Streeter's shop- 

 window with jewels, is not one atom exaggerated. Viola calcarata, 

 Gentiana verna and G. acaulis, Crocus, and Douglasia grow there as 

 thickly intermingled as he has painted them, and the orange, scarlet, 

 and crimson of the young leaves of Rumex alpinus on the dead brown 

 grass, lately left bare by freshly melted snow, rival any stove-petted 

 Codiaeum or Caladium in their colour. Then again the rosy mass of 

 Primula farinosa in the marshes skirting the great road before it 

 takes its plunge down towards Susa is a faithful record of the effect, 

 as I have seen it in three Junes. 



Mr. Malby's magic-working camera replaces Mr. Soper's paint- 

 brush in his book "With Camera and Rucksack in the Oberland and 

 Valais,"* and pleasant accounts _of many scrambles after rare plants 



