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JOURNAL OF THE ROYAL HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 



peasants, disregarding the rarer treasures, fill their aprons or baskets 

 with the mountain pansies [Viola calcarata), of which, when dried, 

 they make a calming tisane. The slopes in June are violet with these 

 charming flowers, of which many are also the less common white and 

 cream varieties. 



The horizon is bounded on every side by snow mountains close 

 at hand like the Glacier de I'Homme and the Grand Galibier, or across 

 the distant Brian^on valley in the direction of Mont^ Yiso. Troops 

 of lean sheep toil up daily on their way to the higher pastures." They 

 have travelled from the distant Atlas Mountains and Morocco, by 

 Algeria to Marseilles, where the peasant proprietors of Le Monetier 

 buy them up to fatten for the Paris market. The best pastures 

 on the col, however, are rigorously preserved for hay, and are not 

 mown till August, so there is a constant succession and immense 

 range of alpine flowers. 



As early as 1894 Professor Lachmann conceived the notion of an 

 alpine garden on the Lautaret, and applied for a grant to the 

 Minister for Public Instruction and the Minister for Agriculture, 

 while the Minister of Public Works conceded gratuitously a piece of 

 State land close to the hotel. The grant was refused, but M. Bonnabei;, 

 proprietor of the hotel, paid the expenses in 1896 and 1897 of clearing 

 and laying out the ground, and fenced it in the next year. In 1899 

 the garden was planted. At this time it contained rocks and turf, 

 a bit of the natural pasture, some borders for bulbs and shrubs, and a 

 kitchen-garden for the use of the hotel. Its principal and character- 

 istic feature was the systematic collection of 532 plants characteristic 

 of the flora of the Alpes occidentales.* In 1903 the laboratory 

 was instituted. M. Lachmann, however, tried to maintain two 

 other similar gardens at Chamrousse and at Villard d'Arene, 

 and when M. Mirande succeeded him in the Chair of Botany at 

 the University of Grenoble in 1908 he found that all the available 

 funds would be swallowed up in necessary repairs to the latter, both 

 of which had come to grief from a variety of reasons. M. Mirande 

 therefore decided to concentrate on the Lautaret Garden. Nearly 

 three quarters of the space available remained to be utilized, while 

 the " natural pasture " had to be given up, since all the native 

 alpine plants were stifled by a rank growth of Ade7io styles, Tassilago 

 Farfara, and Heracliuni Sipliondijlium. The kitchen-garden too was 

 definitely installed outside the barrier. To quote from M. Mirande 's 

 latest publication, Les Jardins Alpine et leurs Buts (Grenoble, 1911): 

 " The garden is now arranged in the following divisions: first comes 

 a rocky slope in imitation of a valley, close to which a stream flows 

 into a little basin. This part is specially intended for the flora of the 

 Lautaret. Another large tract is devoted to the flora of the Western 



* The Western Alps contain over seventy species not found in the Central 

 or Eastern Alps, e.g. Saxifraga flondenta, S. hrnfoscana, S. raldensis, Cardmis 

 aurosicus, Daphne Verloti, Gentiana Bvrseri, G. Bosfani, Genni heterocarpum 

 (of which Mont Sense, near Gap, is the only French locality : it also occurs in 

 Spain), PotentiUa delphinensis, found only in eix to seven localities of Dauphine. 



