98 
THE FLOEIST AND POMOLOGIST. 
[ Mat, 
The “ Alpine plants ” of the horticulturist include the vegetation of all 
elevated regions, -whether in the tropic or temperate zones—all plants, in fact, 
-which clothe high mountain chains and peaks, where above the cultivated land 
they fringe the stately woods, and are seen in multitudes in the vast and 
dehghtful pastures, enamelling their soft verdure with innumerable dyes. There, 
where neither grass nor loose herbage can exist, where feeble world-heat and 
world-force are quenched and discomfited on their own ground by mightier 
powers, where mountains are crumbled into ghastly slopes of shattered rock by 
contending throbbings of heat and cold, and where the very water becomes hard 
and relentless as stone, yet bears and moves thousands of tons of rock as easily 
as the Gulf Stream carries a seed,” these Alpine flowers fringe the vast fields 
of snow and ice, and at great elevations have often scarcely time to flower and 
ripen a few seeds before they are embedded in the snow. The Alpines have the 
charm of endless diversity of form and colour :— 
“ Among them are little orchids, as interesting as their tropical brethren, though so much 
smaller; Liliputian trees, and even a tree-like moss (^Lycopodium dendroideuni), that branches 
and gro-vvs into an erect little pyramid, as if in imitation of the mountain-loving Pines, -which, 
in their massy strength, are often tortured into quaintness by storms, but rarely submit to 
become miniatures of what they are in lower regions; ferns that peep from narrowest 
crevices of high rocky places, often so small and minute that they seem to cling to the rocks 
for shelter, not throwing forth their forms with airy grace as they do in more favourable 
scenes ; numerous bulbous flowers, from Lilies to Bluebells, which appear to have been refined 
in Nature’s laboratory, all coarseness and ruggedness eliminated, all preciousness and beauty 
retained ; evergreen shrubs, perfect in 
leaf and blossom and fruit as any that 
grow in our shrubberies, yet so small 
that an inverted finger-glass would 
make a roomy conservatory for them ; 
creeping plants, like their mountain 
brethren, rarely venturing above 
mother earth, yet trailing and spread¬ 
ing freely along it; and when they 
crawl over the brows of rocks or stones, 
draping them with curtains of colour 
as lovely as any afforded by the most 
vigorous climbers of tropical forests : 
'foliage plants,’ small, it is true, yet 
far more interesting than the huger 
ones which we grow under this name ; 
numberless minute plants that scarcely 
exceed the, mosses in size, and quite 
sm-pass them in the way in which 
they mantle the earth with fresh green 
carpets in the midst of winter; and 
‘ succulent ’ plants in endless variety, 
which yield not in beauty to those of 
America or the Cape; though fre¬ 
quently smaller than the very mosses 
of om- bogs, and which in losing the statui'e of their lowland brethren, have replaced their 
horrid spines with silvery spottings and lacings. In a word, they embrace nearly every type of 
the plant-life of northern and temperate climes, chastened in tone and diminished in size, and 
infinitely more attractive to the human eye than any other kno-wn—‘ a veil of strange inter¬ 
mediate being; which breathes, but has no voice ; moves, but cannot leave its appointed 
place ; passes thimigh life -without consciousness, to death without bitterness ; wears the beauty 
of youth without its passions ; and declines to the weakness of age without its regret.’ ” 
The first division of this hook (pp. 1-120) is devoted to matters of culture, -^vith 
Aetifictal Eavinb in Eock-Gaeden. 
